Opha Mae Johnson

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Opha Mae Johnson
Born 1900
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Marine Corps
Years of service	enlisted 1918
Rank	Private
Unit	Marine Corps Reserve

Opha Mae Johnson (born c. 1900) was a United States Marine in the late 1910s. She became the first woman to enlist in the Marine Corps when on August 13, 1918 she enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve, in the midst of World War I. Johnson was the first of 305 women to enlist in the Marine Corps Reserves that day.^[1]

Her enlistment came half a century after Susan B. Anthony championed women's rights, and about twenty years after Alice Paul fought for the same cause. Johnson began to be seen as another example of early women rights movement fighters.

She was enlisted as a reservist, and she got the category of "F" (for female). She obtained those categories because, even as women were being allowed into the Marines, they were still not allowed to go to war. Opha Mae Johnson may have worked as a secretary, cook, military nurse or other jobs that the first Marine women were allowed to do. Meanwhile, her male colleagues were being sent to fight in France.

It would not be until the 1940s that female Marines were actually allowed to serve in a war zone.