The American Nation A History of the United States, Combined Volume (14th Edition)

Women’s Contributions to the War Effort 721

soon doing “men’s work” in the shipyards. The Seattle
taxicab union objected to women drivers on the
ground that “drivers are forced to do things and go
places that would be embarrassing for a woman to do.”
These male attitudes lost force in the face of the
escalating demand for labor. That employers usually
did not have to pay women as much as men made
them attractive, as did the fact that they were not sub-
ject to the draft. A breakthrough occurred when the
big Detroit automobile manufacturers agreed to
employ women on their wartime production lines.
Soon women were working not only as riveters and
cab drivers but also as welders, as machine tool opera-
tors, and in dozens of other occupations formerly the
exclusive domain of men.
Women took wartime jobs for many reasons other
than the obvious economic ones. Patriotism, of course,
was important, but so were the excitement of entering
an entirely new world, the desire for independence,
even loneliness. “It’s thrilling work, and exciting, and
something women have never done before,” one
woman reported. She was talking about driving a taxi.
Black women workers had a particularly difficult
time: employers often hesitating to hire them because
they were black, and black men looking down on them

because they were women. But the need for willing

hands was infinite. Sybil Lewis of Sapula, Oklahoma,

went to Los Angeles and found a job as a waitress in a

black restaurant. Then she responded to a notice of a

training program at Lockheed Aircraft, took the

course, and became a riveter making airplane gas tanks.

When an unfriendly foreman gave her a less attractive

assignment, she moved on to Douglas Aircraft. By

1943 she was working as a welder in a shipyard.

Few wartime jobs were easy, and for women there

were special burdens, not the least of which was the

prejudice of many of the men they worked with. For

married women there was housework to do after a long

day. One War Manpower Commission bureaucrat fig-

ured out that Detroit defense plants were losing

100,000 woman-hours a month because of employees

taking a day off to do the family laundry. Although the

government made some effort to provide day-care facil-

ities, there were never nearly enough; this was one rea-

son why relatively few women with small children

entered the labor market during the war.

The war also affected the lives of women who did

not take jobs. Families by the tens and hundreds of

thousands pulled up stakes and moved to the centers

of war production, such as Detroit and southern

ARKANSAS

KANSAS

NEBRASKA

MISSOURI

IOWA

WISCONSIN

MINNESOTA

TEXAS

SOUTH

DAKOTA

NORTH

DAKOTA

NEW

MEXICO

OKLAHOMA

MONTANA

WYOMING

COLORADO

ARIZONA

UTAH

NEVADA

OREGON

WASHINGTON

CALIFORNIA

IDAHO

ILLINOIS

MISS.

LOUISIANA

CANADA

MEXICO

Gulf of

Mexico

Assembly Center

Military Area: West

Coast

Relocation Center

Justice Department

Internment Camp

Citizen Isolation Camp

Puyallup

Portland

Turlock

Poston

Pinedale

Manzanar

Crystal City

Merced

Tule Lake Minidoka

Topaz

Rohwer

Jerome

Moab

Leupp

Santa Fe

Granada

(Amanche)

Heart

Mountain

Missoula

Bismarck

Mayer

Gila

Marysville

Sacramento

Stockton

Tanforan

Salinas

Fresno

Tulare

Santa Anita

Pomona

Japanese Relocation from the West Coast, 1942–1945Japanese and Japanese Americans who lived in the West

Coast Military Area were ordered to report to various “assembly centers,” from which they were then deported to

inland internment or isolation camps.