BGuthrie Photos: CA -- Richmond -- Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front -- Memorial

CA -- Richmond -- Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front -- Memorial:

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. ROSIEM_110729_011.JPG: Women in War Work Laundry & cleaning service is badly needed. To do family laundry at a reasonable price and with rapid service, they would be located near workers' homes or at housing project community centers. Shopping services are necessary for the woman who cooks at home. List and ration points are left at neighborhood center in the morning, food is picked up after work. Saves hours of tedious shopping after a hard day's work. AND IF OUR LINES SHOULD FORM, THEN BREAK BECAUSE OF THINGS YOU FAILED TO MAKE THE EXTRA TANK, OR SHIP, OR PLANE FOR WHICH WE WAITED ALL IN VAIN AND THE SUPPLIES WHICH NEVER CAME WILL YOU THEN COME AND TAKE THE BLAME FOR WE, NOT YOU, WILL PAY THE COST OF BATTLES YOU, NOT WE, HAVE LOST --a U.S. Marine
2. ROSIEM_110729_019.JPG: 1940 Women in work force: 10 million Unemployed: 17.2 percent Average weekly wages of production worker: $25.25 Gross National Product: $90 billion People paying income tax: 7.8 million 1945 Women in work force: 18 million Unemployed: 1.9 percent Average weekly wages of production worker: $47.08 Gross National Product: $213 billion People paying income tax: 48 million
3. ROSIEM_110729_027.JPG: Nearly 5 months before Pearl Harbor few women were employed in shipyards... By January 1944, as many as 10 percent of all production wage earners in the industry were women. --Women's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor On the west coast, 25 percent of all shipyard workers were women.
4. ROSIEM_110729_043.JPG: ROSIE THE RIVETER MEMORIAL Honoring American Women's Labor During WWII Dedicated October 14, 2000 Cheryl Barton, Landscape Architect/Sculptor, Susan Schwartzenberg, Visual Artist The are where you are now standing was alive with activity during World War II, when it was known as Kaiser Shipyard #2. It was one of four shipyards carved from Richmond's coastline to serve the war effort. The Rosie the Riveter Memorial commemorates the crucial contributions American women made to the World War II home front. An estimated 18 million women worked in defense industries and support services including steel and lumber mills, foundries, factories, hospitals, and daycare centers. Here in Richmond, women were an important part of the Kaiser shipyard workforce-- the most productive in the United States. They worked alongside men and around the clock to build the troop transport and cargo ships that helped to win the war. As the war ended, women lost many of the benefits that had been inspired by war-time necessity, yet their accomplishments successfully challenged limited ideas of what women could contribute to the nation's workforce. Post-war movements for social justice built on these advances made by women, people of color, and organized labor during that time. Developed for this existing waterfront park, the Rosie the Riveter Memorial evokes both the act of constructing the ships built on this site, and the process of reconstructing memories of women who worked on the home front. The designers' intent was to trigger stories and recollections about the war years within a stroll to the water's edge. This walkway is the length of a ship's keel, it slopes toward the water and aligns with the Golden Gate Bridge. A timeline about the home front and quotes from women workers are inscribed on the path. Sculptural elements drawn from ship's blueprints suggest the unfinished forms of a hull, a stack, and a stern under construction. Two gardens-- one of rockrose and one of dune grass-- occupy the location of the ship's fore and aft hatches. Porcelain enamel panels on the hull and stack display photographs of women at work in jobs across the nation, along with memorabilia and letters gathered during the course of the memorial project.
5. ROSIEM_110729_049.JPG: 1941: U.S. COMMITS SUPPLIES TO EUROPEAN ALLIES IN WAR AGAINST HITLER NATIONWIDE CONSTRUCTION OF DEFENSE PLANTS AND HOUSING BEGINS HENRY KAISER OPENS SHIPYARD IN RICHMOND WITH CONTRACT TO SUPPLY LIBERTY-TYPE SHIPS TO BRITAIN
6. ROSIEM_110729_052.JPG: WIDESPREAD OPPOSITION TO HIRING WOMEN AND MINORITY WORKERS BLACK LEADERS THREATEN TO ORGANIZE 50,000 WORKERS IN A MARCH ON WASHINGTON TO DEMONSTRATE FOR JOBS EXECUTIVE ORDER 8802 BANS RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN DEFENSE WORK
7. ROSIEM_110729_055.JPG: PEARL HARBOR ATTACKED U.S. ENTERS WORLD WAR II 80,000 WOMEN FIND WORK IN DEFENSE PLANTS
