Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures In History Women During World War II 20240712

Compared options for women in service with each military branch. Its good to see everybody today. I appreciate you coming to our space here. Today were going to talk about american women and world war ii. This is obviously a huge topic. We could spend a semester just on this topic alone. Were going to try to break it into three spaces. We will look at a lot of images to fit in with other things we have talked about. Were going to talk about american women. Were going to talk about women at home. Women at work. And women at war. Were going to organize our ideas this way. Were going to look at a lot of the propaganda. We have been talking about propaganda throughout the semester and watching videos and things like that. We will get a chance to talk everybody found the video okay . Its a good one on women at work during world war ii. You can find it on the National Archives website. We will talk about these different parts of women during american women during world war ii. Were just hitting the survey of this. Theres so much that we could talk about throughout the semester. And we do all of u. S. And world war ii, except we cant do all of it. We do our bits and pieces. We have talked about some of these things. Some of it will be familiar. Especially when we get to the women as work part. Then we will go from there. Be sure to stop me if you have any questions. Well do our thing. Women at home. When we think about this, one of the biggest things i want you to do today is think about this reality for the home front, mainly what we are talking about. The reality of what life meant for women in the war. One of the first things that we often think about is all of the men going away to war. The men are going off. Who is left behind . The women. Right . So a lot of the women are married. We talked about there are all sorts of quickie weddings going on. People who have been married for a while as well. This idea of, how do you get by . If you are a household with a husband and a wife in this time period, its a partnership. Each has their role. They are more defined roles in world war ii than they are, say, today. This idea of how are you going to do both your job as the wife and often the mother and the job of the husband . How do you do this . This is a very popular book. This came out in 1942. So your husbands gone to war. This idea of what do do you . How do you get through it . You can see from the cover, tackling male chores. Chores were defined by male and female. Who is going to do which job . Any single woman, any widow, any woman like that does everything. Right . You guys, if you live on your own, you do your own thing. Put your own light bulbs in. You make your own repairs. This book gives some guidance, this guidebook, to help women do those little maintenance jobs that they need to do. This is my favorite part, the wolves in the friends clothing, right. This idea weve got wolves, right, that was the phrase of the day about you know what that means, right . They pretend to be helpful. Oh, i will come change your light ball clulb for you. Let me help. Let me help. Really, they are not quite as nice as they seem. How do you distinguish between the wolf and the real friend . Then this part in the upper right corner is something thats really important. Women had a lot of responsibility, not just to do their work and things like this, but this is the lost art of letter writing. This idea that women were responsible for keeping up the morale of men. This is going to be a theme were going to have through this section. The idea that women are responsible for making men remember what they are fighting for, making men feel confident, making men feel that its okay for them to be away but they are missed and they need to come home. This lost art of letter writing. This whole chapter about how to write your letters to your men. Theres articles in womens magazines. Theres articles in mainstream newspapers. All these editorials about how women should write their letters. What do you think you want to put in a letter if you are writing to johnny who is away in europe fighting against the germans . What do you want to put in your letter as you are writing from home . What would you put in there . Dont worry about how things are going there. Focus on getting the job done. Right. Dont worry about how things are. Focus on getting the job done. Go do your thing. We are are good here. You have to realize that they want you to write multiple letters a week. If you can write daily, thats best. Imagine your soldiers going to get mail every day and if theres nothing there, how depressing that is. I have to go fight my war and nobody at home cares about me. You write that once. So the pressure is to write every day, three days a week, four or five at a minimum, you write that once and then what do you write . What else do you do . We miss you. Please come home. Right . You cant do too much of that. It will make him too sad. Right . Focus on the war. Right. A fun story. A piece of advice that gorman puts in her book is make yourself interesting so your letters are interesting. Do interesting things so your letters are interesting. Dont be too interesting, because he will think you are having fun while he is at war. You have to find that balance. Between being interesting and not being interesting. Yeah . They dont have a sweetheart home, are there women getting together to write letters to strangers, men to help out . Exactly. Theres this series of this campaign through the red cross or different organizations where soldiers would give their