‘Rosie the Riveters’ recall wartime work
The first time Kay Morrison tried to get wartime work, in February 1942, she went down to the boilermakers’ union headquarters in San Francisco and saw a sign: “No women or blacks wanted here.” She was crushed but undeterred. About a year later, Morrison, who was 19 at the time, joined the union and was hired as a journeyman welder in a Richmond shipyard.
“By then, most of the men were gone,” she said. “They needed us.”
Morrison worked the graveyard shift and commuted by ferry from San Francisco, because gas was rationed. She made $1.38 a hour — a good wage at the time — and her husband, Ray, worked right alongside her as a shipwright.
She came to love her work as a welder.
“It was kind of like embroidery, almost,” Morrison said. “It was incred-
ibly precise. The women always made the most beautiful welds. The men’s welds might have been just as strong, but they weren’t as pretty.”
On Wednesday, about 75 years after her first day on the job, Morrison sat in the Visitor Education Center at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, not far from where she used to weld at Kaiser Shipyard No. 2. She was joined by six other women who took up the torch — figuratively and literally — during World War II, along with one of their husbands, a veteran. For the second year in a row, Congress designated March 21 as National Rosie the Riveter Day.
Morrison was one of some 6.5 million women who entered the workforce during World War II, when many jobs were vacated as men went to war overseas. These women were made famous in pop culture by the enduring icon “Rosie the Riveter,” a woman pictured on workforce recruitment posters.
Her dark hair pulled back by a red-and-white bandanna, Rosie flexes a bicep and raises a clenched fist under the speech bubble, “We can do it!”
“We did it,” said Morrison, now 94, flexing her arm and wearing a red-and-white polka dot shirt.
Though many of the women sported versions of Rosie’s bandanna and denim uniform, their stories are unique. Contrary to the stereotype, not all the women worked in physical labor.
Marian Sousa, 92, had an art teacher who recommended a six-week course in engineering drafting at UC Berkeley. She spent the years between 1943 and 1945 working on blueprints for ships.
“The room I was in was almost all women,” Sousa said.
She was 17 when she started, which required her to lie about her age to get the job.
Josephine Lico, 103, worked at one of the first IBM centers. She punched buttons on a computer the size of a grand piano, which helped calculate expenses in the factories.
At the time, many of the women didn’t consider themselves to be on the vanguard of gender equality.
“Not all all,” Morrison said. “We wanted to do our part to help back up the troops and win the war.”
Of course, after the war many of the women had to leave their jobs — some to stay at home with children, and others to find new roles in an evolving American workforce.
“There were four women in my family who worked in the war effort, and we never talked about it afterward,” Sousa said. “It was expected that it was for the duration.”
Over time, the legacy of these women has become an important part of history. Five of the “Rosies” are now regulars at the Visitor Education Center on Fridays, when they give presentations about the lives of working women from 10 a.m. until noon, and again after lunch at 1:15 p.m.
“Like many national parks, this place has historic buildings and spaces, but it also has these women who will tell you stories,” said Richmond Mayor Tom Butt, one of several speakers at Wednesday’s event.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, Morrison turned with a friendly but serious look to a female journalist and photographer.
“Now,” she said, “are you getting paid equally as the men who do the same work?”