8. ROSIEM_110729_057.JPG: 1942: FDR BUILDS HIS "GREAT ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY," ASKING ALL CITIZENS TO JOIN THE WAR EFFORT BY "OUTPRODUCING AND OVERWHELMING THE ENEMY" WORKERS RECRUITED BY PRESS, RADIO, AND FILM HENRY KAISER ADAPTS MASS-ASSEMBLY TECHNIQUES TO SHIPBUILDING
9. ROSIEM_110729_067.JPG: They are in the shipyards, lumber mills, steel mills, foundries. They are electricians, mechanics, and even boilermakers. They operate streetcars, buses, cranes, and tractors. Women engineers are working in the drafting rooms and women physicists and chemists in the great industrial laboratories. --Newsweek, 1943
10. ROSIEM_110729_070.JPG: OVER 1.2 MILLION SOUTHERN BLACK WORKERS MIGRATE NORTH AND WEST FOR INDUSTRIAL DEFENSE JOBS HEAVY INDUSTRIES ADOPT NEW SKILL CLASSIFICATIONS, CHANNELING WOMEN AND MINORITIES INTO LOWEST PAID JOBS AFL-CIO ADOPTS NO-STRIKE PLEDGE DURING WAR KAISER BEGINS A HEALTH-CARE PROGRAM FOR SHIPYARD WORKERS
11. ROSIEM_110729_073.JPG: BRACERO PROGRAM IMPORTS WORKERS FROM MEXICO ON SHORT-TERM CONTRACTS TO WORK IN AGRICULTURE EXECUTIVE ORDER 9066 TRANSFERS 120,000 PEOPLE OF JAPANESE DESCENT TO INTERNMENT CAMPS: 70,000 ARE U.S. CITIZENS HITLER IMPLEMENTS "FINAL SOLUTION"
12. ROSIEM_110729_076.JPG: 1943 FDR freezes wages and prices while calling for increase in production Industries employ 200,000 people with disabilities Prisons take on defense work; some states relax child labor laws
13. ROSIEM_110729_079.JPG: Office of War Information launches campaign to promote defense jobs to housewives "Rosie the Riveter" pop song released Women compose 60% of Kaiser work force in Portland, Oregon; 24-hour day care provided at 70 cents per day
14. ROSIEM_110729_090.JPG: United Mine Workers strike when pay rates fall behind inflation Wildcat strikes throughout country demand wages reflect increasing corporate profits Race riots over jobs and housing break out in Detroit, New York, and Los Angeles
15. ROSIEM_110729_093.JPG: 1944 Kaiser produces larger, faster victory ships Ammunition explosion at Port Chicago, California, kills 320 sailors and dockworkers -- largest industrial accident of the home front
16. ROSIEM_110729_095.JPG: Number of black workers in industry triples during war Average weekly wages for factory worker men $55; women $31 Unions slowly begin to add "equal pay for equal work" clause to job contracts
17. ROSIEM_110729_103.JPG: My mother's first shipyard job was in plate layout. Later she became the first female inspector. She tells a lot of stories, mostly about the guys who gave her a hard time for being a woman. She went on to work for unions. She fought for peace, civil rights, and a living wage. She often says, "Many remember those times with a rosy haze over their riveter eyes-- but we fought hard for social justice!"
18. ROSIEM_110729_106.JPG: I have not been on a ship since... No, definitely not. I will not ride one. I was fearful. When you were working, you would always think about how this ship was going to go out, and who was going to be on the ship when it came back-- the boys in the service. This is what you would fear. You would not want to make an awkward weld. You had to make it perfect-- there were lives involved. The ships had to come back. It wasn't the work that made me fearful. It was the fear of people not coming back. It was what the ship was going to do... bring back boys and bodies-- that's what the memory goes through.
19. ROSIEM_110729_110.JPG: Well all these ladies came from Nebraska and Kansas, and you wonder how these ships came out? Well, I spent 9 years in the Merchant Marines. At first, we didn't want to go aboard. You see, the first ships were riveted and this was a new concept--welding. Some of them cracked apart. But I did get on one that was built here. We went all over the place: Calcutta, Cuba, Melbourne, Ceylon, South Africa, Rio de Janeiro, Trinidad, New Orleans... We got into some seas with 40-foot waves that cupped the deck like washboards and wiped away some of the lifeboats. Then we got into some uncharted waters and hit a reef-- it ripped out almost the whole double bottom. I don't know how many hours were were stuck on the reef. Then a huge wave knocked us off. We broke radio silence and they sent a tug and towed us 600 miles. If it hadn't been for that double bottom, I wouldn't be here today. So anyway, those ships were built okay ladies!
20. ROSIEM_110729_113.JPG: My doctor assured me that I didn't have the body structure -- ha! We tacked the beams to the bulkhead. I always liked outdoor work better than cooking and housework.
21. ROSIEM_110729_115.JPG: When they launched a ship it didn't have an engine. They would bring it over to the outfitting dock and fit it with everything human beings would need. People were like ants-- they were everywhere, and there were things all over the place that could burn or hurt you. You had to be very careful. Sometimes you would get these flash burns in your eyes, or sparks would fall into your collar or shoes. We wore goggles, but sometimes I wrapped extra scarves around my neck and wrists. I still have scars from those burns.
