(delicate piano music) (flash bulb snapping) (water running) - [Reporter] German aircraft carried out a number of attacks on Great Britain last night.

The raids, which lasted for several hours, were scattered over many parts of the country, and the enemy aircraft have been reported over towns on the south coast, the west of England, the north midlands and the northwest, as well as over the London area.

There are reports from Germany that our bombers attacked industrial targets there.

A bill to authorize President Roosevelt's lease and lend policy will be introduced today in Congress.

(emotional orchestral music) (delicate piano music) - My name is Michael Kasper, and I'm the archivist for the Institute on World War II and the Human Experience at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.

This photograph in particular is one of Cologne, and that's the Dahme there.

I literally stumbled upon Charlotte's collection.

As soon as I started looking through her photographs, I knew it was extremely significant.

She had captured, like I've never seen before in any other collection, in fine detail, the day-to-day life of just a common, everyday woman soldier.

The clarity was absolutely amazing, and the settings; they were so clear that you could use a loop and you could see the detail.

(soft orchestral music) One of our students, Patricia Singletary, who was focusing on Women's Studies here, she ended up creating a finding aid and actually going through and organizing the countless loose photographs that we had that just needed to be organized.

- These are cool, 'cause they show her doing the lab work with all the equipment.

Developing a print.

"I'm doing a little dodging and B-9 enlarger."

My name's Patricia Singletary.

I worked in the Institute for World War II and the Human Experience.

Most of my work focused on processing the Charlotte Dee Mansfield collection.

I like this now, this having fun, looking at a magazine.

Oh, here's the ... (chuckles) "Only a parent would want this photo."

So she clearly thinks it's pretty unattractive, she says.

Her role was photo-- She was aerial photo technician.

She would develop the film that planes would bring back after surveying areas.

But then she took personal photographs, and that's what we have, is all of her personal photographs, pretty much, of her time spent in military service, and that's the most prominent part of the collection, is the photos.

She was a World War II photojournalist.

(gentle music) - We don't have a lot of letters from her; I wish we had more, but what we have is really a treasure trove, and there's enough information that you can weave together a story of her experiences.

- [Charlotte] To tell my photographic story, I must go back to the year I was a four-year-old.

My dad had a Spanish American war buddy, Joe Kinman.

I called him Uncle Joe.

He, his wife, and sister-in-law had a greeting card and photo finishing store on Fillmore Street in San Francisco.

Uncle Joe took me to the back of the store.

In a moment, it was a magic place, a great canvas, at least to me.

It was moving, and the ceiling was full of hanging black strips.

I was so impressed with this magic, even in my young life.

Whenever I could get my hands on our box Brownie, I would hold it.

I loved to leaf through our snapshots and look at photo albums.

It wasn't until I was in high school that I was able to buy myself a little 127 camera.

Lots of great images came from that camera.

While I was still in college, I read an article in Popular Photography Magazine about British military women photographers and their work in aerial photography.

I then knew that I wanted to go into the military and be in photography.

After I graduated, I announced my decision to my dad.

We were in the car, and he said, "Of course you're going to be an officer."

I said, "No," because I could only be immersed in photo as an enlisted person.

(tries screeching) I thought he was gonna wreck the car.

I graduated in July, and that day I mailed my request to enroll in WAC.

I was accepted, and enlisted, and put on inactive status until October 1942.

(film reel whirring) (spirited orchestral music) (pleasant string music) - [Man] Hey, there goes one of those petticoat soldiers now.

- Yeah.

My sister wants to join the WACs.

What do you think of that?

- (chuckles) She's crazy.

What the devil's a woman wanna be a soldier for?

- Just a waste of time.

This is a man's war.

What sorta jobs can they do?

- [Narrator] What sort of jobs can we do?

Take a look, Mister.

X-ray technicians.

Inspectors of Army meat.

Teachers schooling our soldiers.

