NORMA STREETER
Age: 86
Born: March 20, 1924
Hometown: San Francisco
Residence: Palm Desert
Military branch: U.S. Marine Corps Women's Reserve
Years served: March 20, 1944- 1946
Rank: Corporal
Family: Husband Chuck (deceased); one child, Robert Jackson of Santa Fe, N.M.; three grandchildren.
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Navy veteran Richard Smith of Rancho Mirage
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii
More
Norma Streeter said she couldn't wait to turn 20.
Streeter, who graduated from high school in June 1941 at 17, could have enlisted at 18 in the Women's Army Corps or the Navy's Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service division.
Instead, she held out for the chance to join her beloved U.S. Marine Corps.
When she first laid eyes on some “Fellas in these beautiful Marine uniforms,” she was hooked on the Corps.
“I said, ‘They started the WACs and they started the WAVES and if they ever start the Marines, I'm going,” she said.
When the U.S. Marine Corps Women's Reserve was officially organized in July 1942, the minimum age requirement was 20.
“Well, that killed me off,” she said.
She eventually took a job at the port of embarkation in San Francisco, “Where all the boys shipped out to the South Pacific,” she said. “A job came up in the signal corps.”
She took the clerical job.
She met her future husband while working at the port, and counted the days until she reached the magic number.
“I kept saying, ‘If the Marines ever changed their age' I guess they wanted a mature person,” she mused.
“Finally, I got to be 20,” she said. “The CO (commanding officer) I was working for at the signal corps office said, ‘I don't know, Norma, you have to get my permission.'”
The officer was just kidding, and on Streeter's 20th birthday, she was sworn into the U.S. Marine Corps Women's Reserve.
“They put us on a troop train — there was no air conditioning in those days,” she said, and they started on their cross-country journey to the Marine Corps base at Camp Lejeune in N.C.
“Oh, it was so exciting, of course,” she said.
The train, filled with new Army and Marine recruits, stopped at bases across the country, dropping one group after another off at their assigned destinations.
Streeter described basic training at Camp Lejeune as, “Pretty much what the boys would do, only on a lesser level,” she said.
“Marching no guns, just exercising and following the commands,” she said. “Indoctrination of what they expected of you.”
All the women roomed together at the base.
“We had one great big room and cots lined up,” she said. “You had to wait your turn for the bathroom.”
The women, like the men, were issued a variety of clothing.
“We had green fatigues, like coveralls,” for physical training, she said.
In the summer, the women wore green seersucker skirts, shirts and hats.
The formal dress uniform was standard-issue olive drab jacket and skirt, khaki shirt and tie, tie-up brown oxfords and hose.
“They had a lot of older girls,” she said. “They took the older girls and put them in certain jobs to fill in the open spaces.
“I thought I didn't want to be a plain, old clerical secretary,” she said.
So she volunteered to attend Naval Training Aircraft Instruments School in Chicago, where “We lived in a big, old office building,” and where she learned how to repair aircraft instrumentation.
Repair and maintenance of plane parts wasn't exactly her cup of tea.
“Norma's brain didn't want to function in that direction,” she said, laughing.
“I ended up back in California,” she said.
She was assigned to Marine Corps Air Station, El Toro, but since the new facility was not finished being built, she was stationed for a short time at Naval Air Station, North Island in Coronado.
“They stuck us there for six weeks,” she said.
Everyone needed a pass to go on and off the base, but Streeter and other Marines waiting to go to El Toro didn't have as many restrictions as their Navy counterparts.
“They said we could just go in and out whenever we had free time,” she said.
When the Marine base was ready for occupation, “They shipped us out to El Toro and that's where I completed my time.”
She ended up back in the clerical pool.
“They just put me into office work,” she said. “I was at the bottom of the list. There were a lot of girls, I was surprised, a lot older than I was.”
“Then we had to wear a ‘ruptured duck'” patch, she said. “You had to put it on your uniform so people knew you were no longer on active service. They put me on a train and shipped me back to San Francisco.”
A certain sailor popped the question soon after he returned to San Francisco.
“The boy, he had come in from the South Pacific after three years,” she said. “We went out and he said, ‘We're getting married.'
“I wrote him for all those years,” she said.
