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Civics & Coffee: A History Podcast
Past, Present & Future: Rosie the Riveter Reporting for Duty
00:26:26
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to Civics and Coffee, a history podcast. The show all about United States history delivered to you in the time it takes to enjoy your morning cup of coffee. I'm your host, Alicia, a historian trained in United States history with a passion for telling both the known and unknown parts of America's past. So grab your coffee and get ready for some bite sized history.
- [00:26]
B
I was in high school and I was at home on a Sunday. On Sunday afternoon, the New York Philharmonic used to play a program and it was very nice to do homework too. And I had a little radio on my desk and was doing my homework and the program was interrupted. As everyone knows, we were told that Pearl harbor had been attacked and we all just were aghast. The next day at school, I was in high school, we all listened to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declare war on Japan.
- [01:08]
C
I think it's easy for people to kind of put this idea of Rosie on a pedestal. And she's not just a poster or a slogan or even a singular idea. She represents a moment when ordinary people stepped forward and changed the trajectory of history for everyone. But primarily for women and people of color. It's an amazing thing. And when I stand in the park, it reminds me that civic engagement isn't something reserved for a few people. It takes everybody to make participatory government happen. And that means sometimes in very quiet, unseen ways. But it's enduringly powerful.
- [02:03]
A
Hey everyone. Welcome back. Nestled along the tranquil Richmond Bay in California, in the middle of an otherwise unassuming business park, sits a single story brick building. Visitors strolling along the waterway may be completely unaware that they are walking on historic ground or that the city of Richmond played a pivotal role during World War II. Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser threw his energy and his shipyards into securing American victory. And almost overnight, the city's population surged from 24,000 to 100,000. The city developed and supported over 50 different defense industries, one of the busiest and most productive areas on the West Coast. But it was Kaiser's four shipyards that were the crown jewel throughout the war. With the help of thousands of women and black Americans, Kaiser's shipyard built 747 ships, one of the leaders among shipyards across the nation. Signs of this history are largely vacant from the business park. But should you find yourself inside the Rosie the riveter World War II Home Front National Historic park, you will be transported to the past. Inside this small space are the stories of the millions of women who, in the midst of the chaos and uncertainty of world World War II joined their fellow citizens in doing their part in aiding the war effort. These women, who later became popularly known as Rosies, jumped in to fill a host of jobs left vacant as men were shipped off overseas. Women paused their lives and took positions in a variety of industries, from welding inside factories and shipyards to repairing aircrafts and performing other tasks that had previously been reserved for men. They toiled for hours, piecing together the bits of steel that would erect the ships and planes American men would rely on to fight fascists and Nazis in Europe. And their reasoning often came down to love of country and a desire to help out. Like the boys in uniform, the Rosies across the country wanted to do their part and feel like they were contributing to an American victory. Their grit and determination inspired the nation, as J. Howard Miller captured in his 1942 Westinghouse we can Do it poster, aimed at enticing more women to enter the labor market at a moment when the country needed them most. This iconic image helped promote the idea that women could still maintain their femininity while engaging in defense work and would become synonymous with the name Rosie the Riveter. And what of the name, anyway? How did we get Rosie the Riveter? The name Rosie the Riveter can be traced to a 1943 song of the same name written by Red Evans and John Jacob Loeb, who were likely inspired by one of the thousands of women employed in the shipyards across the country. Whoever served as the original inspiration remains under some debate, but. But millions of Rosies gave it their all, working six and sometimes seven days a week to ensure materials and supplies got to men safely. You can hear these women's stories when you visit the Rosie the riveter World War II Homefront National Historic park, including that of Ms. Jeanine Gibson, who just celebrated her 100th birthday.
