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- The WAVES were a World War II-era division of the U.S. Navy that consisted entirely of women. The name of this group is an acronym for "Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service" (as well as an allusion to ocean waves); the word "emergency" implied that the acceptance of women was due to the unusual circumstances of the war and that at the end of the war the women would not be allowed to continue in Navy careers. The official title was US Naval Reserve (Women's Reserve), but the title of WAVES stuck. The WAVES began in August 1942, when Mildred McAfee, President of Wellesley College, was sworn in as a Naval Reserve Lieutenant Commander, the first female commissioned officer in U.S. Navy history, and the first director of the WAVES. This occurred two months after the WAAC was established and Eleanor Roosevelt convinced Congress to authorize a women's component of the Navy- the WAVES. Women entering as enlisted personnel in the Navy or Coast Gouard attended the V10 WAVE Enlisted Rating Volunteer Program. Women seeking to be officers in the WAVES or SPARS attended the V9 WAVE Officer Candidate Volunteer Program. Officer candidates went through Basic Training rated as Seamen Recruits, then became Midshipmen during Officer Training, and graduated as Ensigns. WAVE Graduates from the V9 and V10 programs were considered part of the US Naval Reserve. An important distinction between the WAAC and the WAVES was the fact that the WAAC was an "auxiliary" organization, serving with the Army, not in it. From the very beginning, the WAVES were an official part of the Navy, and its members held the same rank and ratings as male personnel. They also received the same pay and were subject to military discipline. The WAAC became the Women's Army Corps (WAC) in July, 1943, giving its members military status similar to that of the WAVES. WAVES could not serve aboard combat ships or aircraft, and initially were restricted to duty in the continental United States. Late in World War II, WAVES were authorized to serve in certain overseas U.S. possessions, and a number were sent to Hawaii. The war ended before any could be sent to other locations. Within their first year the WAVES were 27,000 strong. A large proportion of the WAVES did clerical work but some took positions in the aviation community, Judge Advocate General's Corps, medical professions, communications, intelligence, storekeeper, science and technology. The WAVES did not initially accept African-American women into the division. In November 1944, Harriet Ida Pickens and Frances Wills graduated from the Naval Reserve Midshipmen's School (Women's Reserve) at Northampton, Massachusetts, became the first female African-American WAVE officers. From the fall of 1944 onwards, the Navy trained roughly one black woman for every 36 white women enlisted in the WAVES; this was about 2.77%, below the 10% cap agreed upon by the armed services in 1940. With the passage of the Women's Armed Services Integration Act (Public Law 625) on June 12, 1948, women gained permanent status in the armed services. To reflect this, the V9 and V10 Volunteer Reserve programs were discontinued and renamed the W9 Women's Officer Training and W10 Women's Enlisted Training programs. Although the WAVES now officially ceased to exist, the acronym was in common use well into the 1970s. The first six enlisted women to be sworn into the regular Navy on July 7, 1948 were Kay Langdon, Wilma Marchal, Edna Young, Frances Devaney, Doris Robertson and Ruth Flora. On October 15, 1948, the first eight women to be commissioned in the regular Navy, Joy Bright Hancock, Winifred Quick Collins, Ann King, Frances Willoughby, Ellen Ford, Doris Cranmore, Doris Defenderfer, and Betty Rae Tennant took their oaths as naval officers.
- WAVES ist die Kurzbezeichnung für die Frauen, die im Zweiten Weltkrieg zum freiwilligen Notdienst bei den Seestreitkräften der Vereinigten Staaten, der US Navy, angenommen wurden. Dieser Dienst hatte die offizielle Bezeichnung Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, im allgemeinen Sprachgebrauch und auch offiziell als WAVES abgekürzt. Das Akronym WAVES lässt sich auch als englisches Substantiv interpretieren und weckt Assoziationen beispielsweise zu Wasserwellen. Das Wort Emergency bezieht sich auf die besonderen Umstände während der Zeit des Zweiten Weltkriegs und deutet an, dass es den Frauen nach Beendigung des Krieges nicht erlaubt werden würde, ihre Tätigkeit in der Navy fortzusetzen.
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