STATEMENT OF ALBA C. MARTINELLI, MAJOR, MPC, USAR

Miss MARTINELLI. I should like to include the entire statement. While I shall read portions of it, I do have other material which is not here included, which I would like to present to the committee. Senator LONG. Fine. We will be pleased to study the statement that you have prepared for the committee, and we will be pleased to hear your testimony based upon the statement.

Miss MARTINELLI. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Chairman, Senator Hunt, and Senator Hendrickson, I have followed the progress of the Armed Forces Reserve Act of 1951 with more than passing interest. The men and women who comprise the citizen-soldier Army of our country have long awaited a reorganization that would strengthen the present reserve program and bring about a more efficient administration. H. R. 5426 would appear to do this, and its speedy passage into law and operation is undoubtedly in the best interests of the Nation.

DISCHARGE OF MOTHERS FROM RESERVE OF WOMEN'S ARMY CORPS

I would, however, respectfully submit to the attention of the Senate Armed Services Committee, a point which has not been clarified by H. R. 5426, and which has been neglected, perhaps deliberately so, by the Armed Forces.

It would seem axiomatic that in the creation of the women's branches of the Armed Forces, that those problems which were peculiar to the female sex would have long ago been considered and judicious regulations promulgated therefor. That this has not always been the case can be abundantly attested to by many women who have been members of either the Regular or Reserve Establishments. I shall deal specifically with the creation of the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps in 1942, and its subsequent metamorphosis into the Women's Army Corps in 1943.

I shall confine my remarks to those current regulations dealing with those women who have become mothers or who have assumed the custody of minor children.

After ten years of existence of the Women's Army Corps, the best attack that the Army can make on this particular problem is to state flatly that they will be discharged. This is hardly a solution. At best it is a complete avoidance of a continuing problem.

Because I had decided views on this matter, I wrote to Mrs. Anna M. Rosenberg, our Assistant Secretary of Defense, and I will read portions of this letter now. I read it because it does contain therein some of the points which I feel very strongly about, but which have also been presented to me by many, many women:

DEAR MRS. ROSENBERG: I have followed with deep interest the recent campaign for recruiting additional women into the armed services. I was myself on active duty as a member of the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) and the Women's Army Corps (WAC) from 1942 to 1948. Since 1948, I have been an active member of the Organized Reserve Corps in the New York Military District. You can well understand that I am intensely aware of the contribution women can make to the national defense effort.

It is for this very reason that I am writing this letter and bringing to your personal attention my own peculiar circumstance, one which has no doubt affected many other service women, and will continue as a problem. I have recently become a mother. Special Regulation 140-175-1, Change 1, dated Oceober 30,

1950, paragraph 6a (12), states that discharge will be effected "in the case of female personnel not on extended active duty who have * * * a child or children under 18 years of age

This seems to me to be an eminently short-sighted handling of the situation. First, it must be recognized that, women being what they are, many, in and out of service, will have children. This fundamental truth seems to have been ignored by those who drew up SR 140-175-1-else, where are the provisions for maintaining the skills of this large group of women? Surely, childbirth does not impair the mental processes. In the field of government and business, thousands of women continue to work efficiently while they also have a family. In this connection, may I cite that the first Director of the WAC, Col. Oveta Culp Hobby, was appointed by the President to the highest position in the corps at a time when she had children under 18 and that many others who were mothers served their country well in the Armed Forces during actual hostilities.

I list these points because I feel it is unrealistic to cast aside the spirit and talents of women who have children under 18. In a time when manpower needs are so desperately pressing, it would appear that to do so were foolhardy. To terminate a reserve status because of the birth of a child is unjust to women who have served their country loyally and wish to continue in that service. When so many men are attempting to evade their responsibilities as reservists, surely we should encourage the retention of all possible women reservists within service.

As in the case of male reservists who are unavailable for short periods of time because of illness, serious family difficulties or travel abroad, the woman who is to become a mother should be treated, as the men are, by regulations which recognize a temporary absence from her duties. To do so is recognition of the basic unction of women--not penalization therefor.

If war or similar catastrophe comes, it will make no differentiation among the sexes or in marital status. We shall all be threatened, and we shall all be needed. Surely, a woman should also be permitted to defend her home, which has become all the dearer because a child has come into it.

I am attaching a résumé of my military and civilian experience-not because I feel it is outstanding, but because it exemplifies the Government's investment in me and my own efforts to make myself a more valuable citizen and reservist. While my own status is in jeopardy, I know that my deep concern is shared by many other women in the Armed Forces. For their sake, as well as my own, I respectfully request your consideration of the existing disparities in regulations as they relate to female reservists, and the potential harm which they foreshadow if women generally realized that participation in Reserve activities would be summarily terminated by the normal function of womanhood.

