Sara "Sally" Manning was born on 12 June 1925 in the small town of Lock Haven in Pennsylvania. Lock Haven was home to Piper Aircraft [Annotator's Note: Piper Aircraft, Incorporated] and various defense plants. Manning worked for a defense plant named General Armature [Annotator's Note: unable to identify], which made parts for military technologies. Other than those industries, it was a very picturesque small town. Lock Haven was not a good place to live, it was a great place to be from. The town flooded every spring from ice melt. Her family was very poor, she had four older brothers and one sister who passed away before she was born. All of her brothers went into the service, she was the only one left home. Her mother was not happy with Manning's decision to also join the service. At that time you needed to be 20 years old and have your mother or father's signature to join the military, or 21 without their signature. Manning convinced her father to sign the papers to allow her to enlist. Before that she worked as a bookkeeper for General Armature for three years. Things were different back then compared to now. It was not just the soldiers fighting the war, but everyone on the Homefront as well. People sacrificed a lot of everyday things. Tires, gasoline, and groceries were rationed. Nobody complained, because they all felt like they were doing their part to help the war effort. In Lock Haven there are plaques and pictures of veterans on the light poles, the pictures are changed every year so there is always a veteran's picture on each. Manning would go out dancing with her friends during the war. She often had to dance with other women because there were not any men around. She and 14 of her friends all decided to enlist in the Navy. The Navy ordered them to report to Hunter College in New York City [Annotator's Note: New York, New York]. The women were given train tickets to travel from Pennsylvania to New York. Manning was the only one out of the 14 who showed up to New York City. Despite this, she never regretted a single day that she spent in the service. There were two billets [Annotator's Note: a place, usually civilian or nonmilitary, where soldiers are lodged temporarily] open, a pursing clerk, and a position in the hospital corps, which nobody wanted. She volunteered for the hospital position, went to hospital corps school at Hunter College, and then was sent to Chelsea Naval Hospital in Boston [Annotator's Note: Naval Hospital Boston, Chelsea, Massachusetts]. She worked in the outside wards, where noncritical patients were kept. Manning also worked in a dependent's hospital, which cared for the wives and children of military personnel. Manning also had a job as Master-at-Arms [Annotator's Note: naval petty officer appointed to carry out or supervise police duties aboard ship].

Sara "Sally" Manning met her husband while he was a hospital patient [Annotator's Note: Manning worked at Naval Hospital Boston, Chelsea, Massachusetts, as part of the Navy's hospital corps]. Her husband received treatment and was free to do as he liked for the rest of the day. Once he was better, he ended up spending a lot of time at sea. As the technology was not there yet, the only way she could communicate with her husband was through letters. At that time, if a woman in the Navy got pregnant, they were immediately discharged. Once Manning's husband retired, the couple traveled the world. She was in Time's Square [Annotator's Note: Time's Square, in New York, New York] on VJ-Day [Annotator's Note: Victory Over Japan Day, 15 August 1945] celebrating the end of the war. Manning tells everyone that she is the nurse pictured in the famous photograph of a Navy sailor kissing a nurse. She had never seen so many people in her life as VJ-Day in New York City. Manning had four older brothers in the service. Her oldest was in the Army in the European Theater. The second was in the Army but was killed aboard the transport ship on the way to the front. Manning and her family never received a definitive answer as to what happened. The third was in the Army, serving in the Pacific when the bombs were dropped [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945]. The fourth was in the Navy, serving on destroyers in the Atlantic [Annotator's Note: Atlantic Ocean]. The day Pearl Harbor was attacked [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], Manning was at home and the radio said that Japan ambushed Pearl Harbor. Her parents immediately knew that this attack meant war. At first Manning did not know where Pearl Harbor was and did not understand the significance of the damage to the American Naval fleet. Civilians tenaciously started up war production for the military. It was just different than any other time she has experienced.

Sara "Sally" Manning's duties at the hospital [Annotator's Note: Manning worked at Naval Hospital Boston, Chelsea, Massachusetts, as part of the Navy's hospital corps] depended on what shift she was doing. Her favorite was Master-at-Arms [Annotator's Note: naval petty officer appointed to carry out or supervise police duties aboard ship] duty, working from nine at night until seven in the morning. In that capacity she did office work and made sure that curfew was enforced. As for working in the hospital wards, the men's wards was easy work. She gave them medication, shots, or changed the beds when needed. She worked in the outside wards, which were patients that were not in critical condition. The dependents [Annotator's Note: Manning worked in a dependent's hospital which took care of the children and wives of military personnel], was considerably harder work. She made beds while bedridden women were still laying in them, checked bed pans, and bathed them. She and the other hospital corps members were glad to be free of dependent's hospital duties. Manning wore a seersucker [Annotator's Note: also called railroad stripe; a think, puckered fabric used to make clothing] dress while in the Navy. She was never given a pair of dress pants, although some WAVES [Annotator's Note: Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service; United States Naval Women's Reserve] working in industry were given pants and sometimes coveralls. Manning would have preferred to stay in the Navy but was forced out at the end of the war. She resented the cold shoulder she was given at the end of the war when she was forced to resign, she feels as though her sacrifice was not appreciated. Following her dismissal, she married her husband William Henry Manning and had two children. The family traveled wherever he was stationed. Her husband had unfortunate luck with where he was stationed. Either he was constantly being moved or the ship he was attached to would be underway and he would leave for months. It was a hard life, and her husband was gone for many extended trips at sea, leaving her to care for the two children and the home by herself.

Sara "Sally" Manning's husband [Annotator's Note: William Henry Manning] was a POW [Annotator's Note: prisoner of war ]. Her husband was at Wake Island, which the Japanese attacked the day following Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], 8 December 1941. There were many civilians and Marines there, not many sailors. The sailors were there because a Navy airfield was being constructed on the island. They held out until 23 December 1941, when they were forced to surrender. He never talked about his experiences as a prisoner. William Manning attended reunions with Marines he served with, and the Marines are the ones who told stories about prisoner of war life. When asked if he was a prisoner of war, he always responded that he did not want to talk about it. Even when talking to a mental health professional, her husband would deny that there was anything wrong with him. Manning believes that he and many veterans had PTSD [Annotator's Note: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder], but it was not an acknowledged condition for many years. After the Japanese captured him at Wake Island he was taken to China to labor in the mines. The prisoners of war were moved from place to place consistently. One Japanese guard treated the prisoners harshly but avoided Manning's husband and another prisoner due to their red hair. Her husband was shot twice at Wake Island, in the arm and the back, affecting him for the rest of his life.

Sara "Sally" Manning's life would have been completely different had she not volunteered for the Navy. It gave her the opportunity to leave her hometown. But if she had the chance, she would have lived a vastly different life. Her husband was afraid to say anything about his treatment as a prisoner of war because there was a possibility of being removed from the Navy. She was elated when the military started treating people for PTSD [Annotator's Note: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder]. Many times her husband had violent nightmares due to his mental state following being kept as a prisoner. Of her four siblings that all served during World War 2, she is the last one living. She believes that one of the best things ever done was the creation of the National World War II Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum, in New Orleans, Louisiana].