- [05:51]
B
I was born in Grand Forks, North Dakota, February 22, 1926. The war didn't make that much difference. After I graduated from high school, I went to the University of Minnesota, was there for a couple quarters and began feeling very guilty about not doing something. So the war effort was something that I felt that I should do something about. And the first thing that I did was to enroll in the cadet nurse corps because they needed nurses and they advertising a friend. And I did. And the first part of the training, although we were living in the hospital, was at the University of Minnesota. And so I was just continuing on at the university. But my courses were different. They were, you know, anatomy, physiology and physiological chemistry. And about the time that I moved into the hospital, which was, you know, at the beginning of the order, I began to have second thoughts about doing that. I'm not a nurse. And I realized it, and I asked my dad if I could borrow the money to pay back the government so I could get out. Well, my father was a personnel director of the large corporation in the Midwest. And he said to me, no, that you can't be a quitter. You signed up for this. This is what you should do. So I borrowed the money from someone else, got out, and I moved out of the hospital. After the university quarter was over, another friend and I were both of a like mind that we would go to someplace else and find another kind of war work. So she and I got on the Greyhound and went to Seattle, found a room in a private home. Our landlady, we talked about what we were going to do, and she said, well, Seattle has two big industries. One war industries, actually. One was Boeing and the other was the shipyard. And she indicated that she herself would tell me that the shipyard paid better. So we went down to the employment office for the shipyard. It was called the Todd Pacific shipyard. And they made destroyers and they were glad to hire us, but first we had to join the union. And if you remember, I told you, my father was a personnel director. And so he was the one that dealt with the unions for the large company that he worked for. It was an education for me. I joined the National Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Welders and Helpers so I could get hired as a welder. Welding isn't hard at all, where you go to do the welds and how you crawl in and so on. But the welding, it's very much like sewing. And with sewing, you tack things before you make the seam. And welding, you do little tacks that are about equivalent to the tacks in sewing. And when you weld, it's a small hand motion, very gentle and very controlled. The welding was where you have this welding rod in your clamp sort of thing that is electrified back to the machine, and it holds the welding rod, the clamp, and you hold the clamp and you strike the welding rod against the steel that you're going to weld, because everything is steel around. And when you do, you get an arc, and an arc is a very bright light. What happens is the welding rod melts and it makes a little pool. And with your very gentle hand movement, you nurse that pool across where you want the seam. And women are very good at this. As a matter of fact, some people say that they can Tell whether a weld was done by a man or a woman by looking at it. After we learned to weld, we learned a lot of safety things. Being careful of our eyes and using the helmet. The clothing that we wore protected us after we had learned to weld and the safety precautions. Another one, besides the eyes, is your lungs. The welding rod has a coating on it, and when that coating burns, it makes a toxic smoke. And the toxic smoke is something we want to avoid. So they had what the welders called sucker hoses. Actually, they were vacuum. Vacuum hoses that you kept right next to your work to take that bad air away, the smoke. When we were in welding school, one of the things they told us was that it would be cold where we were. Now, the bay area, San Francisco is cold. Next to the waterfront, Seattle was colder. And we were working spin shift. So they said, put a pair of pajamas on as an extra layer under your jeans and so on. And you know what? They were right. After the two weeks, we were sent to the shipyard, which was on harbor island outside of Seattle in the bay. And we would take the bus from our rented room and go to the shipyard, go to the Yesler way, and then get a dedicated ferry that took us out to the shipyard. The first thing you do is find the lead man. Every person who is a welder has to go to the lead man first to find out what that person is supposed to do that day. There are three shifts. Because we were working swing shift, it was cold. We had to have the long underwear. But it also meant that we go to the lead man. He'd give us his job for the day. If it needed instruction, he would do that. And then he'd leave us and go to the next person. And when you came the next day, the day shift and the graveyard shift had been on between us. And so it might. What we've been working on might not be there anymore and be out the ship. We worked in the steel shed, which was a huge steel building, steel floors, cold. And we would have to. Whether you were a new person or an old person, you still had to go in and check with the lead men on what it was you were working on, because it would change from day to day, and sometimes it would be back to the same thing. But in the steel shed was the beginnings of mining parts of the destroyer. And they would bring in the person that ran the rig that lifted things in the great big, huge building. The rig ran on rails, and he would, you know, bring pieces of metal in and bring Them to the ship fitters, who would clamp them together and ask for a welder. And that was what you did when you came in, when you got the welder, the welder would tack the things he done, clean it off. We had a little hammer that was pointed, and when one welds, the crust forms on top from the coating on the welding rod, and that's called slag. And with this pointed hammer, you cleaned it all off. And then you could do your next tasks of welding and so on. And we would do whatever was assigned for that day. Sometimes you finish something and he'd move. The lead man would move you somewhere else. We worked six days a week, and sometimes, or quite frequently, we'd be asked to work on a Sunday. If we were asked to work on a Sunday, we did not work in the steel shed. We worked out on the ways. One of the problems of working in the steel shed Was that what you did, because everybody else worked on it, you know, one thing after another. And you never finished anything. You always, you know, did this, did this, did this, and then you had left. And then the next day, you do this and this and this, and then leave. On Sundays, you'd work on the ways, and that would be out on the ships. And one Sunday, I remember distinctly, and I'll tell you why I was sent out to work on this destroyer. And they didn't have names or numbers for us. It didn't matter what it was. It was a destroyer. And my job that evening was to weld in the haas pipe. When a haas pipe is the tube that the anchor chain goes through from the deck of the destroyer down to the anchor, and it has to be very securely attached to the deck. It took me a whole shift to get that down as much as it was supposed to be, because one pass around would not be strong enough. It would, you know, it had to be many, many. And when I finished at the end of the day, I had the best feeling Because I had welded the house pipe of one destroyer. It was a portside hos pipe, and I had done it all myself. So some destroyer out there had something that I had that was identifiable, and it made a difference. I talked with other people about this, and they understood that not finishing anything kind of leaves you up in the air. That was the job. If you're a woman, you have to stand up for yourself and advocate for yourself. You can't be pushed around. Just, you know, nobody else is going to do it for you. So do it to the young woman, you know, we can do it.
