Margaret Kiefer
Interviewee: Margaret Kiefer
Interviewer: Courtney Whitfield
Date of Interview: 6 March 2002
Length of Interview: 30 minutes
Margaret Kiefer grew up outside of New York City during the Great Depression. Fortunately, her father had a good job as a banker and her family did well in those hard times. In this interview, she talks a little about her life during the time period. For example, Ms. Kiefer tells of riding her bike to school and going to the library and the movies every Saturday on the bus. During World War II, Ms. Kiefer was a member of the Coast Guard and gives a detailed account of her time in the service. She began at the Coast Guard Academy in Connecticut and then went to Washington, D.C. for training. After being cleared for Top Secret communications, she attended Mount Holyoke College for naval communications training where she learned codes and how to use coding machines. She was privy to much Top Secret information and when serving in Hawaii, carried a gun to protect herself and her messages. In Hawaii, she was stationed at a little Coast Guard outpost on a naval base. Ms. Kiefer tells some interesting stories about Pearl Harbor and USO dances in this interview. She met many servicemen during her time in the service that would correspond with her after shipping out from Hawaii. One of these men sent her a letter in which he told her that he was helping to evacuate natives from Hiroshima and Nagasaki because those areas were going to be bombed. At the end of the interview Ms. Kiefer discusses how the United States changed after the war, citing women in the workplace as one major difference. This interview thoroughly chronicles her time in the Coast Guard and includes some very interesting anecdotes about women in the service during the second world war.