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96-year-old World War Two veteran shares experiences during UNO talk

Katie Knapp Schubert
/
KIOS-FM

About one million World War Two veterans are still alive---and a 96-year-old female veteran of that war spoke at UNO last week.

Mildred Brodt is a Nebraska native who now lives in Minnesota. She joined the Women's Army Corps in September 1943, and served in Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, and Japan. One year after joining the WAC, Brodt was sent to Papua New Guinea along with 50 fellow WACs and 4,000 GIs.

There, she worked at a location she called the “Pentagon of the Pacific,” getting orders for equipment to troops. She says the conditions in Papua New Guinea were difficult.

"No plumbing, we washed our clothes in the helmet, and slept on cots. The cots were pushed together so there would be room to get up on the other side. Slept on blankets, and mosquito net to keep out the mosquitoes, but mostly to keep out the rats."

In September of 1945, Brodt was sent to Manila. Brodt was assigned to a group working on plans to invade Japan in November 1945. She was discharged on Christmas Eve of 1945, and went to Tokyo in 1946. Brodt stayed in Japan for three-and-a-half years, where she worked in personnel, assigning civilians to jobs.

After her military service, Brodt graduated from the University of Nebraska with a business degree, and worked for the National Security Agency.