Born: 1915 (circa), United States
Died: 2015
Country most active: United States, International
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Home State: Georgia
Dates of Service: 1943-1945
Highest Rank: Private First Class
“I was on the list.” (Video interview, 33:30)
Dorothy Johnson had worked as a teacher and librarian before the war and loved her work, but she jumped at the opportunity to join the WAC in 1943. Eager to do her part in the war effort and to see the world, she reveled in the opportunities the military provided her to do interesting and important work and to travel the world. In her interview, she recalls fond memories of her exposure to British and French culture, as well as touching interactions with German POWs.
Collection Highlights
“I had some of the best teachers in the world”: Childhood and Early Career in Education
Johnson grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and was the daughter of two teachers who instilled in her the value of education from a young age. Although both of her parents were college graduates, it was not always easy for them to find employment in the segregated school systems of the time. She was sent to live with an aunt and uncle for a period, and this uncle—as one of the first African American physicians in Atlanta—was able to send her to private schools for part of her education. After graduating from Booker T. Washington High School in 1932, she was accepted with a full scholarship to Spelman College, a historically Black, all female institution in Atlanta. In her interview, she describes the “excellent experience” she had there:
“I had some of the best teachers in the world. It was at a time when all the Black scholars, really, were on faculties in Black universities. And I was very fortunate, because I was there at the time that Dr. Braithwaite was there, Sterling Brown was there, Hale Woodruff was there, the artist. And occasionally, DuBois would come in and out. And my mother had gone to teachers’ college at Atlanta University, and Dr. DuBois was her instructor.” (Video interview, 2:44)
“I was really very fortunate, we had Anne Cook, we had Rayford Logan – all of those famous Black scholars who were in and out of Morehouse, and Atlanta University, and Spelman. So it was really a great time for me.” (Video interview, 3:50)
Johnson majored in history and French while at Spelman, and graduated in 1938. She recalls that the teaching profession was one of the few open to her after she graduated.
“At that time, there was really nothing for college graduates to do—in my situation—but to teach, and so that’s what I did, I taught.” (Video interview, 4:53)
Beginning her teaching career as a third-grade teacher in Miami, Florida, Johnson found that she loved working in education.
“I was teaching third grade, and I loved it – I loved third grade. Somebody had these children in the first and second grade, and they had worked with them and gotten them up to the point where they were just ready to run with reading. And so it was exciting to have these children that were eager to eat up everything that you could put before them. And so third grade was an exciting grade for me.” (Video interview, 6:51)
Reflecting that “History tells, and history doesn’t tell” how segregation and discrimination worked against African American teachers of her generation by both restricting their opportunities and limiting their power in the workplace, Johnson provides a brief explanation of how she decided to leave teaching and become a librarian.
“If you were a creative teacher, sometimes you just didn’t fit into these slots…. And so I decided that I really wanted to work with children, but I must find another way to work with them. So I decided then that maybe I could do it with my interest in libraries and reading.” (Video interview, 8:26)
“The world was erupting around me”: the War and the WAC
Johnson worked as a school librarian in St. Augustine, Florida for a few years before receiving a job offer from her alma mater to work in the Spelman College library. By this time the United States was involved in World War II, and while Johnson relished being back in the academic environs of Spelman, she also felt a desire to do her part for the war effort.
“But here again I was right in the midst of this lovely campus, this cocoon, this secluded world of women. And the world—it was wartime then—the world was erupting around me. And I realized that perhaps I was too much in a cocoon, that I wanted something else.” (Video interview, 12:09)
After being assured by a recruiter that she would have the chance to go abroad, Johnson enlisted immediately and with a great deal of excitement. She went through basic training at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, and she maintained her sense of excitement as well as a sense of humor about the odd situations that servicewomen faced in the early days of the WAC.
