Mildred Loscalzo Vanderpool was born in July 1920 in Queens County, New York. She went to Connecticut College [Annotator's Note: in New London, Connecticut], majoring in economics and merchandising, and is sure that is why she ended up in the supply corps [Annotator's Note: Navy Supply Corps, Navy Supply Systems Command] when she joined the Navy. Her childhood in New York was typical of the times. Her father was a criminal lawyer and an assistant district attorney with financial investments in rental properties. He lost a small fortune during the Great Depression. He eventually recovered and became a judge. Vanderpool was attending a USO [Annotator's Note: United Services Organization] dance when the Japanese attack [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. All servicemen were directed to return to their bases immediately. Patriotic spirit was high, and every young man wanted to serve the country. She joined the Navy in November 1943 because she wanted to do something adventurous, worthwhile and patriotic. Her parents never questioned her decision. The dentist wanted to disqualify her because of her bite. She argued that she wasn't planning on biting anybody during her service and was ultimately accepted. She chose the Navy because the WAVES [Annotator's Note: Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service; United States Naval Women's Reserve] had just been formed to release Navy men for combat duty abroad. As a college graduate, she was sent to officer training at Smith College [Annotator's Note: in Northampton, Massachusetts] for two months. She remembers having to take community showers in cold water, meant to prepare the girls to go out into the November weather in Massachusetts. Once she was commissioned, she was sent to Harvard University [Annotator's Note: Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts] for 16 weeks of intensive training in the duties of a supply officer.

When Mildred Vanderpool received her orders to New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] in May [Annotator's Note: May 1944], all her uniforms were woolen. She thought the assignment would be glamorous, and she was "thrilled to death," until she got off the train. She spent a couple of miserable months working in a hot Quonset hut [Annotator's Note: prefabricated metal building] until her summer uniforms were issued in July. Vanderpool "learned to love it," and when she married a man she met in New Orleans, she spent her honeymoon there, and eventually settled in the state. They were on their own for living quarters. She and two other girls rented a garage apartment, but one girl was transferred because she "carried on" with a married male officer. There were five WAVES [Annotator's Note: Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service; United States Naval Women's Reserve] at the depot, and 42 male officers, and Vanderpool said the girls got a lot of attention. She and the remaining roommate later moved to a ground floor apartment where she had her first experience with southern roaches, and they finally lived with "two maiden ladies" who treated them well. Her work in New Orleans was provisioning LSTs [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] that were going out to sea with "outgoing" supplies. After a while she was moved to purchasing. Vanderpool said it was a "broadening experience," and enjoyed her time in the service. She is glad she did it, and was happy to find a husband, although it wasn't her aim when she went in. She mentioned that her brother, who was a lawyer when he went into service, went into intelligence work and dressed as a civilian. As such, he was not eligible for the privileges that uniformed officers of his rank enjoyed. On one occasion when they were both in New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York], they went out together, she in uniform and he in civilian clothes; the kids teased him asking, "Lettin' your girlfriend fight the war for you?" She guessed he was working as some kind of spy in the Office of Strategic Services.

Asked if she ever experienced any kind of harassment, Mildred Loscalzo Vanderpool answered in the negative. She said her whole Navy experience was in New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana] at the supply depot, and she never encountered what today's generation considers harassment. The name WAVES [Annotator's Note: Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service; United States Naval Women's Reserve], she explained, stood for Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, and was originated by the president of Wellesley College [Annotator's Note: in Wellesley, Massachusetts]. The term Voluntary Emergency Service was included because the fuddy-duddy admirals didn't want women in the service permanently. She thinks that by 1945 a law was passed that allowed women to serve out of the borders of the continental United States in either Alaska or Hawaii. She put in to transfer to either place. While waiting, she met the man she would marry [Annotator's Note: Lieutenant Commander Lee Vanderpool]. She no longer wanted to leave the country when her orders came in to go to Hawaii. The war ended, and she didn't have to deploy. Vanderpool repeats that it was a broadening, enlightening experience, and said she has no regrets. She finds it amazing that the younger generation has never heard of the WACS [Annotator's Note: Women's Army Corps] or the WAVES. Vanderpool notes that civilian life was kind of dull at the time because the fellas [Annotator's Note: slang for men] were gone, there was rationing, and she was working. It wasn't much fun, and she thought service in the WAVES might be something she would enjoy. Asked if she thought it important to teach the younger generations about World War 2, Vanderpool said it is very important that they realize what those times were. She brought up Tom Brokaw's [Annotator's Note: Thomas John Brokaw; American television journalist and author] descriptor of hers as the greatest generation [Annotator's Note: from The Greatest Generation, 1998 book by journalist Tom Brokaw], and said she goes along with that notion. The returning servicemen she encountered rarely wanted to talk about the war, and the most she learned about her husband's service came out of an interview he gave in connection with a grandson's school assignment. He served on the USS Alcyone (AKA-7) that carried Marines and landing craft to beaches in the Pacific, and he never used the word "tragic" lightly.

Mildred Loscalzo Vanderpool heard about the atomic bombs [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki, Japan on 9 August 1945] while she was working at the Navy installation in New Orleans, Louisiana. The whistles and horns were blowing when the announcement was made that the war was over. Everybody was elated and they partied. There were a lot of civilian employees working with them at the old cotton warehouse at the foot of Napoleon Avenue. She didn't consider staying in the service because she and her husband-to-be [Annotator's Note: US Navy Lieutenant Commander Lee Vanderpool] wanted to get on with their lives. She was separated from the Navy in May 1946. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if anybody questioned the dropping of the bombs.] Vanderpool figures they deserved it as they had decimated our fleet [Annotator's Note: Navy fleet]. She had no sympathy for the Japanese at the time and she felt more strongly about the Japanese than the Germans, because the Japanese had attacked our country. Years after the war, when she and her husband visited Hawaii, they still felt uneasy about accepting services from Japanese attendants. Vanderpool liked President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] and naysayers could not sway her admiration. She benefited from her experience and would do it again if she were called upon. She was 23 years old, and it was an unforgettable time in her life. Roosevelt was a wonderful politician and at the time was a very popular leader. Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] wasn't popular until after he put MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] in his place. MacArthur was an arrogant SOB [Annotator's Note: son-of-a-bitch] who felt he ruled the world. On reflection, she thinks maybe she joined the Navy because of the Japanese aggression in the Pacific.