Capt Mary E. McWilliams, USCGR Ret. Oral History Side A - Edited

title:

Capt Mary E. McWilliams, USCGR Ret. Oral History Side A - Edited

creator:

McWilliams, Mary Elise (Bachand) (1919 August 3 - )

subject:

Coast Guard SPARs | Coast Guard Reserve

description:

Side 1 of 2. This is the edited interview audio. Mary Elise McWilliams (formerly Bachand) was born on August 3, 1919 in Brooklyn, New York and grew up there with her parents and three younger brothers. She graduated from St. Brendan’s High School in 1938 and attended Brooklyn College, which she got a scholarship to. She majored in chemistry and shifted to English, but didn’t take her studies very seriously, leaving after two years to try something else for a while. She worked as a clerk for the FBI that was close to home. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, she was called in early to the office the next day where she had to check the paperwork of high-ranking Japanese businessmen and diplomats who were brought in. She believes that, after leaving their office, these men were forcibly confined to a federal holding facility for the rest of the war. She enjoyed her job, but her brothers were all in the service and she wanted to join them. Although the FBI considered her an essential worker, she somehow successfully enlisted in the Coast Guard SPARs in 1944. She was in the last class of female officers trained at the Coast Guard Academy, and her secondary training was as an intelligence officer in Washington, DC. After completing all of her training, she was stationed in an intelligence office in Cleveland, Ohio. There, her job was to “paper” noncitizen seamen, many of whom had come to the Great Lakes because they weren’t allowed to work on the east or west coasts. She spent the entirety of her wartime service at that station, receiving her discharge in 1946 and returning to Brooklyn. She used the GI Bill to take an intensive Spanish course at Columbia University, then returned to Brooklyn College, graduating after only two semesters. She then went to Columbia and got a master’s degree in English and began teaching in throughout New York, eventually getting to Great Neck, New York and teaching junior high school English there for twenty years. Since leaving active duty in 1946, she remained active in the Coast Guard Reserves, attending weekly meetings and devoting a weekend each month to Reserve duty. She remained in the Reserves until 1979. When she left the service McWilliams had reached the rank of captain, and for her service she was awarded a Coast Guard Commendation Medal with a star, American Campaign Medal, World War II Victory Medal, and National Defense Service Medal. No transcript of this interview is currently available.

publisher:

Military Women's Memorial Foundation

contributor:

Bellafaire, Judy

date:

2003-08-01

type:

Audio

format:

Cassette

identifier:

633; 2003.633

source:

CLIR - Recordings at Risk

language:

English

relation:

061704

coverage:

World War II (1939-1945) | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1944-46 | 1946-79

rights:

Unrestricted