“Oh, it was so exciting! It was military, and it was fun for several reasons. In the first place, we were the first women in the military, and actually, they really didn’t know exactly what to do with us. And so they were learning—the same way we were learning—you know, how to manage us and what to do with us. Now, they felt that they could not give us the same kind of training that they gave the men, yet there were no specific plans for the training of women. So we had to go through the basic things that men went through. And of course, a lot of mistakes were made. But we took them in stride.” (Video interview, 16:40)
Johnson recalled one incident in particular, when the WACs in her basic training class were not instructed on how to conduct themselves during an inspection, and the inspecting general arrived to find them lounging around without their jackets on. This was typical of the type of confusion that existed among their instructors and superiors over how extensively the WACs should be integrated into military culture. This confusion and the sometimes haphazard manner in which military discipline was imposed on the WACs took a toll on some of the women.
“And of course, some of the women did not take it well, but it was so different from any life that I had ever led that it became fun, and it was funny for me, and I began to laugh at all of these things! I had a great time, really.” (Video interview, 20:41)
After basic training, Johnson went to Fort Des Moines, Iowa, for administrative training, before being assigned to work at the base hospital at Fort Riley, Kansas. Johnson and her fellow WACs began to face hostility from some male soldiers who resented that female soldiers were being used to replace them in rear-echelon duties in order to make them available for combat-related duties.
“By that time I think people were getting some idea about what their need for us would be. And the thing that made us very unpopular with the men—the military men—was that they understood that our coming—women—coming into the military, there was a need to relieve these men—who were mostly in administrative duties—to relieve them for active duty. And of course, that did not make us very popular with them.” (Video interview, 22:35)
Her time at Fort Riley passed pleasantly for Johnson, as she had the opportunity to put her librarian skills to work by running the hospital library program – together with fellow librarian and Veterans History Project participant Azalia Irene Oliver. Johnson found her time at Fort Riley interesting, and enjoyed her experiences through a commitment to living in the moment and appreciating the people around her.
“And you know, it was so interesting because you met interesting people—soldiers—who had been either to the front or in some military camp who had some medical problem.” (Video interview, 29:54)
“Listen, I never got to be more than a PFC. But with me, it was not—I was not even thinking about the upward march, I was simply satisfied and happy with the assignments I got and the life that I was living that was so different from my civilian life, and that was my challenge.” (Video interview, 31:13)
“I was on the list”: Deploying to England with the 6888th
In her interview with Gwendolyn Coley in 2008, Johnson used the 19th-century poem “Abou Ben Adhem” by British poet Leigh Hunt as an allegory to explain her feelings about service. In this poem, an angel travels with a list recording “The names of those who love the Lord.” Although Ben Adhem’s name is not on the list originally, he requests that it be added as he is “one that loves his fellow-men.” In the end, “Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.” The moral of the poem is that service to others is the truest form of godliness – a moral that Johnson took to heart. When the 6888th was formed in December 1944, Johnson was delighted that her name was “on the list”:
“I was on the list. Now, they found a job for us – they found a job for our unit. And that job was a postal service job.” (Video interview, 33:30)
Johnson was soon worried, however, when the initial roster of those from the 6888th who would deploy to Europe was published and her name was not on it.
“So then everybody was called. My name was not on the list to go abroad with this group. So there I was…. I felt like when they called out the names of the people who were going abroad, I felt like Abou – my name was not there!” (Video interview, 36:49)
Gladly for Johnson, she did deploy with the second group of women from the 6888th who reached Britain at the end of March 1945. She remembers the battalion’s work while they were based in Birmingham with great detail:
“And every morning the trucks would come in loaded with packages of mail, and packages that had been housed in the warehouses in England – Mansfield or Birmingham or somewhere. And they would dump all of these packages into one big room. And they had supplied us with files – the names of the men who were enlisted in the Army in the European Theater. And so every morning, we had to—there was a cadre of people who went through and sorted out, and gave us packages of mail that suited our files. And I had the Vs – and you would have thought that that was a short list, but no there were many, many people in the Army whose last name began with Vs.”