- In the Women's Army Corps, as women are integrated as civilians and then eventually as military, they hold primarily jobs that are considered to be traditional for the time period, and those relate to the fields of communications, so they'll be answering switchboard operators, they'll be typists, clerks, filing things.

Then, as time goes on, most of them still remain in these traditional roles, but you also have this angle of women are serving overseas.

- [Narrator] Yes.

Wherever the American armies will go, WACs may follow.

To Berlin and Tokyo, too.

- [Sarah] Sometimes, even if they're doing things overseas that are considered to be traditional, like being secretary for a general or something like that, some people contest that maybe that's not quite so traditional, because they are overseas and serving near potential combat zones and things like that.

- Important Army jobs which woman can perform as effectively as men.

- [Sarah] Women who were in the non-traditional roles, as they're looked at, they do all kinds of things.

Some of them are actually mechanics for different military bases.

They also did other things, though, overseas, that sort of blur the lines between traditional and non-traditional photography, for example with Charlotte Mansfield.

There are just lots of blurred lines during times of war.

(spirited orchestral music) - The opportunity provided by the Women's Army Corps meant that, for some women, future paths were changed.

In Charlotte Mansfield's case, her passion becomes a career professional choice.

(somber music) - [Charlotte] I was sworn in with two other ladies.

After that, the recruiting office, Major Rumbles, had a talk with us, telling us what we could expect.

I guess my passion for photography showed.

The magic words were: "I own my own speed graphic "and have it with me, and I'm willing to use it "if I'm assigned to pubic relations."

With that kind of attitude on my part and the shortage of cameras, there was never a question how personnel would assign me at the completion of basic training.

Finally, orders came for active duty in early October.

I arrived on Rock Island Station, Oklahoma City, family in tow, and found the platform with many other similar scenes.

I had told my mother I didn't want to see any tears.

We were boarded, and I looked out to wave goodbye.

No mother.

Was I scared?

Yes.

But I was also confident.

Not long after we were on our way, we discovered the adjoining car was full of black women from Texas on their way for basic at Fort Des Moines, Iowa.

Yes, we were segregated, but we did visit with one another.

- Return, and halt!

Forward march!

- One of the really wonderful things about the Women's Army Corps is that, as an experiment, it was really meant to ... to get women into the military to do a lot of the jobs that were supposed to then allow male soldiers to go off to combat.

And because of that, they really, essentially, did a an-all call to American women of different backgrounds, and that meant that you have a lot of women who were ethnically, religiously, class, in terms of differences, existing in the Women's Army Corps.

- [Narrator] And in now a dental clinic, we have a WAC.

- There were a much smaller contingent of African American female WACs, but they were still all-call for minority women as well.

Charlotte Mansfield recognizes, and it's highlighted in the collection, this was segregated times, Jim Crow times, so the WACs were never stationed, necessarily together, nor did they train together, but they often interacted with one another.

And this is one of the things that Charlotte Mansfield's collection really does highlight for us, just kind of the reality of the segregated times, but also the fact that women of all different religious, ethnic, and even racial backgrounds are joining the Women's Army Corps during World War II.

(delicate piano music) - Lorraine Caddy was Charlotte's really good friend that she had lived with for quite a long time and was basically her family.

And so that's how we came into the collection, was through her.

- I'd just come off of a very strange summer of working constantly, and then I got this email, and the same day that I found out I was flying to Seattle, I got this email that I was going to Oklahoma to talk to Lorraine Caddy, and that was very interesting, 'cause I had never conducted any type of oral history before.

And I was coming in with a lot of context, considering I had already gone through all of Charlotte's documents, so I was coming in, talking to Lorraine, already kind of knowing about her.

I didn't know a lot about the photos at the time, 'cause I hadn't had the chance to really work through them.

But talking to Lorraine Caddy and hearing her speak about Charlotte was very ...

It was once in a lifetime.

I mean, how often is the person who knows your person best still alive?

- [Interviewer] In what year did you meet Charlotte?

- The year that we met was in 1970, when we were both assigned to Europe.

She was there already when I arrived.