22. ROSIEM_110729_117.JPG: Dear Ms. Powers: Recently I read an article in our local newspaper regarding the ROSIE the Riveter Memorial. I was quite interested in the article as my mother worked as a welder in the shipyards in Richmond during World War II. I can remember her going to work and taking my brother and me to a day care every day. She would be upset because she had to leave us. My father worked in the same shipyards and they went together. I can remember her in her welding leathers and helmet. I have several newspapers from that time period that my mother saved. If at all possible, could you include my mother's name on the memorial? I think this is a wonderful thing you are doing. These ladies need recognition for what they did to support the war effort. Her name was: DEATA PRIDEMORE My mother passed away in 1979 at age 61. Thank you.
23. ROSIEM_110729_123.JPG: NUMBER OF BLACK WORKERS IN INDUSTRY TRIPLES DURING WAR AVERAGE WEEKLY WAGES FOR FACTORY WORKER: MEN, $55 WOMEN, $31 UNIONS SLOWLY BEGIN TO ADD "EQUAL PAY FOR EQUAL WORK" CLAUSE TO JOB CONTRACTS
24. ROSIEM_110729_126.JPG: Allied invasion of Normandy uses over 700 ships and 4,000 landing craft G.I. Bill of Rights passes in Congress
25. ROSIEM_110729_129.JPG: 1945 Victory in Europe U.S. drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki victory against Japan World War II dead: 54.8 million world wide including civilians
26. ROSIEM_110729_132.JPG: DEFENSE INDUSTRY DEMOBILIZES MASSIVE LAYOFFS, ESPECIALLY OF WOMEN AND MINORITIES VETERANS GIVEN PRIORITY FOR POST-WAR JOBS LABOR FORCE AT RICHMOND KAISER SHIPYARD REDUCED FROM 90,000 TO LESS THAN 10,000 WOMEN RETURNING TO PRE-WAR JOBS EXPERIENCE SIGNIFICANT DECLINE IN WAGES
27. ROSIEM_110729_139.JPG: You must tell your children, putting modesty aside, that without us, without women, there would have been no spring in 1945.
28. ROSIEM_110729_147.JPG: Everyone was from a different state and a different place and everything. I'm sorry I can't remember anyone's last name.
29. ROSIEM_110729_150.JPG: My parents worked in the shipyard until the end of the war. Unable to find work, we returned to Arkansas to farm a few more years until going to Michigan to build cars.
30. ROSIEM_110729_153.JPG: My mother-in-law had already started her family during the war, so she took a job in the Maritime Child Care Center -- where they had shifts of children coming in. After the war the day-care ladies brought in the union. They started Local 1.
31. ROSIEM_110729_156.JPG: It was in all the newspapers -- they needed women workers in factories. We all got raises because my boss was afraid we'd quit and get defense jobs.
32. ROSIEM_110729_159.JPG: It was hard to convince your lead man that you could do the work. When he assigned jobs, I used to follow him around and say, "I could do that, I could do that." He got sick of me and said, "Okay do it!" And of course, I could. I could do it.
33. ROSIEM_110729_162.JPG: Remember those blue stamps? You could hardly find meat. Our friend had a lot of children, so we traded shoe rations for meat rations.
34. ROSIEM_110729_164.JPG: When I got my first paycheck it was $16.80 a week. I was so happy. I stuck it on my wall in the bedroom, then in the kitchen. I didn't want to cash it, I thought I was so rich.
35. ROSIEM_110729_171.JPG: Let me tell you this. I was 23. I never had a job. My husband was an electrician. I told him, "I'm going to work, too." He said, "No you're not." That same afternoon I went to the hiring hall.
36. ROSIEM_110729_174.JPG: A chaperone was hired to escort us to our workplace and herd us to the bathroom and lunch. They didn't know how the men would react. But soon there were just too many of us.
37. ROSIEM_110729_177.JPG: I learned to weld, and when they said I was okay, I went to the hiring hall and was run off. You had to belong to the union, and they said, "No women or blacks." I got pretty upset, but went back every day and up to a different window. I was one of the first six women to get hired at pre-fab.
38. ROSIEM_110729_180.JPG: I'm 83 years old now. I would appreciate if you would check and find out that I was truly there and did my part to the end, and add my name to the women who did their part also...
Wikipedia Description: Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park is located in Richmond, California, near San Francisco. The park encompasses an array of historic properties in the city which were constructed during the 1940s to support America's entry into World War II.

