Document – Recollections of a “Rosie the Riveter”

Document

They were recruiting for any kind of work you wanted. Newspapers, just splashed everywhere: “Help Wanted,” “Help Wanted,” “Jobs,” “Jobs,” “Jobs.” Propaganda on every radio station: “If you’re an American citizen, come to gate so-and-so”—at Lockheed or at the shipyards in San Pedro. And they did it on the movie screens when they’d pass the collection cans. You were bombarded.

They were begging for workers. They didn’t care whether you were black, white, young, old. They didn’t really care if you could work. It got even worse in ’43. I worked two jobs for a long time. I had so much work offered to me and I was not even qualified—I just had the capability of learning very fast. Within three weeks of coming to California my mind was dazzled with all the offers I had. Before the war, in Oklahoma City and in California, I’d ask people if I could get a job and they’d say: “Well, you’re not old enough.” But here I didn’t even have to look. I was having people approach me six to ten times a day—RCA Victor wanted me to come work for them; Technicolor said they’d train me.

Actually what attracted me—it was not the money and it was not the job because I didn’t even know how much money I was going to make. But the ads—they had to be bombardments: “Do Your Part,” “Uncle Sam Needs You,” “V for Victory.” I got caught up in that patriotic “win the war,” “help the boys.” The partiotism that was so strong in everyone then.

Anyhow, Vega Aircraft was the first one I learned about. Someone came in two or three times to the station to get me to come to the application office. One day I said, “I’ll be off tomorrow and I’ll go and fill out papers.” I called this girl I had met and we went together. We both went for the same job, but she was immediately hired for a more educated job because she had finished high school. I went on the assembly line.…

It was very dull, very boring. The first day I thought, “Oh, this is ridiculous. I have to set here for three weeks on this bench?” What we did was we learned to buck and then we learned to rivet. I set there for three or four hours that first day and I picked up the rivet gun: “You show me once and I’ll do it for you.” The bucking, you have a bar. I said, “What’s to learn here? Look at my hands. I’ve been working as a grease monkey. I could do this. I don’t have to set here and train.” I learned very fast.

I went into the shell the next day. First I went inside and I bucked, and then I went outside and I riveted. I was working with real seasoned workable men and it was so easy. We did strip by strip, the whole hull. We used strips of like cheesecloth and paste that had to go on the inside and across the seam. I had to do that. Then, as the riveter outside riveted. I was inside bucking. It would be like a sewing machine, you just sort of have to go along with them.

I stayed there maybe six weeks, and I worked on all parts of it, up in the wings. One by one, day by day, new faces. I would say within six months there were maybe twenty or thirty men left in Department 16 where maybe there had been fifteen hundred. One by one they disappeared. I’d have a group leader one day and two or three days later he was gone. Leadman, two or three days later he was gone. There were men in the tool crib and one by one they disappeared.

As they recruited more and more women, men with deferments were the ones that actually remained to work. Even a lot of the young women working would disappear, going into the service. I made friends with four or five girls that became wacs and waves and nurses. It was very more difficult to keep friends, because they came and they went so fast.…

At the same time I worked in the aircraft, I also worked for a record-cutting company; we’d cut records and make tape recordings for the servicemen to send back home. I also worked for a fellow in Glendale who had a storage garage. As the young men were going to war, they would store their cars with him. He hired me to come over and take each car out every other day or so and put a few miles on it to keep up the engine, and I’d check the water, check the tires, check the oil, and sometimes lubricate them. He wasn’t paying me very much, but I got gas coupons and I’d take a car occasionally to work.

I had so much work sometimes, I wouldn’t even go back for my money. Sometimes they’d just mail me a check and I’d think, “Gee, now where was this?” At one period of time I had six or eight checks laying in my dresser drawer that I hadn’t even cashed. I simply didn’t know how to handle money. The first paycheck I got in aircraft was more money than I’d ever seen in my life. I didn’t even know what to do with it. I didn’t have a bank account. You couldn’t buy anything much.

But we’d hang out in drive-ins or the bowling alleys. And we went to places like the Hangover, Tropics, Knickerbocker Hotel, Blackouts, Garden of Allah, Har ’O Mar, the Haig on Wilshire. I was going into bars and drinking. One of my favorites was the Jade on Hollywood Boulevard. Another was the Merry-Go-Round on Vine Street. When Nat King Cole sat at the piano and sang, he wasn’t even known and the piano bar went round. This was long before I ever reached twenty-one.

We found places like the beach, the pier, on our day off. I think that was on Sunday, ’cause some of us were on a six-day schedule. But we hung out, we read poetry, we discussed books that were current and popular. One book was passed from one to another. It was word of honor, really; you’d pass your book on to the next person and it would eventually get back to you. And movies, mainly movies. We’d sit in the lobbies.

Young people got together in harmless, easy companion ways. Dancing was great. You got rid of your energy by dancing. You’d get a little radio and put it out on the back porch or the lawn where you were living and had everybody come over. That was it. There were no cars racing around. We had a lot of blackouts so you couldn’t have outdoor picnics or beach parties.

Oh, I’ll tell you where we met, workers and their relatives, brothers, sisters, boyfriends, soldiers, sailors, families. At the Biltmore Hotel. They had a tea dance in the afternoon and when my brother would come in with his friends, we’d go there. We’d bring girlfriends to dance with our brother’s boyfriends or our boyfriends would bring in friends and we’d get the girls together. It really didn’t make any difference, but years later I found out a lot of these friends were homosexuals. At that time I didn’t even know what it meant. They were “in the closet,” so to speak. I don’t think many of the gays realized they were gay.