And we were living in the Amelia Earhart Hotel, which was where they were housing the senior women who were stationed there.

- [Interviewer] And where was Charlotte born?

- She was born in Hanford, California on the 31st of August, 1915.

- [Interviewer] Can you tell us anything about her family, community, and upbringing?

- Well, her family consisted of her mother and father and one brother, whom she was very close to.

Her father was very supportive of her military career and of her photography love.

In fact, he bought her the camera that she used in World War II.

- [Interviewer] How common were women military photographers during World War II?

- Not terribly.

In fact, Charlotte was in the first 50 women who were trained in photography.

(gentle string music) - [Charlotte] 50 women were sent to Lowry Field in Denver, Colorado for aerial photo school.

We were the first class of women, and there was great skepticism by our male counterparts.

Most thought we couldn't do the work and we would not only be the first, but the last, class of women.

Wrong.

Not only did we do better academically; we could handle the cameras and do the dark room work as well.

From photo school, six of us were sent to Second Photo Mapping and Charting in Parkwater, Washington.

We were the first enlisted women to arrive there, and we were greeted by officer Ruth Rainey.

Our complex consisted of two barracks, a mess hall, day room, orderly room, and officers' quarters.

We were put to work cleaning the facilities and being responsible for maintaining our complex.

That included firing the furnaces with coal.

The photo lab was separate and manned by male officers and unlisted men.

They became our supervisors, and we in turn became the supervisor for the women who would join us to make up our company of women photographers.

My world of photographic involvement expanded and grew in a delightful way, full of new experiences and challenges.

Next step was to move on to overseas duty in World War II if was to really achieve my unlimited goal.

I pressed again, and on D-Day was landing in the Firth of Clyde while the Allied forces were storming Normandy Beach.

(lively music) - I think that it's true that the popular memory of the war, and women's roles during World War II specifically, is Rosie the Riveter.

The image that people think of is the propaganda poster from Westinghouse, where you have the woman flexing with the red bandana and the patriotic colors.

And that's actually not the popular image during the war.

So, the image during the war was the 1943 Norman Rockwell cover that shows the Rosie the Riveter as sort of a very muscular woman with her foot propped up on a Mein Kampf while she's eating her lunch on break from welding.

That's what people remember.

They also, if you lived during World War II, remember a famous Rosie the Riveter song.

♪ Rosie is her name ♪ Holding on whether rain or shine ♪ ♪ She's a part of the assembly line ♪ ♪ She's making history working for victory ♪ ♪ Rosie (rolling tongues) the Riveter ♪ I think it's almost more comfortable for Americans, especially when you're looking at the postwar period and the Cold War, it's more comfortable for them to think about when as temporarily entering factory work, helping the country, because wartime production did help the U.S. win the war is what historians have established, and so it's comfortable to think, "Oh, they're ... "That's great, they served during the war "in a capacity women hadn't really served in before "in large numbers or in different roles.

"And then, after the war, they went back home "so men could take their jobs, "and that's very noble of them, and patriotic, "and greatest generation," and all that.

And it's less comfortable to think about women's incorporation in the military, considering the fact that, even up til recent years, it's still debated to what extent should women be serving.

So, it's one of those situations where the public sort of has collective amnesia about the other roles that women played during the war.

- Rosie the Riveter is very important, but she's not the only American woman who was doing the work.

And Charlotte Mansfield's photographs really highlight that there is much more to learn about American women's participation during World War II.

♪ Rosie the Riveter (gentle piano music) - On June 5th, 1944, she arrives in England, the day before D-Day, the landings at Normandy, and then is assigned to the 35th Photograph Wing Reconnaissance at High Wycombe, to Wycombe Abbey, codenamed Pine Tree.

High Wycombe was approximately 30 miles northwest of London, just to give you a sense.

And the population in 1940 of the town was around 30,000.

She is working at Wycombe Abbey, which was an all-girls prep school up until the time of the war.

It's on these grounds that Charlotte was operating where the laboratory was.

