The yeoman rate is one of the oldest rates in the U.S. Navy, dating back to 1794. Historically, the Navy yeomen were responsible for keeping the storerooms for the ship's gunners, carpenters and boatswains. With the transition from sail to steam, yeomen were assigned to the ship's engineers. In the modern Navy, a yeoman is an enlisted service member who performs administrative and clerical work.
History
Formation of the U.S. Navy The U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 14) granted the new U.S. Congress the power to build and maintain a navy. It was not until 1794, however, that deteriorating U.S. relations with Great Britain and France, as well as continuing attacks by Barbary pirates, forced Congress to appropriate funds to construct 6 frigates. Congress stipulated that each ship was to have one yeoman of the gun room and one captain's clerk. The captain's clerk was the ancestor of the modern yeoman. Both of these positions were considered as petty officers. Carpenter's yeoman and gunner's yeoman followed in 1798, then boatswain's yeoman in 1799. In the early U.S. Navy, the petty officers, who were appointed by the ship's captain, served at his pleasure. They did not retain their rank when they moved to another ship. No uniform regulations were specified for the petty officers and enlisted men until 1817.
World War I Era With the US Declaration of War against Germany in April 1917, the Navy needed trained men quickly. Recruits who had the aptitude to be yeomen attended Yeoman School. As the war effort escalated, the US Navy found itself lacking personnel to perform the shore-based duties necessary to support more than 128,000 enlisted personnel. On 17 March 1917, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels received authorization to enlist women to perform yeoman's duties. They were designated "yeoman (F)".
Yeoman School The Yeoman School, one of the Navy's Trade Schools, had two locations: Newport in Rhode Island, and San Francisco in California. To enter Yeoman School, the recruit was required to have some prior clerical experience, be able to write legibly, and type a 200-word letter with a passing grade of 70% or better. Knowledge of stenography was desirable, but not required. "Steno" classes would be available after hours.
Preliminary classes, lasting between 4–6 weeks, would cover arithmetic, spelling, composition, and general naval knowledge. The final examination would determine eligibility for the next level of classes. Supply-officer department classes covered preparation of requisitions, surveys, public bills, official returns, and supply-related duties. General bookkeeping, inventories, mess statements, and balance sheets were also taught. Executive-officer department classes covered record-keeping for enlisted men. Correct preparation of forms for arrival/departure of men; ratings and disratings; appointments; and discharges, desertions, and death were covered. Pay-officer department classes required a thorough knowledge of arithmetic. Making up payrolls, computing pay for officers and enlisted men (including allowances, bounties, and extra pay), calculating credit and interest on payroll savings accounts, and preparing payroll checks were some of the duties covered in these classes. Commanding-officer department classes covered the production of various forms of official correspondence, such as official letters, and endorsements. The yeoman had to be familiar with the channels through which the documents would pass, as well as the approved filing systems for storing the paperwork. Generating the proceedings for courts-martial and other courts of inquiry or inquests was also covered. The use and proper care of a typewriter was extremely important in the preparation of these documents. Each of the above classes was 5 weeks long.
Upon entering Yeoman School, the recruit's ranking was landsman-for-yeoman, with a monthly salary of $17.60. Good grades and good conduct could be rewarded with a promotion to landsman-for-yeoman, second class, and a monthly salary of $20.90. Upon graduation, the ranking would be either yeoman, third class (Y3C), at $33.00 per month or yeoman, second class (Y2C), at $38.00 per month. The new yeomen would be granted 10 days leave, with additional time allowed for travel, before transferring to his next station.
Yeoman (F)
The Civil Service Commission notified Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels in early 1917 that it could not supply the clerical support needed by the Navy. Exactly who originated the idea of enlisting women with the necessary skills is uncertain. Daniels consulted his legal staff as to whether the language of The Naval Act of 1916 prohibited women. Advised that it did not, Daniels responded, "Then enroll women in the Naval Reserve as yeomen,’ I said, ‘and we will have the best clerical assistance the country can provide.’" By war's end, there were more than 11,000 women serving as yeoman (F) of the US Naval Reserve. The women also contributed to the war effort in non-clerical positions, replacing their male counterparts who were called for sea duty. They became switchboard operators, recruiters, code decipher clerks, painters, look-outs at naval bases, translators, and messengers. They also dispersed pay, designed ship camouflage, and manufactured munitions. As Secretary Daniels had observed, “They did everything except go to sea.” Yeoman (F) recruitment stopped on 11 November 1918. The young women had enlisted for 4 years, so they remained on active duty until 1920. Afterwards, many of their supervisors urged Daniels to retain the now-discharged yeomen as civilians doing the same jobs.
