Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front NHP, Richmond, California

Poster from Rosie the Riveter/World War II Homefront NHP

It’s not too often I get to meet people who helped shape history. Usually, I read about them, even study them, but with historic figures, they are usually longer with us. At the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front NHP in Richmond, California, I luckily met Marian Wynn and Kay Morrison who had just finished a shift talking to visitors about their World War II experiences. They fought on the home front in the most horrendous war in human history. Without people like them, we might not have defeated the totalitarianism of the 1940s. They helped create the world we live in. We’ll come back to Kay and Marian in a minute.

Granted, a lot of people won the war.  Of course, the soldiers, sailors, and air crews who attacked the Axis Powers had the main role. The Merchant Marines who supplied the global war machine served and sacrificed as well. The factories in the United States feed the war effort with tanks, planes, ships, helmets, rifles, boots, uniforms, food, and everything that the fighting forces needed. The U.S. factories and industries supplied not only our military, but the fighting men and women of our allies. This NPS site documents and celebrates the home front which played a vital role in winning World War II.

Before we get to the home front, here’s a brief review of the events that lead to the United States entering World War II. The flawed Versailles Peace Treaty which ended World War I unfairly punished Germany for a war that both sides hungered for. The resultant economic chaos in Germany in the 1920s led to the rise of Hitler and his Nazi Party which began to rearm their military in the 1930s. The Great Depression on the 1930s worsened people’s ability to resist extreme solutions like Fascism. Germany tested its new weapons and tactics as it aided Franco in the Spanish Civil War where it fine-tuned the lightning strikes of blitzkreig. On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and consequently, Britain declared war on the Nazis. By 1940, Germany had invaded and occupied France, Denmark, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, Netherlands, and parts of Poland.

Meantime, war had erupted in Asia even earlier. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, began ravaging China in 1937, and created the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere which targeted most of Asia. The flag of the Rising Sun spread around East Asia as the Japanese military aggressively expanded its power and captured new territories.

The United States, remembering the shocking devastation of Europe in World War I, remained neutral, although some in government, including President Franklin Roosevelt, saw the war clouds building. They prepared for war. As death and destruction engulfed Europe and Asia, Roosevelt sent war materiel abroad and even provided U.S. Navy escorts for English convoys. These destroyers engaged with German U-boats in the summer of 1941. The U.S. cut off Japan’s oil supply that fall, and with its fuel supply dwindling, Japan launched the surprise attack on Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941 which threw the U.S. into World War II.

The U.S. held a unique and enviable position. It had no common borders with its enemies, and its homeland was safe from serious attack. As a result, its factories remained undamaged and quickly converted to producing the many things needed by the Allied military. Ford automobile plants switched to making jeeps and trucks, factories like the Wadsworth Watch Company began to turn out gun, bomb, and compass parts, and textile mills spun 1,000,000,000 pounds of wool in 1942 to make G.I. uniforms. War work lifted the U.S. out of the Depression while helping to thwart the gains of the Axis powers in Europe, Russia, and Asia.

Workers lined up outside the Kaiser Employment Office at Shipyard #2 (Exhibit photo)

With 16,000,000 men in uniform, who worked in these factories and plants?  Women, of course. Before the war, 12,000,000 women held jobs outside the home. By 1944, that number rose to 18,000,000. Additionally, minorities who could not work in factories before the war found jobs there. By the end of the war, the United States produced more than ½ of the world’s industrial output, thanks to many people, but in particular, to women and minorities.[1]

Richmond, California, north of Oakland, played an essential role in the home front. Henry J. Kaiser built four of the fourteen Richmond shipyards. Part of the Kaiser company's success entailed prefabricating ship components off-site, which increased the efficiency and speed of production. Previously unskilled workers did the repetitive jobs like welding pipes together. This is where Marian and Kay came into the picture.

Kay Morrison and Marian Wynn ending their volunteer shift at the park (Photo by Hunner)

With just two weeks training as a welder, Kay Morrison worked the grave yard shift from January 1943 to August 1945. She told me: “We’re one of the reasons we won the war. We’re FDR’s secret weapon.”[2] Marion Wynn also welded pipes for the Victory ships which were sent to the docks for final assembly. Marion worked at Richmond for the last eleven months of the war and came to the shipyard after her brother died on the beaches of Normandy during the D-Day invasion. Both of these women continue to volunteer at the park as well as do community events around the Bay area. Another woman worker, Marian Sousa, a draftsman at Shipyard #3, perhaps summed up their humble sentiments: “I specifically didn’t do anything great, but I participated in something that was great.”[3]

Kay pointing herself out in the group picture of pipe welders in 1945. (Photo by Hunner) 

The icon of Rosie the Riveter first popped up in a song released by the Four Vagabonds in early 1943: “She’s part of the assembly line/ She’s making history working for victory/Rosie the Riveter.” Norman Rockwell’s famous painting of Rosie appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post on May 29, 1943. Across the country, women started working at jobs previously held by men: welders, machinists, electricians, carpenters, mechanics, and at railyards, gas stations, on farms, in the military. Women even served as pilots and ferried planes across the country from factories to airfields before men flew them into combat.

