♪♪
♪ While other girls attend their favorite cocktail bar ♪
♪ Sipping dry martinis, munching caviar ♪
♪ There's a girl who's really putting them to shame ♪
♪ Rosie is her name ♪
♪ All the day long whether rain or shine ♪
♪ She's a part of the assembly line ♪
♪ She's making history, working for victory ♪
♪ Rosie the Riveter ♪
Roosevelt: December 7, 1941,
a date which will live in infamy.
The United States of America
was suddenly and deliberately attacked
by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
Narrator: World War II dramatically changed the lives
and attitudes of American women.
At a time when millions of men were leaving the home front
for the battlefront, American industry
was forced into high gear
producing war materials, equipment, and supplies.
The nation was strapped for manpower.
A staggering number of workers were needed
for what were traditionally male jobs.
The government along with corporations
and the trade unions began actively recruiting women.
♪ Pardon me, Jane ♪
♪ America's gone to war ♪
♪ You can't waste your life ♪
♪ Sitting under the apple tree ♪
I think the majority of the people that did work for Boeing,
the women, heard of it through the radio or by the newspapers.
Announcer: More and more men are being called into the Armed Forces.
Their jobs must be filled and filled now,
and who can fill them? You. You women.
You're the ones who must fill them,
who can give our boys what they need.
I just felt that the fact that my brother -- oldest brother
was in the service that I could help out in that respect.
And then when my twin went in the service,
why, that was more incentive.
Well, my husband was a Quartermaster on a submarine,
and he was sent overseas,
and we lived by the -- Indian Island,
the Bangor submarine depot, and we went to work.
Everybody just went to work at the --
for civil service for the war effort.
All of us felt like we had to do something to help the effort
and bring our guys home safely.
I fudged my age so I could go to work.
They needed people so bad,
they kind of looked the other way.
I'd never really worked before,
and it was my sister that got me the first job
because they were so short of help, and she asked me to --
why don't I come up and work and I said, "Oh, I don't know."
My husband was against a woman working.
But my mother said, "Well, you're -- the children
are here with me." And at that time,
we only lived just a few blocks from the shop.
I decided to volunteer for defense,
and I was one of the first women to do that at Boeing.
And went down to the Washington State Employment Office,
and the man interviewed me, and I told him I had
gone to night school and taken artistic metal work.
And he said, "You'll make a better mechanic than I would."
Announcer: These lassies days are learning their industrial
ABCs in special government-conducted schools,
and when graduated, they'll take their place
in our expanding defense plants.
And they seem to catch on very fast, too.
Virginia: The government paid companies to train you.
So we all went to -- I can't remember the number of weeks,
but I'm going to say three weeks,
I went to training to learn to do these things.
The War Production Board came out,
and then they decided that we had to go to school
and learn how to instruct.
It was only a course of about three days.
I was the only girl.
The rest were all men that in the class,
and I had to -- either had to go or I couldn't have my job
as an instructor, and it was very helpful.
The fellow started out by putting a part together,
and I watched it. And then he turned around
and had me instruct him,
which was kind of nerve-wracking.
I was milking cows so my husband could go
to the welding classes at the school
at Mount Vernon. And he came out and he said,
"Mary, I think you ought to go to school
and learn how to weld." and I said, "I don't want to
I can think of three things that would stop me.
First place, I'm scared spitless of the electricity."
He said, Well, come up and see what it's like.
There's some other women doing it."
So I went up to see what they did.
I said, "I didn't come to do this."
I said, "I came just to watch,"
So he said, "Well, let's see what you could do."
So I made a bead, just a straight line
just under his, just what he had done.
And he said, "Oh, you've done that before."
I said, "No. I haven't, and I didn't want to do it."
But the first thing I know, I'm in class.
You just kind of went out
and watched to sailors make a grommet,
and then four of them got on -- the sailors got on the line
and made two grommets and interwove them together.
And that was it. That was a half a day's training.
I really didn't have any instructions.
I -- they just told me to put the bar on the rivet and bucket.
Virginia: There were riveters and there were buckers.
Buckers were the girls that stood inside the plane
to hit the backside of the rivet
because you had to have both sides flat, and we were warned,
you know, if that skin on that plane didn't fit up tight,
the wind would get under there, pull it off, and our guys
would go down in the sea or something.
So, man, were we cautious.
You had these various bucking bars,
and they had different angles.
The riveter on the outside tapped
wherever they wanted to place a rivet.
And according to the number of taps,
you knew what part of the bucking bar
you were supposed to press up against this sound.