During the war there was a lot of homosexuality. Straight people became very friendly with homosexual people, more so the women. I’m not a homosexual, but I had a great many friends who were, like the bus driver, Margaret. She was very tall. And there was one girl from aircraft. She and Margaret were always riding the bus, even when she wasn’t working, and I’d say, “Don’t you ever get off this bus?” I sensed there was something different about them when I would show a picture of a boyfriend or I would talk about some fellow I knew who was going into service. You’d exchange pictures in wallets, and you’d see a picture of a wac or a wave.

We met one time at the beach, and there they were together. I said to them, “Hey, you guys act like you’re married or something.” They handed me a book, all wrapped up in a nice package with a ribbon on it, and they said, “You know you have a lot of friends. We want you to read this book and then if you have any questions, you talk to us and if you don’t ever want to talk to us anymore, it’s all right too.” The name of the book was The Well of Loneliness. It introduced me to the fact that there were people who were different from me. It didn’t make a damn bit of difference to me. I still liked them; they were still friends.

We accepted people then. People were more respectful of each other, too. They respected each other’s privacy, and when you had conversations you weren’t noisy [sic]. You talked about the weather, a book, a movie, what are we going to do next week, how many were shot down, who lost a friend or a brother. It was innocent. I think the end of innocence came after the Second World War. By the time the Korean War ended, we were hardened and tough.…

Then I began to see boys coming back. One fellow I’d gone with in 1942. I got off the bus and I’m walking home and I heard: “tap, tap, tap.” I turned around and looked and I thought: “Gee, a soldier in uniform with a cane.” I turned back again and I said, “My God, it’s Dick.” Still in uniform. He came home blind. That was my very first shock, seeing him come back blind. He could see just a little, but later became totally blind—at twenty-three years! There were two or three other fellows I had known at the bowling alley who I went with, my age. When I began to see them coming back like this, it really did something to me.…

I quit because I’d look around me on the outside and I saw people not working in aircraft living an easy life. Women I had known, some that had worked and quit right away, went in and worked three or four weeks and said, “This is not for me. Forget it. To hell with it.” This is touchy. I don’t how to bring this up. The morale was not that strong at the end. On our day off, we saw our friends in the neighborhood that were not working in aircraft: “I know this fellow that owns this store and I can get you anything you want”; “I can get it for you wholesale.” You heard stories of people buying up the Japanese stores and of hoards of supplies in warehouses. Soap was rationed, butter, Kleenex, toilet paper, toothpaste, cigarettes, clothing, shoes. And you saw these people making a lot of money and not doing anything for the war effort, even bragging: “I kept my son out of it.” You thought here are these special, privileged types of people and here I am working and sweating and eating our hearts out for the casualty lists that are coming in.

By 1944 a lot of people were questioning the war. “Why the hell are we in it?” We were attacked by the Japanese and were fighting to defend our honor. But still, this other side had the Cadillacs and the “I can get it for you wholesale.” They suddenly owned all the mom-and-pop stores and suddenly owned all the shoe factories. The rumblings began with that—and the discontent.

It raced through the plant, through the bowling alleys, through all the places where the young people got together. We began to break away from the older generation. We said, “Well, they brought the war on.” I think when we actually began to see the boys come home in late 1943, 1944—those that had been injured had started coming back—then the rumbles grew into roars, and the young people thought maybe they were being led into this. Maybe if we would stop working so hard, they would end the war. There was also rumors that they were holding Patton back and that they were prolonging the war. That was what got us!!

I got an aversion to making anything that would hurt anybody. But I probably wouldn’t have stayed in aircraft, anyway, because my skin disease got worse. It started out like a psoriasis patch and it scaled and I scratched, and I got it on my arms, my neck, my face, everyplace where I was exposed. But I had a change of heart again when I heard that my brother had been injured. I went to work for Hartman making small parts, bench work, which I hated. I stayed there about three months and I said, “This is no good. I can’t do this. I’ve been too active and I’ve been a racehorse too long.” I used to run up and down that plant and it must have been a mile long from one end to another.

But I felt I ought to do something to contribute. Then I reasoned with myself that I was buying war bonds, that’s enough, and I’m a member of the uso. I’m doing my share! I would never have stayed as long as I did if I hadn’t been motivated by the fact that in my mind war was hell. I could visualize it, but I wanted to black out some of it. I never went to see a war picture and I never wanted to read a newspaper. I never wanted to know what was going on. Maybe the older people did, but the young people didn’t want to hear about what was happening in the war; they just wanted to know we were winning.

The workers in aircraft hated it. I don’t care whether they worked on the assembly or the training bench, the cockpit or in the wings or the tail; whether they riveted, wired, or were the managers or group leaders; whether they were in the final assembly—I have yet to meet one who really enjoyed it. The final assembly was the best job of all because you got out of the heat and you got out of the noise. The heat and the noise, I don’ know how I ever lived through it. And I’ve kept in touch with two or three of the women that I worked with, and most of them have tremendous hearing problems. Most of them say it came from that noise.

I would never do it again! Never, ever!!! I don’t think any other woman would either. They might say they would, but no, I don’t think if most women would really be truthful with you, they enjoyed working or would have stayed in it if they hadn’t really been motivated by patriotism or actually having a member of the family in the war. Some used it as an excuse to break out into the world. And it was the first decent opportunity Negro women had to get away from domestic work.

Review

1. 1) How and why did Juanita Loveless become a war worker? What jobs did she hold? How did war work change her life?

2. 2) How did young people spend their limited leisure time during the Second World War?

3. 3) How did Loveless respond to returning soldiers and the growing signs of war weariness?