Norman Rockwell's cover on the Saturday Evening Post (Exhibit poster)

To celebrate Rosie and all of the Homefront workers who helped win the war, the NPS has taken over the old Ford Assembly plant. During the war, this plant made more than 60,000 military vehicles including tanks, Army trucks, half-tracks, tank destroyers, personnel carriers, scout cars, amphibious tanks, and bomb lift trucks.[4]

Other parts of Richmond, especially the other shipyards, played vital roles in building the ships necessary to move troops and supplies for this world war. Richmond launched 747 ships between 1942 and 1945, the most of any shipyard in the country. The U.S. built a total 3,200 Liberty and Victory ships.  

Aerial photo of Shipyard #2 at Richmond. The Ford Assembly plant is at the upper right hand corner. (Exhibit photo) 

Shipyard No. 3 (listed on the National Register of Historic Places) is the only surviving wartime yard in the Bay Area. At Shipyard 3 is moored the S.S. Red Oak Victory. It is a World War II Victory ship built in the Richmond Shipyards in 1944. It carried supplies and troops to the Pacific Theater during the war, and stayed active through the Korean and Vietnam wars. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places to recognize its military, transportation, and engineering significance as an ammunition and cargo vessel during WWII.

U.S.S. Red Oak Victory at Shipyard #3. (Photo by Hunner)

One of Henry Kaiser’s innovations was health care. In 1942, he created the Permanente Health Plan for shipyard workers. This instituted a three-tier medical care system with first-aid stations in the shipyards, a field hospital, and a main hospital. One of Kaiser's original first-aid stations remains intact in Shipyard No. 3. The field hospital also still exists and is now privately owned.  This health care system is now Kaiser Permanente, an integrated health care system that cares for millions of people in California.

Kaiser instituted another innovation at his shipyards-- child care for families working in his shipyards. The child care centers had progressive early-childhood education programming, nutritional meals and snacks, on-site nurses, art lessons, and family counseling. Some of the centers operated around the clock, although most opened at 6 am and closed at 6 pm. Today, the largest Kaiser childcare center --  the Maritime Center -- is owned by the Rosie the Riveter Trust and houses a re-created wartime classroom exhibit.

In most parks that I visit, I ask rangers about climate change. At Rosie the Riveter NHS, Karen (a retired Kindergarten and First Grade teacher who volunteers  at the front desk) replied that she tours visiting 4^th graders along the waterfront. She talks about how these docks at Richmond could be underwater in 100 years.  She tells the students that we need to take care of the planet for future generations just like during World War II, “everyone came together to support the war. We need to do that for the climate today.” Karen emphasized that she wants to make a personal connection with young visitors about climate change since they will inherit this earth.

Shoreline outside of the Visitors' Center at Rosie the Riveter (Photo by Hunner)

By war’s end, the Home Front had dramatically changed the nation. Granted, many women and minorities faced a return to pre-war status as returning vets got their jobs back. Despite the three million women dismissed from their jobs in the immediate post war period, women employment has continued to rise from 16.8 million in 1946 to 31.6 million in 1970. This growing freedom in the job market for women and minorities led to vast social change. As Fanny Christina Hill is quoted in the exhibit: “Hitler was the one who got us out of the white folks’ kitchen.”

In addition to the movement of women into the work force, World War II transformed the population distribution of the nation. Social historian James Gregory says: “World War II set off the greatest sequence of human relocation in American history. At least 57% of the population changed residence during the war years, 21% of them migrating across county or state lines…. California, Oregon, and Washington gained more than three million newcomers during the 1940s.”[5] The American West won big in this migration, ending its colonial status with the East Coast and growing into a powerful region of the country.

Full employment, health care, child care, under-represented people in the workforce, new assembly methods, shifts in demographics, the unintended consequences of the swift changes in U.S. society on the home front proved vital in winning the war. Without Marian, Kay, and millions of Rosies (including my mom, Anna LaShelle), our world might have succumbed to the dark forces of totalitarianism.

Rosie the Riveter/World War II Homefront NHP, 1414 Harbour Way South, Suite 3000, Richmond, CA 94804, (510) 232-5050. It was designated a National Historical Park on October 25, 2000.

Trinidad Gutierrez and Molly Alcanto change lamps and oil cans on incoming trains. (Exhibit photo)

[1] Statistics taken from the exhibit panels and the movie at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front NHS.

[2] Interview with Kay Morrison by Jon Hunner, June 13, 2016 at the Rosie the Riveter NHS.

[3] Exhibit text at Rosie the Riveter NHS.

[4] History & Culture – Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service http://www.nps.gov/rori/learn/historyculture/index.htm

[5] James N. Gregory, “Internal Migration: Twentieth Century and Beyond.” Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 542.