names and women would write letters to strangers. You have romances that grow out of that. Right. This idea of writing letters, talking about whats going on at home. What if your roof gets a leak . Should you write johnny about that . I dont know, right . Its this balance between maybe you wait until the leak is fixed. Then you tell, johnny, the roof had a leak but we got it fixed. You dont want to seem too efficient. Right. If the roof leaks and plumbing breaks and all these things you just take care of it, why does johnny need to come home, right . Its a lot of pressure on these women to write letters and these very specific ways, high volume, positive. You can say you miss him. You cant be too blue. You have to find this balance of being responsible and him not needing to worry but still needing him to come home because its just you are not good at it. Right . You can get by. But hurry home. Its this balance and this pressure on women that gets put, again you have books about it. You have got in different forms of media about womens responsibilities to write these letters. The men i read a lot of these letters coming back. We dont have as many letters of the women going overseas. These letters the women wrote, we dont see as many because the men didnt keep them. The women kept the letters that the men wrote from overseas. We have more of those. We can figure out what the women were talking about by how the men respond to those letters. Thats one of the ways that we can determine what went into those letters. You see a lot of anxiety from the men, especially about the wolves. Theres a lot ideas about the men who dont serve, who arent able to serve or have these different positions domestically and that theyre going to try to steal the women. Thats actually a campaign that the germans and japanese use in leaflet campaigns is the men back home are stealing your girl. Dont you wish the war was over . You can go home. Come on in. This idea of the letter writing and things like this. The fact that this is an incredibly popular book in 1942. It says a lot, i think, that women are working on this and going forward. Other responsibilities that the women had. We talked a little bit about the rationing. We will talk about it more in another week. This idea of weve got all this rationing. Who is the United States responsible for feeding during the war . Pretty much everybody. Lets narrow that down a little. Who are we responsible for feeding . Our allies. The allies. Were going to give food to the russians, british and all that entails. Who else do we need to feed . Our people. Our soldiers. The men and women who have gone abroad. Were responsible for feeding them. British arent going to pull out fish and chips for our soldiers. We have to supply. Who is the third group were responsible for feeding . People rescuing. The home front. The people back home. We have got rationing so they can get that manufacturing that we talked about. Then that reality of food and who is going to eat and who were responsible for feeding. Theres a lot of emphasis on women growing those victory gardens. Ive got a slide of that. Grow the victory gardens. Grow vitamins at your kitchen door. Theres a growth in the study of nutrition in this time period. You want to get as much nutrition in as little food as possible. Then this idea of, what are women going to do . You have to can that. Its one thing to grow a victory garden. If its done by the end of the summer, thats no good. This idea of canning. Am i proud . Im fighting famine by canning at home. Right . Look, this is hard but im doing it. I love this one with the little girl, well have lots to eat this winter, wont we, mother . Very cute. As we go through these, we will see a lot of these posters and images. I want you to be sure to note things like the race of these women that are being portrayed. The appearance of them. These are pretty Perfect Little that little girl is so cute. You could pinch her cheek. This idea of who is being represented, which audience are these governmentsponsored posters trying to reach. Right. Another thing that is used, women get used in a number of different ways, right. We have this pressure to try to get women to take action. Weve also got the effort to use women as propaganda pieces to achieve other goals. What do you see in this image . What do you think of this . Sacrifice. Right. Sacrifice. Is she a perky, cleancut gal . Well, she might have used to have been. What is she now . Shes scared. Does she look happy . No. No, right . The baby is laughing. The little girl is clinging to her, not quite knowing whats going on. The woman looks kind of sad and scared. I gave a man remember when we talked about the soviets and how the americans are like, you have to do more. They are like, we gave blood. You give money. Right . Shes saying, i gave a man. Right. My children dont have a father. Im alone and scared. Can you at least give 10 of your pay to buy a war bond . Thats the least you can do. Look at the sacrifice my family made. This is the least you can do. Women being used to for guilt to make you feel this pressure to buy war bonds. Why do we need war bonds . What are the war bonds for . Do you remember . We can pay for our equipment and the supplies going out. We need it because we talked about how expensive the war is. War bonds are one way that we pay for it. Its basically loaning money to the government so you can the government can afford the war. Right. This is another way women are portrayed in these things. Information is important. Right . Theres all sorts of campaigns out there. Dont talk about whats in johnnys letters. Right . Anybody can be listening. Right . This idea of wanted for murder. What does she look like . If she was in a movie, who would she be . Which character . The villain. The neighbor gossip. Right. Women cant help themselves. Right. Thats the impression given. In so many of these images. I have about 20 of these that we could look at. This idea that women just cant help themselves gossiping. Right. Her gossip cost lives, maybe his life. Right. Right. This idea that she looks perfect but her careless talk, her thoughtlessness cost lives. Right. This idea of women need to control themselves. Right. To resist their natural urge to gossip. Right. Women are used for sex. Right. This idea of images of women as sexual. Right. This is a famous series of prints that im sure you have seen before. You can see shes in the military, but not in this moment, shes not, right. This is mainstream. Right. This is a picture that came out of life magazine. Right. This is an image of the idea of women as these sexualized beings because you have to think about why were fighting. Were fighting so we can get home to the girl. Were fighting so we can get home, because this is what all girls look like apparently. This reality, right . They cant be women are supposed to be sexual. Right. Theyre supposed to be pretty. Theyre supposed to be sexual so men will know what they are fighting for. They cant be too sexual. Right . Give you a minute to take a look at these. You like these . What do you think . What do you see in these images . How are women portrayed . Spreading disease. This is one of my alltime favorites. She may look clean, but. Theres a whole series of these posters that are given to men at the different bases and overseas, you know, whole classes on ven erial disease. But these good time girls and pickups, these are a problem, right. We want to give you posters like this to hang up, but dont touch. Right . They are probably diseased. This idea of women as all these Different Things. Women are mothers, women are raising the gardens and saving and feeding everyone and women are sacrificing, women are write wright writing letters and doing good for morale and these sexual beings and diseased, right. All these things all at the same time. I just think this is right . Again, theres a whole series of these that are out there. They are promoted among all these men. Right . Thats our women at home. You guys have questions about that . Okay. Lets switch to our next topic, this idea of women at work. Women at work. We think of this a lot. When we think of women in world war ii, we often think of these working women. Right . This is the point of the class, the section of the course, my favorite thing is to be a myth buster, right. Thats what we do, thats what historians do, thats our job. This section were going to bust some myths. Im sorry. But we are. Okay . So when we think of women working in world war ii, one of the biggest things that is often talked about is the idea that women go to work. Right . Okay. All the women go to work. Right . Do you guys remember your u. S. History class, your survey . Right . What did you learn about women working . Did women work before world war ii . No . What about in the factories . At the turn of the century, what about the immigrant women . Yeah. Some. But it wasnt as widespread. It wasnt mothers. Okay. All those factories that came out through the Industrial Revolution and all those children, that child labor, did women not work in those factories . It was young, single women. Lots of young, single women. Lots of immigrant women. Right . What about women of color . Did they work . Do you think so . Yeah. Women of color didnt get a lot of teaching jobs. Coming up to here they do. Coming out of the progressive era, we get more women of color taking middle class jobs. Women have always worked. You have always had working class women. Working class women, immigrant women, women of color, unmarried women that have always worked. Right . Which women are we talking about when we say women began to work during world war ii . Middle class white women. Middle class white women. Right . We are talking about middle class white women. This expansion into this area that people didnt work before. Right . Then a second group tied in there is mothers. Right . More mothers are going to work in world war ii than worked before. Right . So its a shift from working class women, immigrant women, women of color working, right, to that expansion of middle class white women, right . So thats what we see portrayed in these posters. Right . Look at these women. Right . First of all, their teeth are perfect, right, which did not happen in the 1940s. They have their eyebrows just right, hair just right. Right . They are beautiful. Right . This is not what most people ever look like let alone in the this idea of who the target is. Right . Who is the target for the working . Because this is the group that we have in excess, that we can target to get to work. Right . So thats an important distinction i want to make sure we understand, which women were talking about when we say the work force expanded to women. Its a specific group of women that are going to be expanded. Right . Now one area that often doesnt get talked about in women working in world war ii is women in agriculture. This idea of women in agriculture. So its important to realize that we have over 6 million agricultural laborers and farmers that leave the land during world war ii. Right . Over 6 Million People who had been working the land leave it during world war ii. These are often men who are going to work in the factories, because they are better paid. These are men who are being drafted or enlisting. Right . The shortage of laborers agricultural laborers gets so bad that by the middle and late 1942 it becomes a draftdeferred position. Whats draft deferred position . Do you remember . You dont have to go to the war. Your job is war critical. You cannot be drafted. If you leave that job, you may be eligible for the draft, but if youre in that position, you are draft deferred. Agricultural laborers, farmers, they become draft deferred. We need people so badly. That doesnt mean you cant enlist. That doesnt mean you cant go work in a factory. By late in the war, there are limits. You have to get permission to do that. Right . At the same moment that were expanding the agricultural needs because were feeding people at home, feeding americans abroad and then were feeding all of our allies, right, helping feed our allies. At the same time were doing that, the laborers are shrinking. Theres a huge push to get american women involved in this. Right . We had seen this before. We had seen this in world war i. There was a volunteer Organization Called the Womens Land Army of america that was around. We expand that in world war ii. There was a Womens Land Army in great britain. We model a lot of what goes on in the United States after that. Theres this huge push to get american women as part of this. There were other organizations. Have you read about that . What was the burserra program . An agreement between the u. S. And mexico to allow workers to come and work in the fields. Right. Exactly. This agreement between the United States and mexico to allow laborers to come to the United States and work. This program goes from 1942 to 1951. This is a huge program. We will talk about it in another class. But they try that to the government tries that to expand the number of laborers. They also go to convicts, right, prison labor, which had been used some in the past but gets expanded. They also use p. O. W. S. We had p. O. W. S in texas and some in oklahoma and then in different regions of the country where you would have german and italian p. O. W. S that would come to the United States and put them in the farms, right, let them be laborers. So youve got all these groups. Then this huge push, lets get more women. Right . Lets get more women to do this. Right . Some basic numbers for you. We end up with Something Like 3. 5 million women working in the agricultural field. Right . 3. 5 million women. Right . Which is a much bigger number than you think of, right . You think of world war ii, we think of rosie the riveter or women pilots because you have me as a professor. 3. 5 million women are recruited. Theres some bias against them in the beginning. You can read a lot of documents about this idea of women arent going to be able to do the job. We cant trust them. This idea of urban women especially. Right . Nobody wants a city girl to come work on their farm. Right . They will break their heel and not be able to do it. Right . But very quickly the women prove themselves, right, that theyre able to do the work that needs to be done and make a real difference. Some basic numbers, 1940, women made up 8 of all farm workers. By 1945, it was 23 . Right . So women went from 8 in agricultural to 23 in agriculture just that quickly. Right . Again, this is all going to shrink back down after the war just because we dont we arent growing as much after the war. But thats a significant amount, 3. 5 Million People working on farms. Theres a new costume idea for you for halloween, right, is to dress up like a farm worker, Womens Land Army, right, everybody does rosie, right . Right . This idea of women in labor, right . You cant talk about women at work without talking about this. Right . Who do you see here . Rosie. Rosie the riveter. This is the part another part of the class that im going to bust some myths. I was going to say it started off with it was supposed to be somebody playing hitler or something, talking about how american women spend more on personal stuff than the u. S. Military did for their own supplies while german women were put to work baby producers, basically. Curious as to how at the time the u. S. Thought about its women becoming part of the major work force. I dont think that was discussed in the video. How were american women treated by american men who were still working in the factories at that time . Right. So this is a really good question. How are the women that are working in the factories treated by the men . How do they interpret them or feel about them coming into the war . Ive got some numbers for you to give you some big ideas. The female labor force grows by 6. 5 million during this period. Right . During world war ii. A shift from 25 of american women working in 1940 to 37 of all american women working in 1944. Right . So this is going to be a huge shift. Your idea of how were they seen, because women did work but women are dominating a lot of these factories especially. The reality is, a lot of the men were put in charge. Right . They were put in supervisory roles if they had been working in the factory. And had experience, then they were going to be put in these roles. You will have all sorts of different interpretations of them. Right . Some are happy to have them as laborers. Some of them will not believe they can do the job. Some are going to be, you know, sexist or harassers or whatever. It just depended on the time and the place how they were doing it. The reality,we couldnt have done the work we did during the war without them. Right . Just by sheer numbers. Right . You brought up the film that hidden army. I want to give you a chance to talk about that. This is a propaganda film done in 1944 before the