Of the more than 16 million Americans who served in World War Two, just a few hundred thousand were women. However, they played an integral part in winning the war.
“I wanted to fight for my country. I wanted to live in a free country and if I could do anything I was gonna do it,” Constance Collins said.
The 92-year-old said her sense of patriotism pushed her to join the military during World War II, specifically the bombing of Pearl Harbor. At just 20 years old, she asked her parents for permission to enlist in the Navy, following in her father’s footsteps.
On the same day, Collins, her older sister and a younger brother all left for war, while another brother joined a monastery.
“On one day the family went from nine to five,” Collins said.
However, Collins said her family supported their daughter’s decision.
“Mother was gung-ho. ‘Constance, if you want to go, you go,’” her mother said, Collins recalled.
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In 1944, women were not allowed to join the full Navy and could only serve stateside. Collins and her sister Shirley went into the reservist program called WAVES or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service.
“You felt that you were really helping the war effort,” Collins said.
She worked as a cartographer in Washington D.C, drawing maps of the Pacific, based on photographs taken from the air.
“We would place the bridges and places that they were supposed to bomb on the map. Every time I did it, I said a prayer, ‘Please let me put the bridge where it is,’” she recalled.
With men leaving their jobs in droves to join the fight in World War II, women were also encouraged to enlist. However, not everyone supported their participation.
“The men were terrible. They didn’t want the women in the service. That was their territory,” Collins said.
Many women weren't much better.
Collins remembered drawing the ire of some women for ignoring social norms and wanting a career instead of staying home.
“Most of them sort of turned their back on you,” she recalled. “Because they were so limited in their thinking and narrow-minded they missed the opportunity to be part of the war effort. I didn’t care how they treated me. I thought they were the losers.”
When asked if the war could have been won without the help of women like her, Collins said, “Absolutely not,” recalling that even President Dwight Eisenhower said the war couldn’t have been won without their participation.
“The women ended up doing all the jobs that the men were doing because the men had to go fight,” she added.
After two years in the service, Collins attended Sargent College of Boston University on the GI Bill. It was located in Cambridge, right next to Harvard Law School, which was experiencing the largest class to date as the war had just ended.
By that point, Collins said men were less concerned about a women’s role in the war and more worried about finding a wife.
“Wow what fertile ground, because the men were afraid there weren’t going to be enough women to go around,” she said. “Boy, what a field day. I had at least a half a dozen proposals the first week I was at Sergeant College. I thought, ‘Wow, this is great. I said to one guy, ‘You don’t even know my name!’”
One young man, a former Army captain attending Harvard Law, did catch her attention.
“There’s my Jim. The love of my life. We were soul mates,” she said, looking at Jim Collins’ picture on the dining room table.
The two married and had four kids.
“There weren’t very many of my friends who had mothers who were telling stories like that, and when she showed excitement about being patriotic, she showed excitement about going out and being part of the world and the adventures she had and the thankfulness she had to the country for being able to get a free education it just made you feel good,” her daughter, Betty Collins, said.
Jim, a Connecticut judge, ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Harford County twice in the 1960s.
Still, life seemed pretty rich compared to growing up in the Great Depression.
Collins said their service during World War II paved the way for those possibilities.
“I lived in a free country and freedom is priceless,” she said, patriotically.
Jim died tragically of cancer in 1975, at the age of 56.
Collins visits his grave every Memorial Day and joins volunteers who put flags out at West Hartford’s Fairview Cemetery, honoring the freedoms they served and fought to protect.
After the war, Collins and the rest of the women in the Navy Reserves were declared full members of the military.