The park is a "partnership park", meaning that no land or buildings are actually owned by the National Park Service, which only administers the park. This relatively new National Park was established in 2000 and is still under development. Bus tours of the park began in 2007 and were run by the city as the park has formed a unique partnership and is jointly administered by the National Parks Service and the city government.

Park attractions:

During this initial developmental phase, the park has limited visitor services. A self guided auto tour with optional walking tour is available for downloading. In the summer of 2007 prelimentary bus tours were begun with a new guideless model, which instead filled half of the bus with residents who spoke of their experiences from the time to put what are otherwise everyday streets for residents into a greater historical perspective.

The Rosie the Riveter Memorial in Marina Bay Park is open year round, dawn to dusk, as are the other Richmond city parks within the National Park's boundaries.
The Rosie Memorial in October 2007.

Rosie Memorial:

The park's creation was spurred by the construction of a Rosie the Riveter memorial in a city shoreline park (three years prior to the creation of the National Park), to honor the "Rosies", women who made up much of the workforce at the shipyards. The four Richmond shipyards with their combined 27 shipways, produced 747 ships, more than any other shipyard complex in the country. Richmond was home to 56 different war industries, more than any other city of its size in the United States. The city grew nearly overnight from 24,000 people to 100,000 people, overwhelming the available housing stock, roads, schools, businesses and community services.

The effort behind the memorial was initiated by then-Councilwoman Donna Powers. It grew under Project Director Donna Graves to become the first national tribute to home front American women.

The memorial is located at Marina Bay Park, the site of former Kaiser Richmond Shipyard #2. It is the length of a Liberty ship with a form of the ship being built. The simple metal pier represents the stern at the water's edge, a simple cylinder frame is the smoke stack, and the bow is made of prefabricated parts similar to those assembled by the shipyard workers. A timeline of World War II is placed along the walkway running the length of the memorial. Interpretive panels within the structures present information on women's history, labor history, and the Home Front.

Ford Richmond Plant:

The Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant was the largest assembly plant to be built on the West Coast. One of only three tank depots in the entire country, approximately 49,000 jeeps were assembled and 91,000 other military vehicles were processed here. Ford employed thousands of workers at the site during World War II, many of them women who were entering the work force for the first time. "Rosie the Riveter" was a period song representing these women.

In mobilizing the wartime production effort to its full potential, Federal military authorities and private industry began to work closely together on a scale never seen before in American history. This laid the groundwork for what became known as the "military-industrial complex" during the Cold War years.

Noted architect Albert Kahn is credited with the design of the Ford plant in Richmond. After World War II, Ford moved its Northern California factory to Milpitas, where it became known as the San Jose Assembly Plant.

Richmond Shipyards:

The four Richmond Shipyards were part of the Kaiser Shipyards. The construction of 747 ships during the war here is a feat not equaled anywhere else in the world, before or since. The park's Rosie memorial is located on the former grounds of Shipyard #2. Shipyard #3 is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Both Liberty and Victory ships were constructed here. These ships were completed in two-thirds the amount of time and at a quarter of the cost of the average of all other shipyards. The SS Robert E. Peary was assembled in less than five days as a part of a special competition among shipyards; but by 1944 it was only taking the astonishingly brief time of a little over two weeks to assemble a Liberty ship by standard methods.

SS Red Oak Victory:

The SS Red Oak Victory is a Victory ship preserved as a museum ship. It was one of 414 Victories built during World War II (constructed at the Richmond Shipyards), but one of only a few of these ships to be transferred from the Merchant Marine to the U.S. Navy. The vessel issued cargo and munitions to various ships in the fleet throughout 1945. During a hazardous tour of duty in the Pacific, SS Red Oak Victory handled many tons of ammunition, supplying the fleet without a single casualty.

Atchison Village Housing Project:

The huge explosion of workers coming to live in cities like Richmond, caused intense strain on city infrastructure. One of these strains was the severe lack of housing. Workers arriving in these rapidly expanding urban centers were forced to find what they could. They slept in all night movie houses, shared "hot beds" (i.e. when one person got in bed, it was still hot from the last person getting out), or just camped out.

