January 1999 oral history transcript; portrait photograph of Ethel LeBlanc Palma in uniform taken in Sydney, Australia on May 1944; photograph of Ethel LeBlanc Palma at Allied Officers Club in Port Moresby, New Gunea 1944; Ethel LeBlanc Palma with her WAAC graduating class on July 14, 1943 in Ft. Des Moines; Iowa; photograph of Ethel LeBlanc Palma in her wedding dress married at Lake Charles Air Base, LA on Dec. 20,1945; First WAACs photograph, 1943; photograph of her friends and co-workers in New Guinea; photograph of Ethel seated in center with lei surrounded by her Filipino employees on May 2,1945; photograph of Ethel on ship leaving Manila; photograph of Ethel on a ship headed home after the war U.S.S. Evangeline on September 1945; photograph of Ethel in New Guinea in 1944; photograph of Ethel wearing sunglasses while lounging off shore in New Guinea with officers; photograph of Ethel with other women and officers in New York; photograph of Ethel on May 2,1999; Invitation to Dinner Dance at "Hill Top" Officer's Club in honor of the WAC's arrival in New Guinea, July 11, 1944; Office memorandum by the Office of the Base Censor; Lt. Ethel LeBlanc receiving and dispatch section on August 31, 1944; Drawing of a woman in her uniform; Clippings; Military Record and Report of Separation Certificate of Service September 2, 1945. Women Veterans Historical Project questions with handwritten answers; News Release of "Women's Army Auxilary Corps Service to be Considered Active Military Service" on April 2, 1980; WAAC parody song sheets.
Ethel LeBlanc Palma (b. 1919) of Timberton, Louisiana, served as a recruiter and mail censor while serving with the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and the Women's Army Corps (WAC) from 1942 to 1945. Ethel LeBlanc Palma was born 2 May 1919 in Timberton, Louisiana, to Cajun parents. She was raised in DeQuincy, Louisiana, where her father owned a bottling plant, and graduated from the local high school in 1936. She attended Draughon's Business College in Houston, Texas, for a year, and then went to work at her uncle's Coca-Cola bottling plant as a bookkeeper for two years. In 1939, Palma moved to New Orleans and worked for the United States Army Corps of Engineers. In December of 1942 Palma joined the WAAC. She was sent the following month to Fort Des Moines, Iowa, for basic training. Palma was trained as a recruiter and briefly stationed at the Second Service Command in New York City before being transferred to Watertown, New York, in February 1943. She achieved the rank of corporal before returning to Fort Des Moines for Officer Training School in the summer of 1943. Palma returned to work as a recruiter in Trenton, New Jersey, and Wilmington, Delaware. In the spring of 1944, Palma was sent to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, for overseas training. She embarked from San Francisco aboard the West Point in May 1944 and landed two weeks later in Sydney, Australia. A month later, she was sent to Port Moresby, New Guinea, where she censored mail and later worked in a mail sorting unit. Palma was later sent to Biak, an island off the New Guinea coast, to work as a secretary to a general. Then in early 1945, she was stationed in the Philippines, where she returned to mail censoring and sorting duties in Leyte and Manila. In November 1945, Palma returned to the United States aboard the converted ferry USS Evangeline, and 2 weeks later married Elwood Palma. Following her discharge, she was active in the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), serving the Henderson, North Carolina Post 7467 as commander. She was also involved in many local civic organizations.
