The women are being feted with speeches and a Senate resolution

OAKLAND, UNITED STATES — They welded pipes. They drew blueprints. And, of course, they fastened munitions and machine parts together with rivets.

Now, seven decades after World War II ended, a surviving handful of the women who marched into factories and shipyards, redefining workplace gender roles to help keep America’s military assembly lines running, will be honored on Tuesday as part of a National Rosie the Riveter Day celebration.

“Well it’s about time,” said Marian Sousa, 91, of El Sobrante, California, who worked as a “draftsman” creating blueprints for warships at the Kaiser Shipyard during the 1940s. “It shows that women are not only capable now, but they were capable then. Yes, the recognition will be nice.”

Sousa and a half a dozen other Rosies, all now in their 80s and 90s, will be feted for the first time with speeches and a US Senate resolution at the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park, which opened in 2000 just north of San Francisco in Richmond, California.

Sousa’s sister, Phyllis Gould, 95, and fellow Rosie worker

We wouldn’t have won the war without the women. I think we deserve it.” Marian Wynn, 91, a former welder living in Fairfield, California

Anna “Mae” Krier, 91, of Levittown, Pennsylvania, were the two women who pushed for a national day of recognition for the last few years.

“This is big,” Gould said in an interview on Monday. “Really big.”

Gould was among the first six women to work as navycertified journeyman welders at the Kaiser-Richmond shipyards in the 1940s. It irks her that her slice of history is often overlooked.

“The work that the women did during the war is totally forgotten,” Gould said, “and it shouldn’t be.”

Krier flew to Washington for a separate but related event to be attended by Senator Bob Casey, of Pennsylvania, a chief sponsor of the Rosie resolution, and other members of Congress.

Facing a labor shortage as many able-bodied males joined the armed forces It!