It is suggested that you may wish to give consideration to pending legislation-H. R. 5426, passed by the House of Representatives and now in the Senate Committee on Armed Services, specifically section 250 (a) and/or section 304, lines 18, 19, and 20. It appears that this long-awaited bill is assured of early passage, and the Standby Reserve therein created is ideally suited to the problem I have posed. Pending passage of H. R. 5426, I urge that the provisions of SR 140-175-1 be suspended in order to obviate the possibility that additional women reservists would be lost to the National Defense Establishment. Respectfully yours,

ALBA C. MARTINELLI (Mrs. L. B. Thompson), Major, MPC, USAR.

Attachment.

Information copies to

Senators Hendrickson and Smith (New Jersey).
Senator Margaret Chase Smith (Maine).

Representative Edith Nourse Rogers (Massachusetts).

I attached thereto a summary of my military and civilian experience. I will not burden the committee with that. I will simply state I was prepared

Senator HENDRICKSON. We may have it, though, for the committee files?

Miss MARTINELLI. Yes, sir.

I was prepared specifically for the Far East in the history and cultures and languages of those peoples in two universities, the University

of Virginia and Stanford University. I served for 4 years from 1945 in Japan and Korea.

I have continued my studies in that particular field. My specialty is Korea, and I have my master's degree and I am working on my Ph.D. in that field in Asiatic political science.

Senator LONG. Do you speak Asiatic languages?
Miss MARTINELLI. I do, sir.

Senator LONG. Which languages do you speak?

Miss MARTINELLI. I speak best of all Japanese, and then in decreasing order of fluency, Korean, Chinese, and Tibetan.

RATIONALE OF DISCHARGE REGULATION

Since 6 weeks passed before I received a reply, I suspect there was some divergence of views in the Defense Department. In fairness to a gracious lady, I wish to read the reply made by Mrs. Rosenberg. Senator LONG. Will you read excerpts?

Miss MARTINELLI. I shall.

I find that the Department of the Army reached its decision to discharge from the Reserve women with minor dependents only after careful deliberation of the many factors involved. You may be sure that the Army and the Department of Defense are reluctant to lose the services of so valuable and experienced Reserve officers such as yourself.

Then she continues on, and then she says:

It is also true, however, that the regulations applied to the Organized Reserve Corps are required to be such as to insure positively that members of the Reserve will be available for active duty voluntarily or involuntarily, whenever and wherever their services are required.

Then she continues and says:

I fear it is not true, however, that a mother could be called to full-time active duty with the Armed Forces and transferred about the United States or even overseas without, in most cases, jeopardizing her children's welfare.

However, she finds no ground for belief that the reasoning behind the viewpoints or the current regulation based upon them will be changed in the future, and she sincerely wishes she could be more helpful to me personally, and wants me to know that the problem raised had the personal attention of both the Secretary of the Army and herself, and received the most thorough and careful consideration. Senator LONG. Would you give us the logic of the armed services in propounding that regulation?

Miss MARTINELLI. I shall, sir. I believe the thought was, first of all, that the Navy-the Navy was the first to have such a regulation, and it is my understanding, although I do not know this as a certainty, that the Army and Air Force were asked to seek parity with the Navy regulation. Whether they sought parity or not, I do not know. All I know is that they adopted the same regulation.

It was the thinking, to my knowledge, that women with small children might not want to be called to active duty at the outbreak of hostilities. This point I cover later in my testimony, and I suppose they felt that the administration involved was simply not worth the effort of keeping these women trained so that they could be placed in a slot where they would not go overseas but could be used here at home.

VALUE OF WOMEN SERVING IN NONCOMBATANT AREAS

Of course, we all know that there is a mighty large corps of chairborne men in this country in recruiting, in induction, in separation, in hospitals, in the overhead of the Army, in service areas, and so on, ad infinitum, who could be replaced by women in that area.

Senator LONG. In some cases they could be replaced to the advantage of the Nation, as far as performance of that particular task is

concerned

Miss MARTINELLI. Yes.

Senator LONG (continuing). As well as the national interest.
Miss MARTINELLI. Indeed.

It would be rather interesting if we could go back to the 100,000 Wacs who were in the last war and have not seen fit to join the Reserves for various reasons. Roughly, perhaps what is it, about seven divisions-would be released by just those 100,000 Wacs, not to mention the others who have left the service since.

Now, then, there was no answer.

Senator HENDRICKSON. I take it, Major, they are separated entirely now and they have no military status at all?

Miss MARTINELLI. That is right, sir.

There is in this letter of Mrs. Rosenberg's no answer to the technical points which were raised in mine. There was only a refutation that women can successfully combine motherhood and service, and there is a reiteration of the status quo, which will continue to exist.