- [17:17]
A
The park isn't just about history either. The Trust is dedicated to tying the past with the future, connecting young people with women in the trades today what they refer to as modern day Rosies. Like Renee Ross, Ross, herself a Local 549 boilermaker, has been associated with the Trust for several years. Introduced to the Trust through her union, Ross immediately felt a connection with the mission of the organization and the women who came before her. Finding her own way of honoring the Rosies of the past, Ross has been spearheading the restoration of the SS Red Oak Victory, the last surviving ship out of the 747 built at the Kaiser Shipyard during the war. Known as the Victory Ship Revival, the project brings together an all female crew of welders to restore the ship back to her prior glory. When asked why Ross proposed this restoration project, her answer was simple. To honor the Rosies who came before her and to help preserve such an important piece of local history. I believe it's important to preserve the Red Oak, ross wrote. It reminds us of a time when everyone came together for the greater good of this country and reminds us how important that time was. Ross also has a personal connection. After joining the Boilermakers Union, she discovered that her great grandmother, Helen Davis, was one of the thousands of women who worked countless hours at the Kaiser shipyards during the war. Davis worked alongside her husband, who was also a boilermaker, doing their part to ensure American victory. When I think of the strength, perseverance and bravery that those women express, ross said in an interview, it inspires me. They kicked the door open. It's our job to take it off the hinges and make sure those doors are never closed again. One of the things that makes the Rosie the riveter World War II homefront National Historic park different is who it decides to highlight. Just ask Pam, one of the many dedicated staff committed to creating an enriching experience.
- [19:42]
C
This national park isn't like any other national park. There are very few national parks that are about women. So this is a very woman forward park. And through that, history is woven throughout the city, in the shipyards, the daycare facilities, schools, neighborhoods and community spaces. So it's not just about where the visitor center is. It's the whole picture. And I think people should come prepared to reflect. It's a hopeful story. It's a story we need right now, but it's also honest. And it addresses inequities, incarceration, unequal and unsafe work practices, migration, labor struggle, workplace safety, all these things that speak to resilience. And it feels really relevant to the conversations we're having today. Rosie the riveter World War II homefront National Historical park tells the story of a city that transformed almost overnight. Richmond became one of the most productive shipbuilding centers in the world. Women stepped into industrial jobs. African American families migrated from the the south in search of opportunity. New systems of childcare and health care were created to support working families. And it's now an officially recognized American World War II Heritage City. It's the only one in California. Rosie the Riveter national park is a park of place. And people when they come onto the park property where the visitor center is, they're actually driving into an industrial area and there's infrastructure that existed prior to and that was built during the war that supported three huge shipyards that were out there. And it's one of the places in the United States where a lot of that infrastructure in those buildings still exists. The mission of the Trust is to support the national park and to preserve the legacy of the Rosies in the broader home front experience and to use that history to inspire youth and civic engagement and exposure to the trades. The trust supports fourth grade field trips for Title 1 schools, youth education programs, public lectures, community events, preservation products and storytelling initiatives. National Rosie the Riveter Day is celebrated annually on March 21, and March 21 is Rosie Mae Cryer's birthday. She is the East Coast Rosie who worked with our West Coast Rosie who has passed away. Her name is is Phyllis Gould. They worked together to get Rosie the Riveter Day nationally recognized by Congress. And then they went on to work on the Congressional Gold Medal which happened back in April of 2024. So it's Rosie May Cryer's birthday, but it's the day to honor millions of women who stepped into industrial work. And if you come to Riveter Day, you get the chance to meet Rosies and talk to them and hear their stories. It's an amazing day. Every Friday you can hear from a real life Rosie at the park, at the visitor center, in the theater downstairs, there's a program that runs twice on Friday it's at 10:30 and 11:30, and you get to meet Rosie Jean Gibson and sometimes Rosie Marion Suzette. And they talk all about what it was like to be a teenager and leave everything they knew and travel across the country to come and do work that felt really important to them. You can connect to everything Rosie the Riveter Home Front National park at www.rosietheriveter.org that connects you to everything about the Trust and you can get everything including how to get to the park. All the park. We also have a really great ArcGIS virtual tour that you can go on and pre plan your visit.
- [24:37]
A
And you also have an amazing social media presence.
- [24:41]
C
Oh thank you. Yes, please come visit us on our social media channels. We're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, we have a really active YouTube channel where you can check out our Rosie Presents Documentaries speaker series and lots of other Rosie related content. And we're actually working on a TikTok channel so oh my gosh. I'm really excited for the fun videos that we can share with people from events and stuff.
- [25:10]
A
Dear listeners, should you ever find yourselves in the California Bay area, consider taking a drive out to the city of Richmond and visiting the Rosie the riveter World War II Home Front National Historic Park. It is a wonderful public site dedicated to sharing the stories of incredible women from history and one of the few national historic parks where women are the focus. And if you can't make it out to California, join the conversation online by following the Trust and the park on social media and seeing how else you can support this fantastic organization, starting with their YouTube channel where an extended version of this episode is available now. Check out the show notes for a link and start exploring all the amazing history today. And finally, Happy Rosie the Riveter Day. Thanks peeps. I'll see you next time. Thanks for sitting down with me as I explored this chapter of American history. If you liked what you heard, be sure to subscribe and share with your friends. I look forward to our next cup of coffee together.