Few World War II WACs went about the business of serving their country with more energy or application than slim, dark-eyed Alba Carmen Martinelli. Alba, one of six children of an immigrant Italian engineer, could speak Italian and French when she quit teaching school in Plymouth, Mass, to join the Army. She learned four more languages—Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Tibetan—studied at Stanford and the University of Virginia, and ended up as a major and an adviser to the Korean government.
She came back to the U.S. in 1948, married a telephone company executive named Loren...