ginny_large

Johnston_Mary_Blakemore

Mary “Ginny” Johnston (maiden name Blakemore) was born in Christiansberg, VA in Jan 1921. Her father was a lawyer, banker, politician, and farmer. Her mother died when she was 2 weeks old. Her father remarried when she was 3 years old. She grew up on a big farm in Emory, VA. She went to Agnes Scott College after High School, but left because she didn’t think her grades were good enough and then went to Emory College in 1941. Her father had been in World War I, but was too old to get back into the Army immediately. He eventually joined as part of the Allied Military Government as a lawyer to bring government to areas in Europe after the US Army left. She remembers being angry by the Japanese attack and enlisted in the WAAC in Dec 1942. She was sent to Daytona Beach, FL for basic training. She was assigned as an interpreter for her MOS because she could speak French, German, and Spanish. Her first duty was at Norfolk Army Base where she processed German POWs. First she went to Fort McClellan and then next she went to Vint Hill Farms, VA with 19 other women for cryptology training. There she learned codes, cyphers, and Japanese. As part of her Japanese training, she focused on water/shipping messages to decipher. She did overseas training at Fort Oglethrope and then traveled to the West coast to take a ship to Ora Bay, New Guinea in 1944. She remembers taking a plane to Hollandia and flying over Japanese flack. In Hollandia as part of the GHQ she decoded for 8 hours a day and worked with a chaplain in her free time. Malaria was a problem and there was the risk of Japanese snipers. She got jungle rot, but was able to cure it on a visit to the Philippines. After V-J day, she left the Pacific around Thanksgiving and was out of the military by December 1945 with the rank of Corporal. She went back to Emory & Henry and graduated shortly thereafter. She met her husband (William Johnston, a physicist that worked on the Manhattan Project) in Charlottesville, VA and had four children (three boys and a daughter), later getting a degree in Licensed Professional Counseling.