There is, perhaps, the polite implication that mothers belong in the home. As a mother, I find it beyond responsibility and allotted scope of the services to dictate the terms of motherhood. When has it ever been necessary to remind American mothers of their duties? I believe the welfare of our children is safe in the hands of their mothers, and that the Army need never concern itself with this score.

So, because of this belief, I wrote my second letter, and the lastI am sure you will be glad to hear-to Mrs. Rosenberg. I thanked her, of course, for the consideration and the extremely gracious reply which she had made, and while I could not find it in my heart to agree with the stand the armed services have taken, I said I could nevertheless appreciate the attention paid to the problem.

WHERE IS A MOTHER'S PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITY?

Certainly, I would be the first to recognize that a woman's primary responsibility is to her home and children, as I indicated in my original letter to you. I deviate from the thinking of the armed services on how that home can best be served.

If by edict or special regulation we could guarantee each child that he would not be separated from his mother in time of war or other national peril, I am sure all womanhood would forthwith retreat to the relative quiet of her kitchen and nursery. Carrying this thought a step farther, we could then resolve that each child was entitled to growing up in a home which has the protection of a father and that young men were entitled to live uninterrupted lives of their own choosing. In a generation where it has twice been necessary to separate fathers from their children and young men from their families, we cannot take false comfort in such wistful dreams. The hard fact, and the sad fact, of the world in which we live is that we can make no promise that the home will be secure unless we fight to make it so.

The woman who leaves her children to work for them, the woman who makes herself available for civil defense, the woman who serves in a governmental position of responsibility, as well as the woman who participates in Reserve

activity, is not less a mother for having done so. Not because we love our children less, but because we love them more do we carry our energies and our hopes beyond the walls of our homes.

For our sons and daughters we want that better world for which we have been groping. It will not come to us; we alone hold it in our power to bring to fruition. Each woman serves her family who makes use of her skills and talents to bring about the greater security of her home. Some do it from within the home; some from without.

You will recall that my original proposal was that the Standby Reserve as envisioned by H. R. 5426 seems to offer women reservists a chance to serve their country as they serve their families, without detrimental effect upon the family. If it is possible to defer men, including reservists, for essential industry in time of national emergency; if it is necessary to establish various draft categories to make the maximum utilization of the available manpower, why then is it not equally practicable to survey women in the Reserves on the same basis?

As Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett himself said, "Our goal is to live at peace with the rest of the world. We hope we will not have to use the great military strength we are building. But every one of us knows the chances that we will not have to use it are vastly better if we have the strength than if we fall short or abandon our efforts." I agree, and I do not think there is any segment of our society that can afford to let its skills fall into disuse-whether or not those skills are ever to be used in the outright defense of the country. I believe this refers to women as well as to men. I believe it is both woman's heritage and responsibility to share in the defense of that country to the fullest extent to which she is capable. This basic principle was also laid down by the Gray Board in its report of June 1948.

WAC SHOULD BE REPRESENTATIVE OF AMERICAN WOMANHOOD

If special regulations SR 140-175-1 were to be applied continuously to the Women's Army Corps, we should be left with a corps composed essentially of two types of women-those who do not intend to have children and those whose children are already grown and enter the corps in the middle-age group. Such an organization is hardly representative of American womanhood. In all honesty, the Armed Forces cannot offer service to young women as a career if that service is to be terminated summarily by the normal course of a woman's life— nor is it economical to train young women whose services normally cannot be expected to be available over an average productive period. Worst of all, the corps will be divesting itself constantly of trained specialists and leaders.

WOMEN WHO SURRENDER RIGHTS TO CHILDREN WILL NOT BE DISCHARGED Further, special regulation 140-175-1 states: "Women who have surrendered all rights to custody and control of such children or dependent (under 8 years of age) through formal adoption or final divorce proceedings will not be discharged under these provisions." Thus the woman who knowingly surrenders her rights to her children is acceptable to the Reserves. Is it the intent to welcome such mothers while barring those who in every way seek to maintain their homes? This particular reference casts some doubt as to whether the armed services are not less concerned with the women having children as that the children shall not be dependents of the women and, therefore, entitled to dependency benefits.

The continued employment and the balanced development of the Women's Army Corps is, I firmly believe, important to our country. My concern is that the corps, to which so many of us have devoted a measure of our lives, will be relegated to the position where its membership will not be representative of American womanhood. The terms of SR 140-175-1 do not protect motherhood so much as they prohibit it within the framework of the services.

The problem which I have posed is not insoluble. Its resolution, however, will take understanding and sincere endeavor. I wish I could feel that the problem had been attacked realistically and not merely buried under the vestiges of a world which might have existed 50 years ago, but which no longer exists today. I wrote this letter on the 22d of January of this year. I have had no reply, and I cannot honestly say I expect a reply.

In both of my letters I proposed simply that experienced womanpower be stockpiled, maintained, and cataloged in a stand-by Reserve