Margaret: This is a code we had -- hit it once
if it's okay, twice if you need it hit more,
and three times, take it out. [ Chuckles ]
♪♪
Narrator: As the Armed Forces continued to increase their demands for men,
even more women were recruited into war jobs.
By 1943, women made up more than one-third
of the American labor force.
Announcer: In the sprawling aircraft factories
on the west coast, teams of women
flush the rivets that hold together
the aluminum skin on the wing of a B-24.
This is like punching holes in a tin of scouring powder.
Instead of cutting out dresses,
this woman stamps out the patterns of airplane parts.
They are taking to welding
as though the welding rod were a needle
and the metal, a length of cloth to be sewn.
Well, it's working on a grommet line,
which is -- grommets are big circles of wire
probably as big around as your thumb,
and they're 60-feet long, and there are two women
on one grommet, and you weave it in and out and you make
a big net, and it -- they roll it up on a big roller thing
and it's 100 --
when they get done, it's 100-feet deep
and 600-feet across. And then they take that out
and put it in all of the inland waters,
so submarines couldn't get in on our coastal waters.
That's what that is. Mm-hmm.
It was the B-17s that I started in on,
and I worked the tail section
where the tail wheel on the 17s was,
and that -- all the time that I was with Boeing,
that's the area that I worked in.
And so I became -- it was my baby. [ Laughs ]
Announcer: The B-17 -- the fortress that flies.
Julia: Some parts we made was for the B-17s.
The boss had the toolmaker put the dye in the machine
to stamp out parts, and then he'd sit there
and he'd run parts for a while, and then he asked me
if I felt that I could take over, and I'd take over.
And then when I felt that I could instruct a girl,
I would instruct a girl to run the machine.
Sometimes if you did have two or three men,
and I had one in my department, they kind of resented a woman
being an instructor and teaching.
♪♪
Narrator: No matter how well-trained they were, women war workers
had to overcome many obstacles, not the least of which
was that they were basically interlopers in a world
that had previously been exclusively male.
Eleanor: My foreman, I thought he was very nice,
but he was married of course, and he was friendly to me,
and he said that I could have my B rating
because I was a C mechanic to start, at $0.625 an hour.
And he said I could get my B rating if I would
go out with him in his soft-cushion Chrysler.
And the following afternoon,
and just take the afternoon off and go out with him.
And I told him, I said, "I want my B rating when I'm worth it."
So the next day, there was a girl in the shop
that bleached her hair blond and she was missing from the shop
and so was the foreman.
And the day they got back, she got her B rating.
It took me about two weeks, I got mine.
I had no problems with the fellows that I worked with.
They were all very nice and accommodating.
And one thing I can say, too, about that group
was there was no swearing.
They had to curb their bad language
in front of us young people. So they had a game
and if someone heard the other one say a bad word
or something, cuss, they'd put a bolt in their pocket.
Well, some of those poor old guys
could hardly keep their pants up.
They were so loaded with bolts by the end of the day,
I never noticed anybody looking down on any woman
who could do her job. That was the only criteria,
and I've found that throughout my life.
If you could do your job, you're okay.
Narrator: Still, many employers refuse to hire women.
According to the men in charge, women did not
have the physical strength or mechanical ability
to do high-paying, skilled factory jobs.
Well, we came over to the Navy yard
and put in our applications.
And the man came and took our papers
and took them back and studied them a little while.
And he said, "You've made a mistake in your papers."
And I said, "What's that?"
He said, "Well, you call yourselves welders.
And I said, "Well, we are."
And he said, "Look, lady,
there's been no woman welding long enough
to be a welder in this yard. They're attackers
and helpers, but they're not welders."
I said, "Well, I am. I said, "Open your baby blues
and take a good look because here stands two of us,
not one but two of us."
So they went back, and then he came back,
and he just in the snottiest voice,
he said, "Exactly what do you think you could do
with the Navy test?"
I said, "Well for your information,
I'll pass the damn thing."
They were all sneaking up behind you,
looking through a glass to see whether or not you could weld.
And they'd say, "Oh, my gosh, Mary, you really can weld."
and I said, "Well, that's what I've been trying
to tell you guys for a long time."
Women generally didn't have their own tools for the job.
So they had two cribs and your were given a ring
with a lot of little tags on it.
So if you needed a drill, you went to the tool crib,
give him a ticket with your number,
and they'd give you the tool to do the job.
Eleanor: They required that we buy a tool box
and $25 worth of tools. I was pinched on the $25
because we were only making $0.625 an hour,
and I had to rent a room
and pay my room and board and clothe myself.
And as I say, I borrowed $5 to get
a few items of clothing that I could use in the plant.
