Esther Gilbert of Norwich, Connecticut, served as a staff assistant with the American Red Cross in the Pacific Theater of World War II from July 1944 to March 1946. Esther Gilbert of Norwich, Connecticut, attended Norwich Free Academy and then Lasell Junior College in Aubundale, Massachusetts before finding work at New England Telephone and Telegraph. However, with the outbreak of war, she joined the Red Cross, serving as a field representative for eastern Connecticut and also as a member of the Boston, Massachusetts, chapter of the Red Cross. Gilbert was sent overseas in the summer of 1944, arriving as an American Red Cross staff assistant in Australia on 10 July 1944. She was successively stationed in Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, and Melbourne from July 1944 to April 1945. She was then sent to the Phillipines after a short stop in New Guinea, where she was stationed successively in Tacloban and Manila until November 1945. Gilbert arrived in Tokyo on 28 November 1945, and remained in Japan through March of 1946.
