Real Rosie the Riveters Speak Out, Honored with Memorial

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/10/21/real-rosie-the-riveters-speak-out-honored-with-memorial/

Sixty-five years ago, some people considered the 6 million “Rosie the Riveters” a temporary blip in the Great War’s home-front workplace mobilization. Today, they’re a collective cultural icon, now memorialized with their own national historical park.




During World War II, these women worked in defense plants as blacksmiths, shipfitters and clerks, while male workers left their jobs to fight in Asia and Europe. Says Betty Reid Soskin:

It was a heroic generation. And the heroes weren’t only on the battlefield.

Soskin was one of those heroes. These days, she’s a park ranger at the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, Calif.

The 2.5-acre park covers the site where the colossal old Kaiser Shipyard #2 once stood. It’s the right place for this memorial. During the war, the four Kaiser shipyards in Richmond produced more than 740 ships, more than any other shipyard in the country—and thousands of women helped make that happen. The park’s centerpiece is a memorial that is the same length and width as an old Liberty ship. It includes an imposing steel sculpture designed to look like a ship hull under construction. When it was dedicated in 2000, some 200 Rosies took part in a parade along a special walkway. Soskin was there.

Soskin recently sat down with Rosalie Pinto, another woman who worked on the homefront, and both discussed their experiences during the war years with park resources program manager Lucy Lawliss, and noted historian Emily Yellin.

The result is “Rosie: A Legend on the Home Front,” a article published in the fall issue of the National Park Service magazine Common Ground.

All of the 6 million Rosies had much in common: They were doing what very few women had ever done before by joining a workforce heavily dominated by men. They had that chance only because of the great wartime shortage of male workers. They may not have been universally welcomed in the workplace—”in a 1943 Gallup poll, only 30 percent of husbands gave unqualified support to their wives working in war jobs,” Yellin notes— but for many of the women, it was a deeply liberating and life-changing experience.

FULL story at link.

[BOSSHOG]

1. There is a nice tribute

to "Rosies" at the WWII Museum in New Orleans. And if you email the museum requesting information the "from" line on the response is "Rosy the Riveter."

[XemaSab]

2. I went there a few months ago... it's really cool.

If you go, find the ship "Red Oak Victory." It's an old WWII ship that was built there, and it's open for tours. :bounce:

[Jade Fox]

3. There is a documentary film called "Rosie the Riveter"....

that was made about 20 years ago which details the lives of six very different women who went into the factories during WWII. It's well worth seeing if you can find it.

[jody]

4. Rose Will Monroe (83) was the model for Rosie the Riveter. She resides in Valparaiso Florida.

Woman remembers her days as a Rosie the Riveter

[Warpy]

5. It was the first time women had ever earned a living wage

and experienced the ability to be independent of husbands and fathers.

My mother was an engineer during WWII, one of the few. The day after the war ended, every woman got a pink slip, including the engineers, so the job would be waiting for a returning vet. Never mind none of them was qualified to do the work she was doing and wouldn't be until the GI Bill had done its job, she had to go. Never mind that she had held the job before the war, she had to go.

Suddenly, the only jobs open to women, no matter their education, were as nurses, teachers, waitresses, domestics, and secretaries. All were low paid.

She never got over it.

[donsu]

6. there is a novel of the times called 'The Doll Maker'

nt

[sarge43]

7. It's about time.

If anyone is interested, I recommend the book American Women and World War II. It goes into a lot of detail of not only the women in industry, but service women and those on the home front - heroic story.

Albert Spears supposedly said that he begged Hitler to include German women in the military and war work as the Allies did. Hitler refused because he thought German women wouldn't tolerate the conditions. Bigotry strikes again. Spears contended that the Allied inclusion of women in the war effort was one of the principal reasons for Allied victory.

:patriot: ladies and thank you.