But I really dressed cute because I had little jackets,
and I wore t-shirts
that were striped and multi-colored stripes
and pants to match the jacket, and some people said
they wished they could dress that way, you know.
Julia: Any girl running a machine had to wear hair nets,
and they all wore slacks.
They'd just started really just before that wearing slacks.
I saw in a magazine recently
where the women would wear kerchiefs
to tie their hair up. We were not allowed to do that.
We had to wear what they called a snood,
which was kind of a wide-holed netting
that went around your head,
and sometimes they'd have ribbons on them and things,
but we all went to work in snoods. [ Laughs ]
Since I already had jeans and bib overalls,
that's what I wore.
When my husband came home from overseas, he came in,
excuse me, on an aircraft carrier.
And Commander Turner -- and you hated to get this signal,
"Commander wants to speak to so and so,"
because it pulled you off the line.
Pulled me off the line, and I was scared
something had happened to Dad, you know.
And he said, "You have the day off.
The barge is coming to get you to get your hair fixed.
Your husband's coming in on the next shift."
So, and they didn't give you days off then,
you worked, so you know, so...
But he -- they did realize that you wanted to look nifty
when your old man came home.
Announcer: Once the male domain,
now it's got that feminine touch you've heard about.
Yes, sir, these gals believe in preparedness, alright.
I came out and went to the restaurant
with my hard hat and everything on,
and the dishwasher says to the Chef,
"Chef, there's a man here to see you."
And he didn't know me, and he knew me well
because I'd worked with him the night before.
And he said, "There's a man here to see you."
So the guy came around -- the chef came around the corner
and he said, "Yes, can I help you?"
And I said, "Well, I don't need any help."
And he said, "Mary? Mary? Mary? For God's sake, Mary."
And I said, "Well, that's what I look like
when I get through welding."
These women are working around the clock, around the calendar.
They do a man's job, and they can draw a man's pay.
And they're doing it safely.
They're safer here than in their own homes.
I lost part of my finger on one the machines stamping a part.
The girl came, it was 4:20, and she asked me
if she could have a relief to go to the bathroom.
So I says, "I'll run your machine for you."
When she come back, she says, "I'll take over."
And I says, "Oh, we've only got five minutes more,
you stack the parts, and I'll run them through the machine."
And the brake slipped and repeated itself
and took part of my one finger off.
I had to take a rivet out.
And I was looking on the other side
to see what had to be done, and my drill was still running,
but it had slowed down. And it caught my bandana
and pulled about a inch and a half hair long
and about half an inch wide out.
One of my best friends lost an eye
because you have these big wrenches,
and you're winding these through, and this wrench
flew out, and the wire came and got her in their eye.
So, you know, it was a dangerous job.
You didn't have masks, you didn't have anything
to guard you, you know.
We got a taste of what men go through all of their lives.
Hazardous work.
Narrator: Off the job, women war workers did double duty
as housewives and mothers.
Although a few employees built childcare centers,
most working mothers relied on relatives or neighbors
to take care of their children. Women relied on each other
for moral support, as well.
Well, there was one woman in the neighborhood,
I think watched seven kids from infants
to 5 and 6 years old, and she was a marvel.
Without her, the grommet line wouldn't have gotten done.
Yeah, they all helped each other out and all together
Many of them lost their husbands, their children.
Peggy: I had a dear friend who lost her husband.
He was in the Army,
and they called her off the line and it was a sad thing.
In fact that day, Commander Turner turned
the whole line down because we were all sobbing.
We couldn't work.
Some of the girls have their fiancés overseas,
and sometimes there'd be one that I felt
that was wasting a lot of time,
and I would tell her I said, "You know, if it was me,
and I had someone over there, I'd worked so hard,
if I dropped at the machine to get them home quicker.
Narrator: Regardless of what they had to deal with,
most women were determined to succeed.
They were enormously proud of their skills and abilities,
and they had every reason to be.
During the four years of the war,
production levels were phenomenal.
War materials were turned out at a rate
that would have been impossible without women's help.
Many women also initiated changes that made their jobs
more efficient and work environments safer.
Announcer: Once upon a time, there were beauty parades.
All the girls needed was youth and culture.
But this is war, today's beauty contests are in the shipyards
on the assembly lines. Here at Marinship, California,
women welders have a lunchtime contest.
Men workers vote on each girls' job record and attendance.
For now, Miss America is at work.
The winner is expert welder, Mrs. Gladys Griffin,
mother of two, and Mr. Griffin's in the service.
You were supposed to vote one person in your plant
that you thought was doing a good cause for the war.
When the votes were all counted,
I had all but one vote out of the 125.
And that's when they came to take a picture
of who was elected in each plant.
And that's why I have that picture today.
