Chief of Recruitment

Chief of Recruitment

Veterans

Grace Thorpe

Life in Japan

“As a matter of fact I was in the first plane of women going into Japan.”

"Well then after I got out of the service I was discharged from the WAC in Manilla, and I took a War Department Job in Tokyo. That’s when the occupation had just started there. As a matter of fact, I was in the first plane of women going into Japan. So then I was married over in Japan. I had a couple of kids there and then the marriage didn’t work so I came back to the United States."

After being discharged from the WAC in Manilla Grace moved to Tokyo, Japan where she worked as a chief recruiter at General McArthur Headquarters. While working in Japan she met and married her husband, Lieutenant Fred W. Seely. Then in 1946, she had her daughter, Dagmar and two years later in 1948, she had her son, Paul. Grace’s work in Japan and with the WACs helped her develop skills in public relations that she would go on to use later in life as an American Indian activist. In 1950 Grace divorced her husband and moved to New York with her children.

1945-1950

Thorpe, Grace. Oral Memoirs of Grace Thorpe, transcript. Audio, 1972. Baylor University - Institute for Oral History Interviews. https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/Documents/Detail/oral-memoirs-of-grace-thorpe-transcript/1708298?item=1708300 oral history

Menyuk, Rachel. “Grace F. Thorpe Collection.” National Museum of the American Indian, 2017. National Museum of the American Indian. https://sova.si.edu/record/NMAI.AC.085#using-the-collection