war is over. How does it begin . Hitler in a cell, i shouldnt have underestimated those american women. Its this strange setup of a prison guard coming down and hitler in a cell writing a memoir, right, now he will write how i lost the war. Right . This is before the war is over. This is how were going to do it, right, how were going to put hitler in this position. The name of one of the chapters is the hidden army. Right. Its women. Its women. Do you see this we talked about we watched the documentary Memphis Belle. As a propaganda piece. Weve watched some of frank capras why we fight films as well. Try to put this hidden army film into that context of propaganda. What pieces did you see that looked familiar or that were a little different or that were focussed on women more . I thought it was interesting they did interviews with women. Why are you here . Some of that seems very fake. Yes. Right . So they interview women. And say, why are you here in the factory . Why are you doing what you are doing . They are set up. Right . This isnt some random lets walk up on the street to a random worker and say this. Yeah. You see more of that guilt of not working. The girl that wakes up in the morning and goes back to sleep and because of that people are dieing. More of that similar to the Memphis Belle when they show the dead people. You get more of that attitude with this film. Definitely. There was was an entire sequence of women getting telegrams saying, your son, husband, brother is dead. The woman in particular, flinging herself on the bed crying when the son is going, mommy, whats wrong . You are not being subtle. I can respect you for that. But wow. Theres no subtlety to this film. Its definitely a propaganda piece. Everybody watching this is a propaganda piece. Were so cynical to this. We have to wonder were they as cynical as we are. But the slacker who sets the alarm off and goes back to sleep and johnny dies because she went to sleep instead of working in the factory, right. Very dramatic. Very on point. The telegram saying, you have lost your person. The reality is, people are dieing. Right . People are going missing in action. People are receiving telegrams. We talked about this in the past when we talked about the manufacturing chapter of david kennedys book, this idea of american stuff, our tanks, planes, all those things, helped win the war. Right . There really is a direct correlation between people not going to the factory and people not having the supplies they need. Right . Very dramatic, very done. Were there other points of that film that you noticed or wanted to make sure we talked about . Its very short. Its like seven minutes. Its kind of fun. Right . Its one of those where you dont want to giggle, but its like, my god, its so over the top. Its something that was important. We talked about a little bit when we talked about manufacturing the idea that people were having strikes. When we talked i think last week about censorship. The idea that earlier in the war, the War Department censored photos, they wouldnt show men dead on the beach and things like that because it was just too hard. Right . It was too hard. By 1944, they are letting those images out. Right . They are showing more of those images, more of this drama of the families being affected. Theyre showing more of the violence that was occurring to the soldiers. Why were they doing that . Young people were starting to slack. They thought they won the war. Why go to the factory and work . Exactly. We werent being bombed. Right . We werent with some exceptions in the northwest and, of course, pearl harbor, most americans werent being impacted as they were in england or france or other places. Right . So this idea of, i dont want to go to work today. Whats the consequence . Who cares . Right . Theres another moment in the film where they show bombed out cities, im not sure if its in italy or britain or anything like that. It basically says, if you dont go to work and do this thing, we could get bombed here. Please take this seriously. Yeah. We looked at some of those images of that idea of we want to stop the fighting over there. Right . We want to stop it in europe, we want to stop it in the pacific before it comes here. Right . Because were next. Thats the goal. Right . So go to the factory. Right . Go to the factory and get the job done. Right . Okay. So this idea of women working was important. Right . Just to kind of drive home the point of which women are working and how it changed. Before the war, 13. 9 of american women who were married are working. Right . And that number goes up to almost 24 during the war. Right . So its still a pretty small number, isnt it . Right . If you think about it. Thats a little warped by the fact that you have so many marriages during world war ii. Right . Those kind of quickie marriages that occur. We have known each other two weeks but you are about to go overseas, lets get married. Right . Its important to realize just a side note that the divorce rate between 1945 and 1952 is astronomical. The highest divorce rate in American History, those seven years. Everybody comes back from war and is like, i dont really know you, maybe this isnt a good idea, right. That idea of married women working. Right . So weve got this image, this we can do it, we can do it image, which is so popular and of course, so important. Right . The idea of rosie the riveter comes from a song. Right . This is a 1942 song, it is incredibly popular. Im going to try to play it for you. Lets see if i can make this work. Its so fun. Anything with a ukulele is good, right . All the day long whether rain or shine shes part of the Assembly Line