Video
Home Front Heroes
Transcript
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:16:11
Music
00:00:16:13 - 00:00:21:16
GOULD
Here is a beautiful little city.
00:00:21:19 - 00:00:25:15
GOULD
I fell in love with it.
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GRIMES
Everything was wide open and rough and wild. (NINOMYIYA)The conditions for going are really, really good in Richmond. Lots of sunlight, and it's not too hot. (GRAVES)It was kind of a combination of industry and semi-rural landscapes that most people remember. They would have vegetable gardens and a cow tethered out behind their home and walk up to McDonald Avenue to do their shopping.
00:01:00:17 - 00:01:44:22
DR.MOORE
Richmond was a, working man's town. You had the Pullman coach refurbishing factories there.(GRAVES)Standard Oil, the railroad and later the Ford Assembly Building. Kind of a working class community. (DR.MOORE) And you had a diversity of ethnicities and races living in Richmond. Italian Americans and African Americans, the Japanese American population, Chinese population, Native American Indian population, as well as Mexican American.
00:01:44:25 - 00:02:12:20
DR. MOORE
Kaiser plant located there before Pearl Harbor. Richmond had a really good deepwater harbor, perfect for the shipping industry. It had lots of open space, but it also had a working force.
00:02:12:23 - 00:02:38:27
RADIO ANNOUNCER
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian Islands has caused severe damage. WILLSON) It was absolute horror. We were in total shock and terror because we were being told immediately that we might be bombed, and we had to immediately go into blackout mode.
00:02:38:29 - 00:03:03:20
MOORE
When we got into the war, there was a big demand. We had to have ships. We had to have everything I heard on my car radio. Women, do something for your country. Go to the Richmond Shipyard and be a welder. I had not the faintest idea what it was. I just knew that it was something that they needed done real bad.
00:03:03:20 - 00:03:15:28
MOORE
And I decided that that's what I was going to do.
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FANTIN
With that suitcase. And got it on a train. And came to California and stayed with my sister Caroline.
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HEAD
We all thought we could make money working in the shipyards. Father was the type of man that looked for a better job, and he was never him. (ARCHIE) And Henry J. Kaiser you know, he brought a lot of people back from the South to work in the shipyard.(DR.MOORE) For African American sevens, the most frequently given graduation gift was not a watch or a typewriter, but a train or bus ticket out to the west.
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RADIO ANNOUNCER
In two years, Little Richmond 3000 had become a bustling metropolis of 130,000. This fabulous growth in necessitated this expansion.
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GRAVES
Richmond's population exploded physically, but also in terms of cultural and social and even political differences that made living together and working together a challenge.
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(Dog Barking)
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(Children playing)
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Unknown
(MEDRANO) I remember always sleeping in crowded conditions… GRIMES)…there wasn't enough housing for everybody.(PRICE) Some were living in a truck slum, living in a car. Everybody was taking in roomers.(PRICE) I had a roommate. I work swing shift. She worked graveyard. We slept in the same bed. (GOULD)… that way I could sleep in the daytime, and they could sleep in the bed at night.
00:05:37:00 - 00:06:01:10
GOULD
In downtown Richmond was just seething with people. (MEDRANO)Lots of people on the streets. I mean, like 4th of July or like Cinco de Mayo. (GRIMES) Grocery stores were open 24. Everything was open 24 hours a day. During that time. (GOULD) Everything was moving. The energy was everywhere.
00:06:01:13 - 00:06:32:21
DR. MOORE
You had clubs like many Lou's Restaurant and Blues Club in North Richmond. And then there was, of course, this enormously popular club called Tappers Inn. Was a nightclub of blues club, and they had sort of in the backroom, the slot machines and card games and things like that. (SOUSA) It was a busy happening. Good town. People had jobs and there was optimism and there was an, an an energy.
00:06:32:23 - 00:06:50:07
Unknown
(GRAVES) In addition to the shipyards, there were 55 other defense related industries in Richmond. So there were workers moving in all directions. (SOUSA) Everybody was working towards the same goal. We wanted to bring the boys home.
00:06:50:09 - 00:07:19:17
GOULD
I went to the hiring hall and they said, you have to join a boilermakers union. So I went there and this man, stern, big and said, we don't take any women or blacks. The next day I went back to the hiring hall and they gave me the same story, and I started crying. And there was a man sitting at a desk and he says, go back up there.
00:07:19:19 - 00:07:27:13
SOUSA
And they they hired me.
00:07:27:16 - 00:07:54:10
STEWART
But then when they brought in the women, oh, my land! The men laughed at them terribly at first. You know, look at her. Look at her walk. Look at her. She didn't even know how to hold a hammer. (GRAVES) There were tensions in the workplace that related to both race and gender. There were people who said, I'm not going to work with a black person, and there were men who said, I'm not going to work alongside a woman.
