Verna White was born in 1923 in Heimdal, North Dakota. She grew up there, and in winter she enjoyed ice-skating; in summer she roamed the countryside experiencing nature. Her father owned a truck line, and before the war began, White worked for him trucking grain from the fields. She remembered the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. That Sunday afternoon, White was listening to opera music on the radio when the news came over. She didn't know it at the time, but one of her favorite cousins was on the battleship Arizona (BB-39), and lost his life that day; that incident influenced her decision to enlist in the armed forces. The day after Pearl Harbor, her brother and 23 of his friends enlisted in the Army. When she was old enough, she enlisted in the United States Marine Corps at Fort Snelling in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She completed her basic training at Camp Lejeune [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina], North Carolina, finding the experience rather rewarding, and less demanding than her work in trucking. Right out of boot camp she was sent to Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California], California.

Verna White's first assignment was at Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California], California, where she carried guard mail from the administrative offices to four different Marine Corps bases and one Navy base in southern California. She delivered the mail every day except Sundays, and drove a little black pick-up truck. The truck was not painted Marine Corps colors because at the time the government was worried about espionage, and because it looked like every other farm truck, it was camouflaged. She was aware of the events of the war, and followed the island invasions as they happened. She had only been in California a short time when she met her husband-to-be in the ice cream parlor of the PX [Annotator's Note: post exchange]. On a bet, he invited White and her girlfriend to a dance. The girls could only go if they traveled by Marine Corps bus, and she went with other girls who had been asked to attend. The event took place in a mess hall, complete with a full orchestra, but White didn't get to dance because her date didn't know how. He came to see her every night for the next three months, and then they were married.

While she was in boot camp, Verna White's daily routine started at five in the morning, followed by calisthenics and breakfast. Then she went to classes, and learned how to look after civilians in case of an emergency. They were also schooled in Marine Corps procedure, and White compared it to going to college. Once at Camp Pendleton [Annotator's Note: Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in San Diego County, California], her work was taking messages from the commanding officers to the different bases; it wasn't ordinary mail. The dispatches were signed for at each training base, which were about 50 miles apart. She lived among 80 other ladies in a barracks, and they got along famously. In their evening time off, generally between seven and revile at ten, she enjoyed the company of her talented companions. It didn't, however, allow her enough time to arrange for a wedding, and her aunt and uncle, who lived in Los Angeles [Annotator's Note: Los Angeles, California], handled everything. The local newspaper covered the ceremony. Under the circumstances of war, her family could not attend the wedding. White and her husband served together for five months before he was sent overseas. By that time, the big bomb [Annotator's Note: nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, 6 and 9 August 1945] had been dropped, and her military career came to an end in August 1945; she had only enlisted for the duration of hostilities. Her husband served as a forward observer, and participated in the battle of Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Iwo Jima, Japan], where he lost five close friends. White was pregnant when she left the Marines, and returned to live with her parents. Her husband was on a ship, ostensibly headed for the invasion of Japan, when he learned of his daughter's birth. The captain of the ship hosted a big dinner in the child's honor, and passed around cigars.

Back in North Dakota after the war, Verna White waited for six months for her husband to return home from occupation duty in Japan. He described to her how fortified the Marines found the civilian population of Japan, and said an invasion would have been very costly in terms of American and Japanese lives, had it taken place. The couple had corresponded by mail until he got home, and White remembered getting 30 letters at one time, because of the unreliability of the delivery systems. Her husband came home in January 1946. White reiterates that she enjoyed her time in the Marines, and says that when she joined at the age of 20, her parents were gracious about her decision. Her mother said she would just put another blue star in the window, and her father kissed her. When her husband returned from his tour of duty, the couple moved to West Monroe, Louisiana. He went into home and commercial contracting, and had a successful business until his death at 49 years of age. In concluding, [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks White if she feels today's Americans are aware of the service she and her young colleagues gave to the country.] She said she thinks so, but pointed out that nobody expected any extra attention. She was just glad she was able to help with what she could. It was a good job.