I just -- I kept it.
Announcer: The call for better, faster production methods goes out,
and in the shops, the men and women
who are giving their time and their muscle,
they give their ideas, too.
Eleanor: I was working on an electrical saw
and I saw that by designing a new part,
I could avoid the operator flipping her hands
into the saw blade while it's moving and being injured
or maybe tipping some tubing into the machinery
while it was still revolving.
So they took my blueprints and they manufactured it,
and they applied it to the saw, and that was that.
And I was real happy to do that.
Oh, it made me feel very good
to get my rating. It was the top rating.
I think one reason why I probably got it was the fact
that that I was using the 25-pound squeeze.
They sent a man down to help me out.
And when I saw the work he was doing, his weld
was just full of pinholes, and he said, "That's alright,
Mary, because the pin holes on this side
won't coincide with the pin holes on the other side,
so we won't have any leak anyway."
And I said, "Pack up your gear and get off this job.
And you tell the lead man
if he wants to come and talk to me, he can,
but I'm not going to have my name
printed on this job and have it look like that
because you won't find a pinhole in my work."
I worked on C-47s for Douglas,
and when I'd finish a job, a plane, they were on hoists
that would move down the line, you know, for finishing touches.
I always would write notes and stick them, oh, behind
the fire extinguishers or under the seats or any place
because it probably would have been my job if I'd got caught.
And I'd just give the guys messages, you know,
"Give us one for us," and "Come home safe,"
or "We all love you," or...
♪♪
Narrator: As 1945 began, the peak of industrial mobilization
in America was over. Slowly the jobs
in defense industries declined.
Before the year ended, millions of men would return
from the battlefront to the home front.
Announcer: A day of days for America and her allies.
Crowds before the White House
await the announcement from the President
that the Japs have surrendered unconditionally.
I deem this reply a full acceptance
of the Potsdam declaration, which specifies
the unconditional surrender of Japan.
Announcer: Washington is jubilant, and in Chicago,
more than a million sing and dance in the streets.
I'll never forget the day the war ended,
and they were saying the people downtown were just going wild.
Announcer: Seattle let lose all the pent-up emotions
of three years and eight months of war.
Joy is unconfined.
We went down there and, my lands,
the street, you couldn't even get through.
Everybody was grabbing one another
and hugging them and crying.
In fact, somebody grabbed me, some sailor,
and gave me a big kiss on my cheek,
and he was crying, so excited that the war was over.
And that was a scene I'll never forget.
I was in the hospital when the war ended,
and they were dancing in the streets and celebrating,
and I couldn't dance in the streets and celebrate
because I'd had my second child, Melody.
I blamed her for that.
She's never gotten over the fact that I blamed her for that.
♪♪
Narrator: More than 2 million American women war workers
were laid off. Although some women plan to work
only for the duration of the war, the majority of women
hoped to keep their jobs.
About two-thirds of them continued working,
but most were shifted to so-called "female" work
where there was less pay and less chance for promotion.
Others left willingly to raise their families.
At the end of the war, they offered
to find a place for me, but I told them,
I says, "We have done what we came here to do."
And so I says, "I just want to go on with something else."
After the war, I really didn't want to work full-time.
Dad came home and got a GI loan, bought a house.
He went to work, and he went to work at the Indian Island
where I had worked and became fire chief there.
I didn't have to -- really have to work, and so I wasn't --
but when we -- when the boss sold everything out,
why, the bookkeeper and several of us, we had jobs
to go to the new places that bought the machinery.
I worked for 15 years, and then I decided
I was going to do something different,
and I went to Alaska, out on the --
out on the peninsula, and I cooked in a hotel.
My husband was in the paratroops then,
and although I didn't know him, but he found my notes.
And then a few years later, we met at church
and at a bingo game,
and we got to talking, and here it turned out,
he was the one that got my notes and read them.
And we started dating, and now we're married 54 years.
I felt much more capable of doing things knowing
that I had been able to do
what I needed to do at Boeing's during the war.
I look back and I think, I know I was kind of timid and shy
and little by little, I got
so that I could face things a lot easier than I did.
I wasn't scared of anybody, not a one that wouldn't matter.
I thought that was a challenge,
and I like anything where you can use
reasoning ability and use your intelligence.
And so, but I think I should have been a songwriter
a long time before I became one.
[ Laughs ]
Did I ever feel that I didn't want to keep going?
Many, many times,
but you know, you wake up in the morning,
and the sun's out or the rain's coming down or the bird sings,
and you kind of say to yourself,
"God, I want to be part of this," so you keep going.
That's a pretty simplistic way to look at life,
but that's kind of where it is for me.
♪♪