... Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.

-- Chief Joseph at the conclusion of the Nez Perce War

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TOPPENISH -- Virginia Beavert vividly recalls how the fervor of war lured her in 1943 from welding in a Portland shipyard to the Army Air Forces.

As men working alongside her began signing up for military service, she followed suit.

"I was curious seeing all the advertising, the recruiting," the 86-year-old Yakama tribal member remembered. "You'd walk down the streets and see all the advertisements."

Her job was to give pilots authority to take off and land while stationed at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico just west of Clovis until her honorable discharge in November 1945, two days before her 24th birthday.

She was just one of 241 Yakamas who left the 1.2 million-acre reservation to fight alongside American servicemen in the war. At that time, the tribe had a membership of only about 3,000. Today, the only other World War II veterans still alive from the tribe are Nelson Moses, Calvin Charley and William Blodget. Last year, the tribe's most decorated World War II veteran -- Louis Cloud -- died at 87.

Although the Yakamas agreed to lay down their arms in the 1855 treaty, they, like many tribal members from across the country, didn't hesitate to defend the country when war broke out in 1941.

They were protecting their aboriginal ties to their traditional lands, said Beavert.

"That was their attitude," she recalled. "They were protecting their land."

But Beavert's enlistment wasn't met with widespread acceptance on the Yakama reservation, with some tribal elders still holding to tradition that the military -- especially during wartime -- was no place for a woman.

"The attitude was women going into the military were just playthings for the men," said Beavert, whose three stepbrothers also fought in the war.

Later she learned that even her mother had made contributions to military service as a civilian truck driver hauling supplies to the state's west side, she said.

Farmers were growing food in the Valley that was canned to support troops overseas, she recalled.

"A lot of Indians, too -- they went to work in the shipyards," she said.

It wasn't until returning home that she learned that her deployment left her mother feeling as if "my heart was being torn my chest," she said.

While Beavert remained stateside, many men stationed at her base lost their lives in bombing raids over Japan.

"I lost some friends," she recalled.

Her sadness extended to the tragedy Japan suffered as well.

"I really felt bad about what happened in Japan," she said. "My best friend growing up was Japanese."

But her commission mostly was filled with fun memories, she said.

She recalled one time when the plane carrying President Franklin D. Roosevelt was trying to land at her base, but she refused him permission, thinking she was being teased by members of her squad.

"I thought they were teasing me again," she said with a chuckle. "Then my commanding officer came in and said, 'Virginia, that's the president -- give him permission to land.' I was so shaken, I had him do it."

Although she was embraced by her family when she came home, it was still tough to adjust, she said.

She ran into her cousin, whose face was badly scarred in a mortar attack during combat in Europe.

He was happy to see her, and they went to a nearby restaurant in Toppenish to talk. But the coffee never came.

He returned from the counter where he asked why they weren't being served and said: "I'm going to tear this place apart. They won't serve us because we're Indians."

She said she urged him not to, and they left, she recalled.

"I understand the problems these guys have when they come back," she said. "If I didn't enroll in school, I think I would have been on the streets."

* Phil Ferolito can be reached at 577-7749 or pferolito@yakimaherald.com.