I am writing a book on the Women's Air Raid Defense, this was a group of
uniformed-civilian women who took over the Information Control Center at Fort Shafter,
Oahu, Hawaii. I have interviewed several of these women and have been able to ascertain
history, development, life styles of the WARDs but none has remembered the training to
become a radar plotter with any detail.
I have contacted Fort Shafter and any manuals or training modules of 1940 are long
gone. Can you direct me to or do you have information about the nitty-gritty of their
jobs?
For example, one of the WARDs told me she plotted her husband in from Midway and
knew that he had crashed. (He survived and went on to win the DFS.) When I asked her
how she knew it was Bill's plane, she replied, "He wasn't on the board anymore." But
she couldn't explain to me what that meant. "It wasn't my job to post on the board."
I've asked about the training, but they all remember the strange names for the
quadrants, and the military protocol, uniform-measuring, hearing tests, but that's it.
Those are significant details, but I still am not at the meat of what they did.