Two SPAR recruits take the oath of enlistment into the United States Coast Guard Women's Reserve.
U.S. Coast Guard Historian's Office. Public domain.
About 10,000 women served as SPARS, the women's reserve of the United States Coast Guard, created in November 1942 and named for the service motto, Semper Paratus, Always Ready. They worked in communications and administration at Coast Guard stations, district offices, and training bases across the country, sending men to sea in their place. Theirs is among the least-told stories of all the women's branches.
1899 to 2006
Captain; first Director of the SPARS.
Dean of women at Purdue before the war, Stratton became the first woman commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard and served as Director of the SPARS from 1942 to 1946. She gave the women's reserve its name, drawn from the Coast Guard motto Semper Paratus and its translation, Always Ready, and rose to the rank of captain.
1915 to 2016
Petty officer, U.S. Coast Guard Reserve; Filipino American resistance fighter.
After surviving Japanese imprisonment in Manila for aiding American POWs and the Philippine resistance, Finch enlisted in the Coast Guard Women's Reserve in 1945. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom in 1947 and the Congressional Gold Medal posthumously in 2024.
1915 to 2018
Yeoman Second Class, U.S. Coast Guard SPARS.
Hooker enlisted in February 1945 and reported to basic training at the Manhattan Beach training station in Brooklyn on 9 March 1945, becoming the first African American woman on active duty in the U.S. Coast Guard. She later qualified as Yeoman Second Class, earned a doctorate in psychology, and served decades as a clinical psychologist.
dates unknown
Lieutenant (junior grade); commanding officer, LORAN Station Chatham.
After a two-month course in the secret long-range navigation system LORAN at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Hamerschlag took command of the Coast Guard's LORAN station at Chatham, Massachusetts. Within a month a crew of eleven SPARS had taken over almost the entire station, believed at the time to be the only all-woman station of its kind in the world.
Researched and written by Erin Faith Allen · Fortitude Research