shes making history working for victory rosie the riveter rosies got a boy friend charlie, charlie hes a marine rosie is protecting charlie when they gave her a production e, she was as proud as a girl could be theres something true about red, white and blue and rosie the riveter all right. A longer song than that but well stop there. Wasnt that fun . Right . Its going to be stuck in your head all day. And its going to be my fault. Thats okay. Right . I know its my fault. Im sorry. Thats my job is to get into your brains, right. This is an incredibly popular song and gets covered by everybody. It gets covered by everybody. Four vagabonds makes it popular in 1942 but just about everybody who is singing and remember music is such an important part of all of this during the war that it is just so popular. This idea of rosie the riveter, also wendy the welder. Theres another, all of that, right . This idea of going and working in the factory. So weve got this image and this is the myth busting portion of the class. This idea of rosie the riveter, im sorry. But this woman was not called rosie the riveter until the 1980s. All right . She was a poster created by Gerald Miller for Westinghouse Corporation factories that hung up in their factories for two weeks in february of 1943 and that was it. This was not a poster that inspired all of america. This was not an image that made people sit up and go to work. Im very sorry. You can still love her. You can still dress up like her for halloween. She is definitely a worker. Definitely fits. It is not dishonest to call her rosie. Look at the image from the cover. Very similar. Well have images of real rosees. But she wasnt called that during the war. This is rosie the riveter. You guys recognize Norman Rockwell from his own paintings of himself . Thats why im like, oh, i know him, right . This is mary keefe. She was 19 years old. She was his neighbor. He was a pretty broke artist at the time. He paid her 5 to come to his studio and he had a photographer take pictures of her in different poses. He liked to work off of photographs instead of live subjects. Then they had her come back a week later and put on a blue shirt and penny loafers so he could work off of that photo. She got 5 for each session. She got 10 to be rosie the riveter. He wrote to her afterwards or called her afterwards and ap guised apologized for making her look so hefty. Rosie has these big, strong arms and is a big girl. Shes a big, strong girl. Mary doyle keefe is, you know, a slender 19yearold. He said, i just want you to know, im sorry about that. She was okay. Obviously the thing went very popular. This is rosie. Her lunch box says rosie on it. The song had come out and was popular. And then he did this painting and dubbed her rosie the riveter. I like little trivia for you. To see how this was inspired, michael angelo, isaiah has dropped his sandwich, i think. This idea, right . How often does rockwell do this . I dont know enough rockwell history, but i love how, you know, this similarity between the two is obviously what he did and very popular, so this is the image that gets taken all over the country. This is the image that gets turned into posters, the image people have hanging up and think about as rosie the riveter. Not our we can do it girl, as much as you love her and still love her, but shes a creation, right. We talk about that a lot in here the idea that people use the past for Different Things and in the 1980s they used that image to inspire women and called her rosie. We bust myths in here. This is rosie. Representing all of the women. She the real rosie never actually riveted anything. She was a telephone operator. She never riveted anything. But she posed. And we have this terrific, terrific image with her lunch box and such. Just one more image. This is her in 2015 with a copy of it. I just think shes great. She was just very nice, happy lady. Weve got that. This idea of promotion of women working, weve talked about the fact that the federal government had all of these different commissions, all of these different boards to try to help organize the economy, control the economy. This idea of women doing different jobs. This is one of my favorite posters. It is not seen quite as often. Its drawn in a different style than some of the others. But the idea of look at all the different jobs women are doing, right . We often think of rosie the riveter, wendy the welder, people working in aircraft factories or naval ship yards building ships. But youll note this one has a waitress on there. Theres a whole series of advertisements saying, being a waitress is a war job. Somebody needs to feed the workers, somebody needs to feed the people who are doing these other jobs. This type of work is just as important. We just need you to work. You dont have to be a mechanic. You dont have to weld. But work. And i wanted to point out, too, in this one, you see the one here in the middle has gray hair. So this is another target is women in their 40s and 50s to help them get into the work force doing these different jobs. You know, you can roll bandages but we really need more people in the factories or more people doing these different jobs. Peo doing these different jobs. And we talked about the fact that women are working when theyre married and when theyre mothers, right . Whos going to care for the children if youre working a 10hour shift at willow run or down here at lockheed . Grandmothers. Grandmothers, right. So theres a huge push. Eleanor roosevelt we talk about her a lot, how she advocates for different groups. If you want women to work, if you want women to be part of this war effort then youve got to