Yona Owens (b. 1949) served as an interior communications electrician in the United States Navy from 1973-1977 and in the Navy Reserve in 1979. In 1976 Owens joined a class action lawsuit that challenged Congress's prohibition of women on ships. Yona Owens was born 30 September 1949 in Charlotte, North Carolina. She graduated from Independence High School in 1967, and then began attending Appalachian State on an art scholarship. After about a year, Owens transferred to East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, but left in 1971 without graduating. In May 1973, influenced by the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment and after having spoken with a Vietnam veteran who told her if women wanted equal rights they needed to serve their time and fight for those rights, Owens decided to enlist in the United States Navy. She attended eight weeks of basic training at Orlando Naval Training Center in Florida, where she was named Education Petty Officer and held study groups for her peers. During basic training, Owens was given a test to determine what A School she would attend. She later informed she had done well and was given the option of being an Electrician's Technician (ET), Interior Communications Electrician (IC), or Aviation Shopkeeper (AK). She chose Interior Communications Electrician. Owens was then sent to San Diego, California, where she was one of the first women to attend electronics school. She was enrolled in a self-paced calculus course and learned to read wiring diagrams. After graduation, all the males received orders to ships, but Owens received orders to Naval Station Great Lakes, in Illinois, for marine telephone maintenance school. Owens continued to be assigned to more training, and although she was learning electronic skills that were to be used aboard ships, Owens was never assigned to a ship, something that began to become very stressful as she felt this was not fair. When she found out women were beginning to be allowed at overseas duty stations, Owens decided to speak with her detailer about changing her orders. In 1974, Owens received orders to Yokohama, Japan; she was the first woman assigned to this facility. Upon arrival she was informed she could take two-weeks of immediate leave, and decided to visit Sasebo, where she knew of some friends on a naval ship. When Owens returned to Yokohama, she began working eight-hour shifts, six days a week. In 1975, Owens was invited by the mayor of Yokosuka to participate in the first International Women's Year, where the women were asked to show skills that aren't traditionally held by women. During this ceremony, Owens was impressed by women from other countries who were excelling more than were U.S. women, including a Russian doctor and a German who was studying radioactivity. While in Japan, Owens received approval to meet with the Judge Advocate General when he came to Yokosuka. When they met, she inquired as to when the navy was going to repeal the law that prevented women from serving aboard ships, to which he replied, "Never." Owens decided to sue the navy, something she was told by her detailer she would only be able to do if she was stationed in the United States. Owens was then assigned to the Pentagon, outside of Washington D.C. This position required a high security clearance, so while a six-month investigation took place, Owens performed various tasks, but was also able to spend time compiling information and documents related to her lawsuit, which she eventually sent to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). In 1975, the ACLU Women's Rights Project accepted Owens' case, and filed the case in the District Court of Washington, D.C. The case was assigned to Judge John Sirica, who certified it as a class-action suit. By now, newspapers had begun to take notice, and Owens soon received information from the Women's Rights Project that four women officers from the West Coast wanted to join the class-action suit; the Women's Rights Project assured Owens it would strengthen their case because of the women's credentials. With the additional women, Owens and the ACLU Women's Rights Project had the case recertified and were put on Judge Sirica's dockets for April 1978, which dismayed Owens because her fulltime enlistment would end in 1977. After leaving active duty, Owens remained in the reserves for a year. In July 1978, Judge Sirica declared the law forbidding women aboard navy vessels unconstitutional. Over the years, Owens has been a supporter of the North Carolina Governor's School Foundation, received her Master of Library and Information Science degree from Syracuse University iSchool, and been Project Manager for the Lewis Clarke Oral Histories Project at North Carolina State University. As of December 2012, Owens has been the Director of the Lewis Clarke Biography Project. In 2018, on the 100th anniversary of the acceptance of women in the military, Owens received an invitation to Naval Station Norfolk for a women's history celebration, where she participated on a panel with some of the first women surface warfare officer commanders and first women captains on guided missile destroyers.
