Who Are These Female Firefighters Taking Care Of Business At Pearl Harbor?

That picture is America personified.

I want this picture in a frame.

Amazing. Is there a way to get a higher res picture? I would love to get a print of this somewhere.

Japanese descent? They’re probably Hawaiians. Y’know, ‘cos they’re in HAWAII.

You could very well be right but I prefer not to assume their nationality from a picture/location it was taken. 

And plenty of Hawaiins who were of Japanese descent were placed in internment camps following the war. People weren’t interred because of their statehood. They were interred because of their ethnicity.

Remember in 1941 Hawaii was not a state it was a territory. There were many Japanese-Americans working in defense factories and as dock workers etc. For this reason unlike California and states on the west coast there were no roundups and no internment camps in Hawaii. Nisei volunteers [second generation Japanese-Americans] formed the 442nd Regimental Combat Team which was the most decorated unit in  WW2. Based on the uniforms I would say these were dock workers on Ford Island in the middle of Pearl Harbor where the sea planes were and next to battleship row.

This is interesting and makes me want to read more about it. Thanks!

I want a copy for my wall of women the women who inspire me to try

Thank you so much for that information. So these were civilian women workers? That makes a lot of sense. What jobs would they have been doing before the attack?

I believe they were civilian. They are wearing uniforms but their shoes are not uniform. They could have been general dock workers or parachute packers or welders or any of a hundred other jobs that were given to women to free men for military service. 
By the way I was wrong there were a few internment camps in Hawaii but only about 1,200 Japanese and Japanese-Americans were held in them. As opposed to around 112,000 relocated to internment camps from the west coast.
Nearly 1/3rd of the population of Hawaii was of Japanese descent. They were vital to the economy of Hawaii not only working at the Naval yards and the Army and Army Air bases but also in the sugar cane and pineapple fields. The governor of the territory pointed out that to intern all of them would have crippled the war effort and the economy.

Great picture! I’d love to find out about these women.

(Although, I think it is clear that the one is the front is actually Rufio! Rufi! OHHH!!!

I did some searching and found it on Getty Images, as part of an editorial archive. You have to pay, but they have no options listed for personal decor licenses, so I sent them an email inquiring about it. I’ll keep you updated.

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/women-fire-fighters-directing-a-hose-after-the-japanese-news-photo/2628526 

Well, at least the DREAM of America personified…

looks kinda posed to me (not unlike the Iwo Jima photo)

It does a bit, but if it really was posed I’m guessing they would have found some thinner white women.  This is the 1940s we’re talking about.

Okay, I got a response back (just know that Getty Images considers it an Editorial image):

“Hello Terence, Our Creative Images can be licensed for ‘Internal Company Use’ sub-category ‘Wall Décor Prints’. Unfortunately we do not sell or license our Editorial imagery for personal use. If it’s a Sports releated image you could contact www.photofile.com Thanks!”

Lame. I guess it’s locked in obscurity except for the right “editorial” moment.

MSNBC did some more research on the photo and they found a copy in archives in Hawaii. The photo had the names of the women and one of them still lives in Hawaii. Here is the link and a portion of what they said.

http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/12/9377669-pearl-harbor-surprise-photo-of-female-firefighters-wasnt-from-dec-7And there were names! The  caption: “A crew of women fire fighters, all crews having been chosen from personnel working in the immediate vicinity of the pumper stations. From left to right: Elizabeth Moku, Alice Cho, Katherine Lowe, and Hilda Van Gieson.”Lowe said the wartime photo was certainly not taken on Dec. 7, 1941, the day the Imperial Japanese Navy shocked the United States into joining World War II. On that Sunday morning she was headed to church when the bombing started, and she went ahead anyway because she wasn’t sure what else to do. But she and her friends from the Dole pineapple factory did soon go to work as civilian workers at the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, and one of their duties was to fight fires. She said the photo was probably taken at a training exercise during the war. She said she had no idea that her photo was in history books.So the bottom line: These women were female firefighters at Pearl Harbor, the place. To that extent the photo is authentic. But they weren’t fighting a fire when this photograph was taken, and they weren’t fighting any fires on Dec. 7, the day we remember every year on Pearl Harbor Day. In addition to Lowe’s account, there is strong documentary evidence that this is a Navy publicity photo taken to showcase the roles of women during the war.

My god, that’s Boomer, second from left!

We had also heard this was a training exercise and not taken on the day Pearl Harbor was bombed.