I love research.
Bill Dedman at MSNBC has discovered the true backstory for this fantastic photo:
It wasn't taken on December 7, but later in the war, when the women were being trained in firefighting as part of their duties working in a storage facility at the shipyard. Dedman not only discovered the names of these previously nameless women (From left to right: Elizabeth Moku, Alice Cho, Katherine Lowe, and Hilda Van Gieson), but that one of them, Katherine Lowe, was still alive. Here she is, 96 years old and still awesome:
She lives with her daughter and a great-grandson. She walks with a cane, and has to take her blood-pressure medicine, but she's up at 4 a.m. to hitch a ride to breakfast with friends and then twice a week to her bowling league. She said her bowling average is "145, going down," and she's rolling a smaller ball these days, just 10 pounds.
When our photographer visited, she had flowers in her hair and volunteered to do a bit of a traditional hula dance.
She says, "we were rugged." Ms. Lowe, you still are, and you rock the house. :D
It wasn't taken on December 7, but later in the war, when the women were being trained in firefighting as part of their duties working in a storage facility at the shipyard. Dedman not only discovered the names of these previously nameless women (From left to right: Elizabeth Moku, Alice Cho, Katherine Lowe, and Hilda Van Gieson), but that one of them, Katherine Lowe, was still alive. Here she is, 96 years old and still awesome:
She lives with her daughter and a great-grandson. She walks with a cane, and has to take her blood-pressure medicine, but she's up at 4 a.m. to hitch a ride to breakfast with friends and then twice a week to her bowling league. She said her bowling average is "145, going down," and she's rolling a smaller ball these days, just 10 pounds.
When our photographer visited, she had flowers in her hair and volunteered to do a bit of a traditional hula dance.
She says, "we were rugged." Ms. Lowe, you still are, and you rock the house. :D