Title	[Opening of Red Cross Club in Japan, 1945]
Date	1945-12-24
Subject headings	World War, 1939-1945 American Red Cross
Era	World War II era (1940-1946)
Service branch	Red Cross
Item description	A crowd of sailors sit in chairs and on the floor for opening night of the Red Cross Club at the Naval Operating Base at Buckner Bay (Nakagusuku Bay), Okanawa, Japan, on Christmas Eve 1945.Tex" and Mary Clark are the women seated on the front row watching the Christmas show.
Veteran's name	White, Ruth Matthews
Veteran's biography	Ruth Matthews White (d. 2003) of Greensboro, North Carolina, served in the Red Cross from 1945 to 1947 . Ruth Matthews White grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, and graduated in 1939 from Greensboro High School. She briefly worked at Belk's Department Store, then studied physical education at the Woman's College of the University of North Carolina (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro), graduating in 1943. She then got a job teaching PE at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana . In April 1945, White joined the Red Cross to work in troop recreation. In July, she went to two weeks of training in Washington, D.C., and then two weeks of service club training at Camp Patrick Henry, Virginia. She was then sent to Camp Stoneman, California, for departure to Manila, Philippines, where she opened a Red Cross club. In November 1945, White volunteered to go to Okinawa, Japan. There she help set up a Red Cross club at the naval operating base (NOB) at Buckner Bay, and then six months later, in the summer of 1946, she moved to the air force's Club Doolittle, also on Okinawa, near Kadena. After suffering two severe cases of pneumonia, White resigned from the Red Cross in the summer of 1947. She returned to North Carolina and started Camp Awaniko near Blowing Rock, North Carolina, with her Red Cross friend Nancy Wrenn. Ruth White died in November 2003.
Place	Okinawa Island (Japan)
Type	image
Original format	photographs
Original publisher	[Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified]
Contributing institution	Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives, UNCG University Libraries
Source collection	WV0089 Ruth White Papers
Rights statement	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Additional rights information	IN COPYRIGHT. This item is subject to copyright. Contact the rights holder noted above for permission to reuse.
Object ID	WV0089.6.002
Digital publisher	The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, University Libraries, PO Box 26170, Greensboro NC 27402-6170, 336.334.5304 -- http://library.uncg.edu/
OCLC number	900810860

[Opening of Red Cross Club in Japan, 1945]

Page/Item Description