Frank da Cruz
February 9, 2018; updated 18 March 2021, 3 March 2023.

My Mom, Vivian Lund, joined the Navy at age 20 in San Francisco in 1942, just after President Roosevelt signed the bill authorizing enlistment and commission of women in the US Navy. She had Basic Training at Iowa State Teacher's College in Cedar Falls and then Navy Radio School at "RS NYD Washington DC" (Radio School Washington Navy Yard), where she became a Morse code operator, and then she worked at Navy Department Headquarters on Constitution Avenue in DC until she became pregnant with me in 1944, resulting in a compulsory early release from the service.

Most of my mother's Navy photos are missing. The first three photos below are hers; the rest are from the National Archives and/or the book Making Waves: Navy Women of World War II by Evan Bachner, or other sources as noted.

WAVES training moved to the Hunter College campus in Bronx, NY, right after Mom's training in Cedar Falls; "USS Hunter" was the primary training center for WAVES, SPARS and women Marines for rest of the war.