- They lived in what were culled huts.

And they were two women per hut.

It was out kind of in the wilderness, sort of like a camp out.

Their dining halls were not the best in the world.

Access to them was sometimes difficult because of the hours that they worked.

If the pilots came in with film, they processed the film.

If it was lunchtime, sorry, you'd do without lunch and go process the film.

(emotional string music) - Air reconnaissance was critical, was key, and without it, I don't see any way where we would have had the successes that we did.

They were working 24 hours a day, seven days a week on shift work.

And they were long hours.

A lot of it was on your feet, working in various departments.

She never complains about, really, the work, because she's doing what she loves.

Photography was her life's passion.

- Her own time was usually spent, photographically speaking, on friends.

Her documentary effort was more for the women's side of the story, because that's where she was exposed.

It, to me, tells what these women had to cope with, but that they were also happy in their own existence.

They all had a purpose.

They all had a job to do.

And the thinking, at that point in time, during the World War II era, if you talk with any World War II people, was always pride in serving their country.

And I think all of these women exhibited that beautifully, and I think that's what she shows in her photographs.

(ecstatic music) (crowd cheering) - [Narrator] Throughout the world, throngs of people hail the end of the war in Europe.

It is five years and more since Hitler marched into Poland, years full of suffering and death and sacrifice.

Now, the war against Germany is won.

- V-E Day was a big issue for everybody.

I was very young at the time, but I can still remember people just dancing in the streets and screaming and thanking God that it was over.

She has some photographs of them reading newspapers that are saying "Germany quits".

And I think they were all just very happy that, fortunately, they survived, 'cause a lot of them didn't.

(gentle music) - The war really, I think, was the decisive factor in her life.

It led to a whole postwar career as a photographer and as a career military woman.

- She decided to continue on after the war and enlist back into the Air Corps, which then became the Air Force, and she made a career out of it.

She spent quite a bit of time in Germany, so we have postwar photographs of her activities in various areas of Germany as well, all the way through into the '50s and '60s.

- In the 1950s, there is a, really, notion that women should serve at home, in the sense they should be mothers and raise families, let men become the breadwinners.

And I think the military, for military women, this is one of the spaces women who want a career, the military does offer a space for them to have a career, and at times a really interesting career.

- She photographed several presidents.

She jumped on an airplane to take a photograph of President Hoover.

Truman, she was right up front, and they got some wonderful photographs of him at his inauguration and his gala afterwards.

I think it was because they knew that they could rely on her to get the best possible product.

As far as achievements and accolades, you'd need a book.

She had any number of outstanding ... awards for her photographs.

I couldn't even begin to name half of them.

Throughout her career, she tried to tell people that you have to be willing to step out and do something other than what's expected of you.

- What are we looking at?

Well, these are all the pictures that we put on video in order that we could reduce the inventory.

So here's how we're reducing the inventory.

This is the destroy pile.

- [Lorraine] I find myself talking to her occasionally.

I'll say something when I'm sitting in the living room, and I suddenly realize, "Lorraine, she's not here."

Because she was there for so many years.

- [Charlotte] On the bed, you see Lorraine's pictures, which she's gonna go through.

- God knows I miss her.

But it's just ... She was always such a great friend and so wonderful to be with that I don't have to hear from her in the hereafter.

I know she's there waiting.

When I get there, she'll say hello.

No doubt in my mind (chuckles) about that.

None whatsoever.

- [Charlotte] Why did I choose military service?

Partly because I'm a female of the species.

The majority of the human race, in that sense, but a minority on the job scale ratings.

So my job as a photographer had no holds barred in the military.

I did the same photographic laboratory duties as my male contemporaries.

I knew what I wanted.

I went after it as early as my first weeks in basic training.

I got what I wanted.

Granted, I had some breaks, but if I hadn't been determined, I don't know where I would have been.

Well, the story goes on with my own personal photographic successes.

I still had on occasion to call upon my courage and go after what I wanted.

And I've never known a photographic failure.

(gentle string music)