Smile and stay thin - life as a 1960s air hostess

In 1959 Qantas only had 85 flight hostesses, but was receiving 800 applications a year

They looked fantastic but it must have restricted their movements something terrible.

-Max White, Qantas flight steward, 1947 to 1980

In 1958, Qantas began employing Japanese flight hostesses to work on the “Cherry Blossom” route to Japan. Qantas’s Marj de Tracy had flown to Japan to select, from 150 applicants, Yoshiko Watanabe, Teruko Oshima and Kazuko Otsu. Publicity photos of the new recruits, all in their early twenties, showed them arriving in Sydney wearing full kimonos, similar to the ones they would wear on the flights to Tokyo.

Teri Teramoto was selected to fly on the Japan route in 1964. She started training