Glen lived on the Camp Pendleton base near San Diego and was not supposed to leave, but occasionally, he’d sneak away to see his wife, Mary.
His orders finally arrived in September 1942. Glen would ship out for duty in the South Pacific, headed for one of the bloodiest battles in modern Marine Corps history. Vicious fighting was taking place on the South Pacific islands. The Americans had to prevent the Japanese from taking key territories like Guadalcanal and Australia.
The night before he left, Mary recalled sitting in her bed crying, knowing he was going, and there was no guarantee she would ever see him again. As she sobbed with a heavy ache, the door opened, and Glen appeared. Their time together was short, and then he was gone.
Mary wrote a handwritten letter to Glen daily and occasionally received a letter back. In one letter to Glen, Mary wrote, “I feel you have been injured, but I don’t know how bad.”
Glen was gone, and Mary got a job at Consolidated Aircraft as a riveter in San Diego on production lines building fighter jets to support the troops. Mary worked long hours as a riveter and had to kneel for her shifts of eight hours while holding rivets into the airplane wings on the factory line.
After a long day of back breaking work, Mary had finished cleaning her tools with five minutes remaining in her shift. The “boss man” walked above the workers on a ramp, looking down to oversee the operation. One day, the “boss man” looked down and noticed Mary cleaning and putting her tools away with five minutes of her shift remaining. He pointed his finger down at her and yelled, “Get to Work.” Mary felt humiliated at being yelled at in front of all the other workers.
Glen had been gone for three years and looked forward to Mary’s letters. He said he received thirty letters in one day, so he lined them up by date and read them in order. Even after a physically exhausting and stressful work shift, the women of the 1940s still made time to support the troops, this time emotionally. The greatest comfort to the soldiers of both wars, the Pacific and Europe, was the mail they received from home reporting about the daily lives of those waiting for their return. It is striking to now see and read some of these letters written on thin transparent paper in beautiful handwriting. These letters gave the fighting men hope and determination to prevail.
During the war, women of America worked in positions usually held by men. Planes and equipment would have been in very short supply without them. At the time, women made a massive difference in the war effort. Women were forty percent of the workforce in 1943, learning factory jobs to support the troops and fill the void at home. Women employed in the aircraft industry before the war were less than one percent and grew to sixty-five percent during the war, with 310,000 women employed. They also used many women in the munitions industry.
Another Mary, Mary Lou White, was also a riveter who worked on the B25 Bombers in 1944, one named Sand Bar Mitchell. The B25 bombers played a crucial role in the Allied victory. Mary Lou soldered wires on countless planes at the Fairfax plant in Kansas City, Kansas.
Recently, Mary Lou was unexpectedly invited to the plant by the War Birds of Glory Museum to help restore the Sand Bar Mitchell bomber to airworthy condition. This was the same plane she had worked on to build 78 years ago in 1944. When she was toured the museum the surprise was unveiled.
“This is unbelievable. I’m going to cry,” Mary declared with emotion when she saw the instrument panel.
She recalled how she would solder the wires onto the panel on one plane and immediately go to the next plane and repeat the work all day. When she was brought in to see the instrument panel of wires she had once worked on, her voice broke with emotion taking her back to what seemed like a lifetime ago.
Mary said, “It made my heart so happy. I can’t describe the feelings I had.”
Mary Lou excitedly rolled up her sleeves and, as if not even an hour had passed, once again soldered the wires on the panel of the Sand Bar Mitchell. The restoration of the Sand Bar Mitchell was done as a tribute to all the Rosies who did back-breaking work in the name of patriotism.
During World War II, the US government borrowed the famous Norman Rockwell Rosie the Riveter painting to make posters and stamps as an incentive campaign to bring more women into these industries. Making up for the absence of men who traditionally held those jobs, this was a turning point for women in the workforce. Women were empowered and felt a new self-confidence by achieving financial independence. They still needed to be paid wages equal to men for the same jobs.
Women saved most of the money they earned during this time, and their savings contributed to families having the ability to buy a first house in the post-war 1950s. This led to the boom of prosperity and the beginning of the 1950s suburbs in America.
The women of America proved they had the toughness and resolve to do whatever it took to support the country and their young fighting men abroad.
Robin Morris
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