Rosie the Riveter Memorial Photo courtesy of National Trust for Historic Preservation

This new National Park commemorates a significant chapter in America's history: the World War II Home Front. Fully engaged in winning World War II, American women, minorities and men worked toward a common goal in a manner that has been unequaled since. Women affectionately known as "Rosies" helped change industry and had sweeping and lasting impacts. Richmond, California, played a significant and nationally recognized part in the World War II Home Front. 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. As a "partnership park" with no land or buildings actually owned by the National Park Service, the success of Rosie the Riveter is dependent on collaboration with other government agencies and private property owners. Historic properties within park boundaries include Richmond Shipyard Number Three, Ford Assembly Building, SS Red Oak Victory, Atchison Village Defense Housing Project, Maritime Child Development Center and Kaiser Richmond Field Hospital.

Historic view of Atchison Village's Garrard Boulevard streetscape, c. 1941, just after the project was completed Photo from National Register collection

Atchison Village Housing Project is an excellent illustration 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 publically-funded housing construction during the period. Just prior to and during the war, the Lanham Act of 1940 provided $150 million to the Federal Works Administration, which built approximately 625,000 units of housing in conjunction with local authorities nationwide. 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.

Maritime Child Development Center Photo by and courtesy of Lisa Pfueller Davidson

The Maritime Child Development Center was one 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. This center was funded and constructed by the U.S. 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. That the Maritime and Pullman (since renamed the Ruth C. Powers) Child Development Centers in Richmond, both constructed during World War II, continue to function as child care facilities nearly six decades later, is a testament not only to their effective design, but to the continuing demand for assistance for mothers who work.

Kaiser Richmond Field Hospital (Kaiser Permanente) Photo by and courtesy of Lisa Pfueller Davidson

The Kaiser Richmond Field Hospital for the Kaiser Shipyards was also financed by the U.S. Maritime Commission, and opened on August 10, 1942. Sponsored by Henry J. Kaiser's Permanente Foundation, it was run by Medical Director Sidney R. Garfield, M.D. The Field Hospital served as the mid-level component of a three-tier medical care system that also included six well-equipped First Aid Stations at the individual shipyards, and the main Permanente Hospital in Oakland, where the most critical cases were treated. Together, these facilities served the employees of the Kaiser shipyards who had signed up for the Permanente Health Plan (commonly referred to as the "Kaiser Plan"), one of the country's first voluntary pre-paid medical plans, and a direct precursor to the Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) defined by the federal HMO Act of 1973. 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. After the war ended, the Health Plan was expanded to include workers' families. 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. Originally intended for use primarily as an emergency facility, the Field Hospital opened with only 10 beds. Later additions increased its capacity to 160 beds by 1944. The Field Hospital operated as a Kaiser Permanente hospital until closing in 1995.

Rosie the Riveter--World War II Home Front National Historical Park, administered by the National Park Service, is still in development. It has a small Visitor Center in the City of Richmond's City Hall South where a Driving Tour Booklet can be obtained. The Rosie the Riveter Memorial in Marina Bay Park is open year round, dawn to dusk, as are the other city parks within the National Park's boundaries, as is the SS Red Oak Victory. Other sites of the park are in private ownership and are not open to the public at this time. However, their exteriors can be viewed.