WAC
WAC.Half a year before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts introduced a bill in Congress on 28 May 1941, to establish a Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) within the U.S. Army. Mrs. Rogers's bill aroused immediate controversy: most men in Congress and the War Department opposed the idea of women in the military.
To gain passage, Mrs. Rogers had to accept changes in the WAAC bill. When it was finally passed on 14 May 1942, it provided for a corps of 25,000, to be an auxiliary to the U.S. Army without military status. Later that year, the corps was authorized to increase to 150,000. The WAACs would serve under women commanders, be given duty at army posts in the United States and overseas, have separate grade titles and pay schedules from men, be noncombatants, wear uniforms, and serve under WAAC rather than army regulations. The head of the corps would...
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