Blandina Govea Tuero,
Women's Army Corps Member

BY REBEKAH CLARK,

BETTER DAYS HISTORICAL DIRECTOR

Blandina “Trina” Margarita Govea served as a cook and a baker in the Women’s Army Corps Service (WACS) during World War II. Although she experienced many hardships throughout her life, she forged a path filled with purpose. Open-minded, generous, and kind, she appreciated the experiences and connections that she gained through her work in the Army.

Her parents, Raphael Tomas Govea and Antonia Medel Gomez, were both originally from Mexico. Blandina was born on June 5, 1921 in the rural coal-mining town of Hartshorne in Oklahoma, where her father was a miner. At the age of five, her family moved to Colorado and her father and brothers began farming and ranching. She was only able to finish school up through ninth grade because her mother got so sick that Blandina had to stay home and take care of her.

U.S. Army recruitment poster, 1941. Library of Congress.

After her mother’s death in 1941, Blandina had to find a new focus for her life. She joined her brother in Salt Lake City as soon as she turned twenty-one. She planned to get a job there and started attending classes at a machine shop school to get training. Every morning, she saw an Army recruiting poster of Uncle Sam pointing at her and saying “I want you.” “And it finally got to me,” she later recalled. Even though she would have made more money in the machine shop, she chose to join the Army because she wanted to help the country. The owner of the machine shop was upset when she left her training program, but the woman who managed the tools in the shop supported Blandina’s decision, saying: “If you think you want it, go ahead and do it. . . . You’re not going to make money, but you’re going to do something.” That vision of a larger purpose helped shape Blandina’s experience during the war.

Blandina was at a crossroad in her life: “I guess maybe it was because I was, what would you say? Homeless? See, my mother had passed away and my brother, the one that supported us, was in the service too. So there was nothing left for me.” She found her place when she joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps [WAAC] in March 1943. The WAAC had been created almost a year earlier, on May 15, 1942, as an auxiliary unit of the Army.^[1]

In July 1943, just a few months after Blandina volunteered, the Army began converting the women’s branch to full military status and by September had disbanded the WAACs and established the Women’s Army Corps [WAC]. The women who served as WACs during the war helped perform essential non-combat roles and released the equivalent of seven divisions of men for combat duty. Under the new military designation, they received expanded operational responsibilities and became eligible for the same benefits, privileges, and pensions as men in the Army.^[2]

Photo of the 907th unit, the first contingent of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) assigned to Hill Air Field in Ogden, Utah, just a few months before the transition to full military status. Hill Aerospace Museum.

Blandina became one of over 150,000 women who served in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II. She started in basic training in Des Moines and was assigned to be a cook and baker. Her childhood on a farm prepared her well for the early hours, rigorous work, and even the butchering that she was required to do. The skills she learned not only helped her be an effective cook for the Army but also prepared her for a future profession in the food industry. Further, they expanded her experiences and introduced her to a wider world. The WACs followed the Army’s rule limiting African Americans to only ten percent of recruits, and the U.S. armed forces remained racially segregated until a few years after the war. Despite these barriers, the Women’s Army Corps became a place where many women of color were able to find success, including women like Captain Elizabeth Hampton, who served at Ogden’s Hill Air Field during the war, Velma E. Trottingwolf, a Sequoyah WAC stationed in Ogden, and Priscilla Yasuda, the first Utah Nisei (first generation Japanese American) to serve as a WAC . The introduction of more diversity provided new opportunities to connect but also illuminated tensions.

Although Blandina did not record any observations about her own treatment as a Mexican American in the Army, she remembered her surprise at the unequal treatment of African Americans: “I’d never seen a black person until I went to Des Moines. I didn’t understand this racial thing. I had no experience with that.” She became friends with some of the Black women in the Women’s Army Corps that she worked with in the mess halls during training. She observed moments of prejudice and discrimination, particularly from her white southern roommate who criticized Blandina for befriending the black women with whom she worked. Blandina matter-of-factly responded: “Well, I work with them; they’re nice to me.” Years later, this experience still stood out as a key moment in her service: “I guess that was the biggest eye-opener. It made me feel bad….And that racism bothered me so much.” 

During her time in service, Blandina had several other opportunities to work with and befriend people who came from different backgrounds, including enemy soldiers. Beginning in August 1943, she was one of the first seventeen WAC women stationed at Camp White in Oregon, an Army training base that included a German prisoner of war (POW) camp. She ran the kitchen for over a year and had three German POWs assigned to help her with cleaning. “We weren’t supposed to talk to them at first, they told us. But how can you tell somebody what to do if you can’t talk to them?” As she communicated with the POWs in her kitchen through signs, she overcame the animosity of war and realized “they were harmless, they were just kids.” 

Just before V-E Day, Camp White closed and Blandina was transferred to San Francisco to cook at Fort Scott and then at the hospital at Fort Baker. Her time cooking at the hospital was difficult as she helped care for so many injured and sick soldiers, but she also felt like it was “the most exciting thing, I guess, I ever did.”  She was at first excited when she was discharged from military service on February 7, 1946. But after the war ended, Blandina missed her time in the service and struggled to reenter civilian life. She explained: “Most of the girls had homes to go to, parents or families. I had no one.” Her father had also died while she was stationed at Camp White, leaving her an orphan.^[3]

After being discharged from the Army, Blandina once again had to forge her own path. When her brother was discharged from military service, he took a job at Alcatraz prison. They reconnected  in San Francisco. Blandina worked in factories in San Francisco for a few years, and then she married Juan Gutierrez Tuero in 1950. She moved back to Salt Lake City two years later with her three-month-old baby. She cooked for the Salt Lake School District schools for decades until she turned seventy. She ultimately had eight children, seventeen grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. 

Blandina later in her life. Find A Grave.

Blandina’s World War II service left a lasting impact on her life and the lives of those who knew her. Later, she proudly stated: “I never regretted it. I’ve always thought that if I could do it over again, I’d do it.” She noted that she was working in the cafeteria at East High in Salt Lake City during Operation Desert Storm: “I thought then, ‘Well, if I were young enough, I’d go.’” 

Looking back on her life, Blandina concluded: “I think I did the right thing by going into the service.” She passed away on April 18, 2009 and is buried in the Mount Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Salt Lake City. Her bold legacy of service, generosity, and standing up for those on the outskirts continues to inspire us today. 

^[1] This was not the first time that women were officially called to serve in the U.S. Army. During World War I, General Pershing created the Army Signal Corps of telephone operators to run the switchboards on the Western front. These “Hello Girls” included two Utah women, Emilia Lumpert and Mary Marshall.

^[2] “Women’s Army Corps Comes Into Being,” Mt. Pleasant Pyramid (3 September 1943), 1; “WAAC Becomes WAC in Ceremonies Wednesday,” Salt Lake Telegram (1 September 1943), 15.

^[3] “Obituaries: Rafael Govea,” Salt Lake Telegram (2 June 1944).