“And you know what was so exciting about that? There was part of the history of these men on the files. The Army really must be commended for the kinds of files that they kept, even under those wartime circumstances; because the men who were listed in my files, their whereabouts had been traced as far as the Army could tell at the time we got the files. And what was so strange about all of this was you could see the last time that this man got mail. And you were so determined to find him, because you had this pile of mail here that he should have gotten over the years, and packages. And you were so—you felt a connection with this man whom you only knew by the name on the card. But you knew that he had not gotten any news from his family or friends from the last date that was mentioned on your card. And you were determined to try to find him. So that was what everybody was concerned with. And so we worked there until we got that warehouse all cleared out.” (Video interview, 39:01)
Other memories that stood out for Johnson from her time in Birmingham included dealing with rotting food in care packages, but she also fondly remembered the warm welcome they received from the people of Birmingham:
“And when we finished clearing out that monumental mountain of mail that had been piled up—now some of that mail had deteriorated to the extent that it wasn’t even readable. Some of it was mildewed, some of it was still wet, some of it was—you couldn’t handle it. The packages that people had sent their relatives in the Army – the packages of food had to be just thrown away because it was no longer of any value to anybody. So we had to go through all of that and settle all of that out. But we worked very hard from early in the morning until about four or five, then we had dinner, and then we were free for the evening to explore the town.”
“And I must say that the English were very happy to have us, and they were very wonderful hosts, and they opened up the town for us. And they came and invited us into their homes. The children would come, and you know the army was well-supplied with food and fruits and we had lots of stuff, you know? And they knew we did, and the children would come, and we would give them oranges. And one of the things that they would say to us sometimes when they would just see us on the street – they said, “Have you any gum, chum?” And so we would give them whatever we had, and they were very wonderful hosts to us, because they knew why we were there and what we were doing. And so our time there was really very interesting. They helped us explore the town and meet the people, and I just thrived really, I really did enjoy it.” (Video interview, 42:55)
France: Absorbing the Culture and Seeing the Enemy
While Johnson enjoyed her time in England, as a librarian and lover of French literature and culture she relished her time in France:
“Then the other thing that made me so thrilled about being in Rouen was the fact—you know I told you that in college I had majored in French—and Rouen was one of the places where the great French writer Rostand—you know the Cyrano de Bergerac author—had lived. It was a place where Flaubert had lived – Flaubert’s father was a doctor, and the hospital was still there where his whole family had been reared. I said, “I have to find some kind of way to get into that hospital.” Now you could only go to that hospital if you needed a doctor’s help! [laughs] So how was I going to get into that hospital?”
“But it just so happened—and they keep telling me that they think I contrived this, but I really didn’t—I had something similar to what we call the flu today. But anyway, you could not have any kind of illness with your group, because they had to take you out right away so you wouldn’t contaminate the rest of the group. So I got a chance to go to that hospital, this hospital where Flaubert’s family had lived, and where he was raised, and where—maybe—his Madame Bovary or something had sprouted in his mind. But it was just wonderful for me to be in Rouen.” (Video interview, 46:45)
Johnson used the opportunity to improve her French, and also took advantage of the opportunity to see the Louvre soon after it reopened. While the battalion was in Rouen, there were German POWs housed in separate quarters at the same barracks as the 6888th. Encounters with these former enemies made an indelible impression on her:
“We were warned that we were not supposed to fraternize, they were not to have anything at all to do with us. And of course, it was not easy for us to fraternize with them, we didn’t know their language, they didn’t know our language. But most of them were excellent craftsmen, and they would sit in their area and they would be crafting, doing woodwork carvings, and they would paint gift boxes.”
“And do you know what they would do? They knew they were not supposed to interfere with us, and we were not supposed to interfere with them, but they would come and leave the things that they had made where we could find them. And we got the most beautifully crafted gift boxes – decorated, painted, and everything. We never knew who did it, but they would make these, and they knew that we would find them.”
“And I thought that was kind of interesting, you know? And I don’t know whether or not I should say this, but I didn’t feel like they were enemies. I felt like they were probably victims of war, just like we could have been, and our soldiers were victims of war. And so, I remember the feeling I had toward them.” (Video interview, 57:00)
After the War: A Continued Dedication to Education
Johnson took advantage of the GI Bill to earn a second bachelor’s degree in library science and was able to land her dream job as a children’s librarian.
“And that was due to the GI Bill of Rights, they paid for my schooling, and it was wonderful. And I just hope that our veterans who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan get the same chance that I did to further my education.” (Video interview, 1:06:27)
Dorothy Turner Johnson remained a staunch advocate for education and the arts until her passing External in 2015 at the age of 100.