00:07:54:12 - 00:08:29:24
GRAVES
So we've talk about unity during World War two, but there were lots and lots of bridges that had to be built. (DR.MOORE) In the case of Kaiser, the labor unions, particularly the Boilermakers Union, began reluctantly to accept first women and then, African-Americans, men and women. The momentum to challenge Jim Crow that really launched the modern civil rights movement grew out of the double V campaign that African-Americans pushed for victory over the enemies abroad, but also over Jim Crow at home.
00:08:29:27 - 00:09:00:20
DR.MOORE
The Pittsburgh Courier really was behind launching this campaign for African Americans to challenge and defeat segregation, discrimination based on race, in housing in the workplace, in schools. (HEAD) I went to Richmond High. I was taught welding and I worked at Kaiser, but I never worked side by side with no, you know, on the same ship with a man world.
00:09:00:20 - 00:09:30:27
BROWN
I'll tell you what. The women were the best welders. If you give the woman the job, she goes and does that job until it’s done right. It was like creating an embroidery in metal. I could point out that was a man's world and that was a woman's world because they looked different. The men's is in this as uniform.
00:09:30:29 - 00:09:38:29
Unknown
We worked out in that. We did twice where the men started.
00:09:39:01 - 00:10:09:12
Unknown
This, new world shipbuilding record is set at one of Henry J. Kaiser's California shipyard 24 days ago. Just the keel plate. Henry Kaiser was a genius. He started one of the first health plans. And he started the, you know, a place for people to live and things that people didn't have before. He developed childcare centers to accommodate the children needing care while their parents were at work.
00:10:09:15 - 00:10:15:04
Unknown
And.
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Unknown
here's the man who builds them in record time. Henry J. Kaiser. But a model to show how it's done. Built. Scale. The 14ft marble is made of 81 pieces. Everything was prefab under Kaiser, where they had the big sheets of steel. And they melt those together and then move them by crane onto the ship. We call them the Holy Cranes.
00:10:36:22 - 00:11:00:06
Unknown
They were so enormous. And they would lift these massive pieces of metal in boxes, and they were just one of the biggest things I'd ever seen. That's how come ships could be built so fast. Parts would be welded together and ready to be put onto a ship, and in no time.
00:11:00:08 - 00:11:30:21
Unknown
Our motto was ten down the ways and 31 days down the ways that they were slide that ship down into the ocean. Francisco Bay ran on shiny ships and quietly slipped into San Francisco Bay faster and faster. By the fall of 1943, more than one ship a day left Richmond lost colossal shipbuilding spectacle the world has ever witnessed, and they were always giving speeches and telling us how the other yards, how fast they were getting a ship built.
00:11:30:21 - 00:11:54:12
Unknown
So there was always competition. And I remember when we worked on the Robert period, which was built, by the way, I think is the record has it either three and a half or four and a half days from beginning to finish. And I think that's an amazing thing.
00:11:54:14 - 00:12:02:11
Unknown
I can.
00:12:02:13 - 00:12:40:11
Unknown
Make a launch in that yard. One and two were particularly festive occasions because they got famous people from all over the country. Ship would go sliding down the waves right after the champagne rush back to the bottom, and very soon I thought it was a patriotic time. You'd see the kids collecting newspapers, collecting tin foil, collecting anything. Women, they gave up all their girdles of their underwear.
00:12:40:11 - 00:12:56:06
Unknown
They had a lipstick. It really was the most wonderful time of coming together of the American people that I have ever lived through.
00:12:56:08 - 00:13:38:28
Unknown
And I. It wasn't as if the shipyards closed and some balloon burst and Richmond was depopulated. It really continued to be a thriving community. Today, I think you have waves of newcomers who have that kind of vibrancy that those newcomers during the war time had. Richmond, it was called the city that won the Purple Heart because of the amount of, change and crowding in the war effort and churning out those ships in record numbers.
00:13:39:00 - 00:14:08:06
Unknown
And something happened in the small town of Richmond that people should be in very proud. I was very proud of myself that I worked in the shipyards, proud of myself, because I thought we were doing something for the war effort from that point on, I always thought, I can do anything I want to do. If I set my mind to it, I can do anything.
00:14:08:09 - 00:14:41:13
Unknown
And that's how I lived the rest of my life. This was the place to be. What sticks with me the most was how wonderful everybody was to each other, very patriotic and pulling together. And it was just a good time. That's what makes this story so interesting, that these were ordinary people who did extraordinary things. Yes.
Description
Introductory film for the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park.
Duration
15 minutes, 47 seconds
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