Rachael Golden/The Gazette Florence Isbell fought for the rights of Japanese Americans during World War II. She is one of almost 100 Chevy Chase residents being honored tonight as part of the Chevy Chase Historical Society's World War II remembrance.

Florence Isbell did not fight in World War II.

In 1943, she was on the front lines of a different battle.

"It was a very, very sad episode in American life," Isbell said. "You had people in concentration camps for three years and with nobody to speak for them or plead their case."

At age 19, Isbell went to work in the New York office of Roger Baldwin, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union. The fledgling ACLU's main interest at that time was in challenging the incarceration of Japanese-American citizens during the war, many of whom were born in the U.S.

Isbell is one of nearly 100 Chevy Chase residents who will be honored tonight in a special meeting of the Chevy Chase Historical Society, held at the Chevy Chase Village Hall on Connecticut Avenue. Her story is one piece in the mosaic of experiences the historical society has gathered over the last year in compiling a written and oral history of residents who participated in and were affected by World War II, from women who served in the Women's Army Corp and inspected airplanes to men who flew single-engine bombers over Europe and commanded submarines.

"This was an interesting experiment in doing a collective memory from our neighborhood residents," said Susan Elwell of the Chevy Chase Historical Society.

The historical society compiled the stories in order to honor local veterans and to examine a time when the country was united in one cause and to coincide with the dedication of the national World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. Poster-size photos of the veterans will be on display at the Village Hall through the month of June, along with excerpts from the veterans' personal essays.

Dorothy Uphoff Camp, a resident of the Village of Martin's Additions who served as a second lieutenant in the Women's Army Corps from 1943-45, told the historical society of her first night with the corps.

"I joined the WAAC in January and spent the first night in a hotel that caught fire," Camp wrote. "I escaped by jumping from the second floor wearing one shoe and my new fur coat over my nightgown. I had just bought the fur coat; I lost everything else."

Other first-person essays, many of which will be read during tonight's event, include those by John Reed and William Borders of Chevy Chase Village, and George Painter of the Town of Chevy Chase.

Reed, who served in the 69th Infantry Division of the 271st Regiment and spoke some Russian, found himself working in a small group assigned to gather intelligence from the Soviet troops. Borders, a University of North Carolina graduate, participated in the May 11, 1943, offensive that took the Allied forces to Rome. Painter was a U.S. Merchant Marine in the South Pacific in 1945 and wrote about the tense experience of being on "submarine alert" while he was working in the engine room.

"I glanced up and the Chief Engineer was standing at the exit door at the top of the stairs with a drawn pistol in hand," Painter wrote. "I later learned that the Chief Engineer always took that spot to ensure that no one abandoned his post. It was common knowledge that if a merchant ship gets hit by a torpedo, the guys in the engine room die. Fortunately we were not torpedoed."

The wartime experiences of the Chevy Chase veterans are diverse, but one common element is that their memories of that time remain vivid. Isbell can describe in precise detail the ACLU office on 23rd Street and Fifth Avenue, just across from the Flatiron Building.

"Today it would be condemned, I mean, with OSHA they wouldn't have allowed people to work in a place like that," Isbell said during a recent visit to her Bradley Lane home. "It looked like sort of a welfare office. The desks were old and scratchy and falling apart. The secretaries' chairs were all missing a wheel or two. And the typewriters, even in those days they were old, old typewriters."

Isbell described Baldwin as a man who despite his wife's wealth, maintained an austere appearance.

"In all the years I knew him, he only had one suit and he only had one tie that I can recall," Isbell said, "but it looked different all the time because he kept dropping things on it, gave it a new pattern."

Isbell's career with the ACLU lasted long after World War II. She became the director of three local affiliates of the ACLU and then went on to become the associate director of the national ACLU, a position she held from 1978-84. She left the position in 1984 because the commute became too much of a hardship on Isbell and her family. She finally retired from working in the ACLU in 1991 after quadruple bypass surgery.

"I would be doing it to this very day," Isbell said. "I loved that job."