Atchison Village Housing Project is an example of the local-Federal collaboration that provided much needed housing and domestic support for defense workers and their families. The modest, wood-frame buildings clearly reflect the constraints (time, money and materials) placed on publicly-funded housing construction during the period. Just prior to and during the war, the Lanham Act of 1940 provided $150 million to the Works Progress Administration, which built approximately 625,000 units of housing in conjunction with local authorities nationwide. These were highly sought after and company managers were the most likely to be able to procure housing in Atchison Village.

Due to racial discrimination, minorities fared very poorly in gaining housing. They often lived in shacks, in the crates that brought the raw materials to the city, in trailers, or in automobiles. They and other lower income earning workers were lucky when they were able to move to barrack-like dormitories constructed for the mass of World War II workers.

The Richmond Housing Authority was selected to be the first authority in the country to manage a defense project. Atchison Village represents one of 20 public housing projects built in Richmond before and during World War II. Constructed in 1941 as Richmond's first public defense housing project, it is the only project funded by the Lanham Act that still exists in Richmond, and one of the few in the nation not destroyed after the war.

Today, Atchison Village is a collection of privately owned houses managed by a cooperative of the homeowners. While most of the dormitories and other low income housing of World War II are gone, Atchison Village, built as permanent housing, remains.

Kaiser Richmond Field Hospital:

More American workers died in Home Front accidents then US soldiers killed on World War II battlefields. This was true up to the Battle of Normandy in June 1944. Henry J. Kaiser, owner of the Richmond Shipyards, realized that only a healthy work force could meet the deadlines and construction needs of wartime America. He institutionalized a revolutionary idea, pre-paid medical care for workers, which soon expanded beyond workers. For many workers, this was the first time they had seen a doctor.

The Kaiser Richmond Field Hospital for the Richmond Shipyards was financed by the U.S. Maritime Commission, and opened on August 10, 1942.

By August 1944, 92.2 percent of all Richmond shipyard employees had joined the plan, the first voluntary group plan in the country to feature group medical practice, prepayment and substantial medical facilities on such a large scale.By 1990, Kaiser Permanente was still the country's largest nonprofit HMO.

In part due to wartime materials rationing, the Field Hospital is a single-story wood frame structure designed in a simple modernist mode. The Field Hospital operated as a Kaiser Permanente hospital until closing in 1995.

Maritime and Ruth Powers Child Development Centers:

The Maritime and Ruth Powers Child Development Centers were two of approximately 35 nursery school units of varying sizes established in the Richmond area during World War II in order to provide child care for women working in the Kaiser shipyards. The Maritime center was funded and constructed by the Maritime Commission as part of a larger development that also included housing, an elementary school and a fire station. The temporary housing was demolished after the war but a larger permanent housing complex remains as do the other buildings.

The Maritime Child Development Center, a wood frame, modernist style building operated by the Richmond School District, incorporated progressive educational programming, and was staffed with nutritionists, psychiatrists and certified teachers. It had a capacity of 180 children per day. At its peak, with 24,500 women on the Kaiser payroll, Richmond's citywide child care program maintained a total daily attendance of 1,400 children. Unlike the Federally-funded WPA day care facilities implemented during the New Deal, the World War II centers were not intended for use by the destitute, but for working mothers.

The Kaiser-sponsored Child Care Centers, particularly those at Kaiser's industrial sites in Vanport, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, gained a reputation for innovative and high quality child care. The center is still in operation today.

Lucretia Edwards Shoreline Park:

Lucretia Edwards Shoreline Park, named in honor of local community activist Lucretia W. Edwards, honors the wartime contributions made by the Bay Area Shipyards during World War II.

Bay Area shipyards:

In addition to the local Richmond Shipyards, shipworker's bootprints with plaques set in the sidewalks and long low seating walls point visitors to the other Bay Area shipyards.

The following inscriptions are engraved into the concrete walls:

Bethlehem San Francisco - The only privately owned shipyard in the nation to operate a submarine repair base, this 16th Street yard overhauled 31 subs in two years.
Moore Dry Dock handled the difficult jobs of production, repair and conversion that slowed overall output in other yards.
Hunter Point Naval Dry Dock - Hunter Point repaired 600 fighting and support ships.
Mare Island Naval Shipyard - Mare Island built more than 400 vessels. Mare Island Naval Shipyard set a shipbuilding record for a destroyer that was never broken completing the USS Ward in just 171/2 days.
Marinship - The 75,000 Americans who poured into Marinship during the war years build 93 ships.
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