After spending a few years at The University of Southern California, in 1944 Margaret “Midge” McWhirter decided to leave the West Coast for Washington, D.C., where her father had recently joined Congress.

“I decided that I wanted to learn about Washington — and I heard there were a lot of good-looking, young military guys there, so that was an incentive,” the 84-year-old Palm Springs resident laughed.

Her father, Rep. John Phillips, served in World War I and in the California State Senate (1936-1942). He put her to work in his office, where she wrote condolence letters to families.

“I was very impressed with the woman Marine uniform,” she said. “The more I looked at them, I thought, ‘I'd like to be wearing one of those.'”

On her birthday, she joined the Marine Corps.

“And when I went home and told my father, he said, ‘Well that's all right, honey. You've tried college. You've tried working for me. Now you're going to be in the Marines and that's one you can't get out of.'

“I loved every minute of it,” McWhirter said.

After boot camp at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, she was transferred to Cherry Point, N.C. There, she was assigned to install and wire communication systems in the cockpits of the Hellcat F4U Corsair airplanes.

“Some of the airplanes that came in to be repaired were from Pappy Boyington's 214 VMF squadron,” she said.

Major Gregory “Pappy” Boyington battled against Japan in the South Pacific and is credited with shooting down 22 enemy aircraft.

McWhirter's military career was cut short because she fell in love.

“I met my husband in the Marine Corps and we got married in Washington, D.C. At that time, no women Marines could be married or engaged. You would be discharged within six months. I got married and, in six months, I got discharged.”

They put her on reserve.

A ‘historical' trip

“I went to see my brother in Lincoln, Neb., in the Air Force. He was in intelligence. At that time, we could hitch rides in military aircraft if they were going where we wanted to go and seats were available. Actually, they weren't seats. You just sat around on bucket-like things because these were all combat planes.”

She then needed a ride back to Washington, D.C.

“My brother said, ‘Midge, we just had a B-29 come in from Guam and land and we're dropping off the bombardier. If you want to sit in the bombardier seat, you may ride on the plane to Washington.'”

There was a big dome in the middle of the plane and when she asked the pilot what it was, he said, “I'm not able to tell you that,” she said.

After she got off the plane, “I hitched a ride to Washington, D.C., and my father was on the appropriations committee in Congress and the appropriations at that time was trying to vote on how much money to have for the Manhattan Project — the project to construct and build the atom bomb.”

Her father later told her about the B-29 she had hitched a ride on.

“He said, ‘You were on the reconnaissance plane that had a stop in Guam and this was the B-29 that went up first and circled and took the reconnaissance pictures of Hiroshima before they dropped the atom bomb.'

“To me, that was something very historical,” she said.