Agnes Meyer Driscoll
Agnes Meyer Driscoll graduated from Ohio State University in 1911 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics. She was also proficient in four foreign languages: French, Latin, German, and Japanese. Driscoll enlisted with the US Navy as a chief yeoman (F) in 1918, and worked in the Code and Signal Section of the Director of Naval Communications. throughout WWI. After the war ended, she continued working for the US Navy as a civilian crypto-analyst. She was instrumental in breaking the Red Book Japanese naval cipher in the mid-1920s, and the Blue Book Japanese naval cipher in 1930.
About the same time (early 1930s), William D. Puleston, Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) suspected the naval attaché office at the Japanese Embassy in Washington D.C. of extending their espionage activities throughout the US. Suspicions of Embassy military officials and possible Japanese naval officers posing as English language students at US universities resulted in increased surveillance, and led to the expulsion of Japanese assistant naval attaché, Yoshiro Kanamoto, for photographing US Navy fuel oil depots. Further decrypted Japanese messages confirmed Director Puleston's suspicions. Driscoll was reviewing a decrypted message which contained the word 'TO-MI-MU-RA'. Unable to recognize the word, she showed the message to a Japanese language specialist. He initially suggested that the word could be a Japanese name, but Driscoll wasn't so sure. His next suggestion was the alternate reading of 'MU-RA': "son", thus making the entire word mean "Tomison", or "Thompson" in English. The ONI had a lead to an American possibly spying for the Japanese.
Over on the West Coast of the mainland US, Harry J. Thompson was a former US Navy yeoman, and now jobless. In 1934, Thompson had been recruited by Lt Cmdr Toshio Miyazaki of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Miyazaki was posing as Mr. Tanni, an English language exchange student at Stanford University. Thompson was given the uniform of a chief yeoman and was able to access classified information on gunnery and gunnery tactics. While drunk, Thompson confided to his roommate, Willard James Turrentine, also unemployed, about the spy ring. Turrentine informed the ONI, passing along some of Thompson's correspondence as proof. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) placed Thompson under surveillance, and arrested him in March 1936 under the Espionage Act of 1917. Thompson was convicted, and sentenced to 15 years at McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. On the day Thompson was arrested, Miyazaki fled back to Japan.
World War II era The duties of the navy yeomen aboard a battleship during World War II are remembered by the living historians of the , now a museum ship in Wilmington, North Carolina. There were ten yeomen of the executive division of the executive department. The executive department was responsible for all duties on the ship except for those performed by the gunnery and navigation departments. It contained divisions responsible for supply, medical, engineering, security, and the executive functions aboard ship. The yeoman staff included: Chief yeoman (also known as the ship's writer), one yeoman 1st class, three yeoman 2nd class, two yeoman 3rd class, and three seamen who were learning on the job to become yeomen (known as "strikers").
North Carolina was a combat vessel. Therefore, besides the traditional duties of a yeoman "paper-pusher", the yeomen had battle stations to report to when General Quarters was sounded. They were: Secondary battle plot (battle recorder) Auxiliary CIC (3JW phone circuit talker) Turret 2 booth (phone talker) Damage control station (X1JV phone circuit talker) Repair 1 (forward) (fire party & traffic control, valveman) Repair 2 (aft) (fire party) Repair 3 (chief in charge, fire party, valveman & fire party) Conning tower (3J2 phone circuit talker, JA phone circuit talker) Battle II (JA phone circuit talker, JL phone circuit talker) Central station and forward gyro (JA phone circuit talker) Note that duties of battle recorder and the various circuit talkers (who relayed orders over the shipboard telephone system) required the attention to detail that was part of the yeoman training. That a yeoman was in charge of the repair parties made use of his organizational skills.
Another aspect of the yeoman's duties was highlighted during the Court of Inquiry convened in August 1945 to investigate the loss of the . Part of the Judge Advocate's legal staff were yeomen court reporters, in the modern US Navy this duty is performed by legalmen.
Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington (IUB) has been teaching military science since just after the US Civil War. During World War I (WWI), a US Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) was established under the Department of Military Science and Tactics, and IU women graduates became yeomen (F). The 7 December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor galvanized the university administration (some of whom were WWI veterans) and the student body. On Tuesday, 9 December, the student newspaper, Indiana Daily Student, ran an editorial in response to President Franklin Roosevelt's message to Congress on the previous day: