Having just finished two glorious weeks in Coronado at Helicopter Control Officer school in March 1999, my first time in San Diego, I hadn’t had the time nor the mental capacity to fully prepare to embark on what was about to become the two most difficult years of my life. Ever. In retrospect, I really had no way of knowing it at the time.
I joined the Navy to see the world. Early on during service selection night, the second of only two female billets available on board USS La Salle, the then-U.S. 6th Fleet flag ship homeported out of Gaeta, was taken by a fellow woman SWOrrior candidate from the top third of our class.
I was in the bottom third.
I quickly reviewed my hand scripted cheat sheet to discover the only other overseas homeport option with billets available for women was Japan, Yokosuka or Sasebo. Since Yokosuka was closest to Tokyo, Yokosuka it was.
Out of sheer naiveté I had chosen the Aegis cruiser option because I thought if I was going to be a SWO – my second choice, the default career option – I was going ALL-in. CRUDES was the way to go. Cream of the crop. Best of the best.
Sidebar: Because what I really wanted to be was a public affairs officer, not an option straight out of the Academy, Marine Corps was my first choice since it was the quickest path to becoming a PAO. This is now utterly laughable. Thank God the Jarheads told me, “Thanks, but no thanks, Suzanna. And don’t let the door kick you in the ass on the way out.” Best rejection I ever received.
From SAN to HNL and then on to GUM, I reported for the billet I chose that fateful night in Annapolis eighteen months earlier, an FDNF (forward deployed Naval forces) CG serving at the “tip of the spear” in the U.S. 7th Fleet.
Since stepping off that plane, everything was a blur. Jetlagged and on a quasi-foreign island, I was rudely awakened to the fact I was no longer on my San Diego training boondoggle. I would later learn that Guam is actually a little slice of America in the vast Western Pacific, and I would look forward to return port visits there to ail my homesickness with some semblance of Western culture.
Before I arrived I had known for some time that I would be part of the Navy’s effort to properly integrate surface combatant crews. As part of the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 1994, Congress repealed the prohibition on women serving on combatant vessels and aircraft.
I remember vividly as a youngster when the brigade received word that beginning with the class of ’96, women were not only able to serve on board combatants, but indeed would serve on board combatants. There was no choice in the matter. At the same time, women could no longer choose among a handful of restricted line or staff corps career options such as cryptology or supply corps that were generally reserved for NPQs (not physically qualified).
Unbeknownst to me, this seemingly small change in military policy would provide the seedlings of a seismic shift in the misogynistic subculture at USNA. A subculture with origins that could be traced back to when women were first admitted into the Service Academies twenty years earlier. This momentous cultural change was for the betterment of every possible outcome for our nation and our national defense. Furthermore, I have to believe that any remaining misogyny at the Academies has seriously diminished today. Culture is hard to change, but right is right and actions feed perceptions, which ultimately underpin cultural change.
Back on board my cruiser, I quickly learned that I was one of only four women comprising the entire crew of 350. With an air wing embarked, that number grew to about 375 (and no, the air wing from Atsugi did not bring any women aboard with it). The Navy’s strategy was to first integrate the combatant wardrooms, and then later bring aboard enlisted women. I served a whole year as one of four women officers on board ship before we welcomed aboard thirty women enlisted crew. When we did, I noticed my quality of life increased significantly.
To be perfectly blunt, I was not at all prepared to be “living in a fishbowl” environment, or “under a microscope” was more like it, as part of the 1% minority within the microcosm of ship life. (While I was at the Naval Academy, women comprised nearly 14% of the brigade of midshipmen.) And to make matters worse, I was equally unprepared to endure the loneliness from isolation of living as an American woman in Japanese society and within the broader context of Eastern culture. These were distinct choices that I had made on my own as a young adult, and when they came to fruition the end result was almost all that I could bear.
Learning to be an FDNF surface warfare officer in the late ‘90s was not for the faint of heart. It gave new meaning to the old adages that “SWOs eat their young” and “back-stabbing SWO.” Because we were forward deployed, we were underway A LOT. The one saving grace was that this was before 9/11, and we had visited nearly every single port imaginable in the Western Pacific, save for the Philippines. Twice, at least. We even hit Australia, though our port visits there were curtailed due to genocide that erupted in East Timor. Serving as part of the INTERFET forces was a noble and valiant mission, of which I am proudest.
With so few women on board and all four of us having very distinct personalities, pooling our forces to band together seemed futile. In the end, we really just tried to survive. Ours is not a story of girl-power or a “band of sisters” conquering all, but rather a story of individual perseverance for all four of us. Eventually, we did all earn our SWO qualifications and individually moved on with our Navy careers. I later became a public affairs officer, and still am one today.
I realize, back then, not all women called to integrate crews suffered the same fate that the four of us did my first year on board. I know this because when my ship performed a hull-swap/crew-swap mid-way through my tour, and I alone stayed aboard our original hull, the three new roommates I gained in the women’s JO jungle were more like sisters to me. We were from the same tribe.
The author, left, with two of her sea sisters in Newport, RI in April.
Navigating the SWO qualification process and life aboard ship was still just as challenging as it had been before, but it was a lot more fun after I had found my sea sisters. Their friendship, laughter and all-out feminism radiated through me for the rest of my time on board. Just being present during the second-half of my one and only SWO tour, I am forever grateful for them.
And that’s the way it was. For me, anyway.