have somebody watching their children. And we know child care is a problem for families today. Its not just a womens problem but a family problem, but affordable child care is a problem. And in the 1940s its an even bigger problem because there was even less infrastructure for child care. Because women once you have children you dont work, you take care of the kids. Working class women, immigrant women, women of color always did and found ways. But Eleanor Roosevelt said lets have some child care. But there are child care facilities setup across the country but theyre in such small numbers its completely inadequate. So the people going to watch the children are going to be family, grandmothers or this idea of support within the community. So that gets promoted as a war job. Right, if you work as a child caregiver you are enabling someone else to go and work in the factory. If youve got arth riting in your elbow and cant rivet maybe you can feed a baby a bottle right and do your part. The idea all these jobs are important, all these jobs help the war effort and make a difference to the whole thing. We often think of rose es the riveter the epitome of women working during the war, but the reality is more women typed than anything else. When we get to the women at war were not going to highlight that, but i want to kind of sneak it in now. Its one of the biggest things that women do in the military as well. Youve got the Civil Service women working for different parts of the government for Civil Service. Remember there are no computers, right, and everybody has orders and theyre all in triplicate or q quadrupleicate. Every Government Official depending on your level would have a stenographer that would listen in and take short hpd, the ultimate secret language and take shorthand and type out the phone kmfrpgz in the National Archives we have transcripts of phone calls between generals, between important people making business decisions. Weve got transcripts of all those phone calls. Theyre hard to find because theyre not labeled that way, right, so you have to look through a lot of boxes, but somebody typed those. And thats going to be women that are typing those. This one one of the things about a lot of these posters is theyre sponsored by different companies. Weve talked about that before, i think the idea they want to promote their company by sponsoring the bonds or whatever. So royal type Writer Company sponsors this type of ad. You go and serve your country but do it by typing, and wouldnt you rather have a royal type writer than any other . So its a quiet plug for their own company but supporting the war effort. This is another push. This idea of shes holding his letters and being all sad and lonely, crying, right. You see the tears. Isnt that sad, right . But her lipstick is perfect. What is this essentially saying to this girl or any lonely girl. Dont cry about it, get to work. Dont cry about it get to work. Chin up, dont be a baby. Go do something about it. Right, this idea only you can bring him home, only you can end this war by going to work. If youre going to sit around and cry nothing is going to happen. You have to go to work. You have to get this job done. Again, similar type of team, right. The men would rather be doing this work. The men are better at it than you are but somebodys got to do it. Whats with the head wrap . Talk to me about that. We see that in the image of rosie the riveter. Why . Are you going to wear your hair in pin curls to the factory, do you think . No, and you dont want your hair getting on any of the machinery. You will get scalped. So this is a safety issue. So you can do double duty. You can put your hair up in pin curls and wrap it up and you dont kill yourself wrapping it around a drill press or something and then you can go out. Its killing two birds with one stone. Does she look like shes sweating working . Shes perfect. Shes perfect. Shes beautiful. Shes got her makeup on. I dont know are those fake lashes or real lashes . I dont know, right. And again the perfect lipstick, right . So this is the image thats being left of these women is these very perfect images and this is a very serious effort. This is very serious effort. So this is a group of women and some of them just have hair nets instead of bandannas. Can you see that . Those are going to be on the nose of bombers, and this is important. Theres going to be a man sitting here, and if you dont do it right he could die. So this is important work. Just to review weve talked about this idea of the manufacturing. Remember when we talked about fdr. In 1942 he said 60,000 new airplanes, right, we had like 9,000 new airplanes before we got involved in the war. Were going to build 60,000 new airplanes in 1942, and 125,000 airplanes in 1943. You think about that reality. How the heck are we going to do that . How is this even possible that weve spooled up so quickly in our factories and manufacturing and that weve reached those goals . Right, wave built 300 airplanes over the course of the war. From 9,000 to over 300,000 in the course of the war. Were supplying the soviets, were supplying the british, and were supplying ourselves. We are completely overwhelming the germans and japanese. Completely overwhelming them, and its because weve got women working in these factories. Women working in these factories. I want to show you some pictures of the real rosie the riveter. Weve got this one, which anything with lots of airplanes you know i love. But this is another image of rosie the riveter. So, again, i want to make the point that even though most of the poster images that we see are targeting the middle class white woman and the idea you can still be attractive and feminine if youre work in the factory, the reality is youve got a lot of women of color working in these positions and doing these different jobs. I love it. This is one of my favorites so much i have it twice for you. I like this one because of the reflection on the plane. This idea of shes still feminine, shes got this beautiful ring. Look at her nails. I dont know if shoe knew she was going to be photographed the next day or she just kept her nails that pretty because it made her feel feminine while shes doing this work. This idea of women doing this work while still being feminine. But the target in a lot of that advertisement isnt women of color, but you see a lot of different women taking these jobs. This is why i say we can do a woman rosy because she looks like a lot of these women, right. This idea of the bandannas to hold their hair up, doing these different types of jobs. The shoes is always of interest, right. They were penny loafers, they were little loafers. No work boots for this generation, right . I like this one, too. What do you see up there in the corner . What do you see here . The idea of men doing these different jobs. You can see the one on the right, the sailor. So thats the kind of place a poster would have hung, on the back wall of the factory kind of thing just to remind people why youre there. It gets romanticized a lot. Because you riveted that, right . Your rivet saved the world, right . But its also boring, right, to do the same thing every day. So its how to find that balance. Its important for you to keep coming to work, getting through the boringness of doing the same thing every day, right . How to find that balance, how to find that balance. Just another one. These are ship fitters. My classes always show all the airplane pictures, but its important to know we built tens of thousands of ships during world war ii and these are women working in one of the shipyards. Again, i like this picture because its diverse, right . Youve got an asian woman, probably an asianamerican woman, an affkb american woman, a white woman all in the back working together. Much of the workers are integrated. While the military is still segregated this time the workers were integrated, right . So i think thats important, right . So youve got all different types of women working. Look at that sweater and shirt, right . Youre going to get dirty. Youre going to get dirty. They all have i. D. Badges, right, with photo i. D. These are secure facilities. It depends on where you are and what youre doing how secure its going to be, but these are secure facilities, so youre going to need to have these photo i. D. S. This idea of photo i. D. S. Theres a limited series of colored photographs during the war. Colored film was fairly new and fairly expensive, so this was a whole series of colored photographs which i think is wait a minute, theyre real. It adds a whole other level of things, but you think of different jobs. This woman is literally participating on the plane. Shes participating the star on the plane. This is fabric. This is fabric plane, probable a trainer. So artists had jobs, right, all sorts of different jobs not just the factory riveting. Why did it matter that women went to work, right . This is the willow run factory near detroit. Its in bellville, michigan, actually. This was fords factory that got transitioned into the bomber factory, this is huge. This is one of my favorite photographs. Can you see the person here sticking their head out . Just to give you a scale of the planes were talking about this one factory at willow run builds over 9,000 of the 18,000 b24s that are built during world war ii. Think about the scale of that. They were building one every 63 minutes by 1944. One of those was coming off the Assembly Line every 63 minutes. Think about how complicated that machine is. This is a big plane and incredibly incredibly important, right, and then they go off to war, right . And again weve talked about previously in this class weve talked about the scale of the stuff, right. The planes, the tanks, the ships, the guns, the trucks, the jeeps all these things and how we just overwhelmed the enemy. And this is one example of it. So when you think about women at work during the war and whether they really needed to do it, this is the result. And its not because theyre women. Its because theyre workers and theyre able to do the jobs that need to be done and make a real difference in the war. Just some other quick statistics for you remember were reaching our goals of feeding everyone, right, both ourselves here at home, our soldiers abroad and our allies overseas, right . We build over 300,000 planes over the course of the war, right . 300,000 planes. Now thats going to be everything from trainers to the balm brs and the b51s and all of them, but 300,000 planes over the course of the war. 40 of the whole worlds arms thats enemies and ours. Were giving 10 of the soviet unions total military leads. We gave the soviet union 350,000 trucks. We gave them 956,000 miles of telephone cable, right. All those Little Things that you think maybe dont think of that we had to give them, right . And all doing this while our population is healthy and better fed than weve been in a generation because we had that steady nutrition. We had all the farming going on. So all the things had to come together. It really did make a difference. We had this idea of being fun and some of it sexist and some of it kind of racist, but it all comes together, right, this idea of different people working. Theres a lot of discussion about the jobs that women had before and after the war and this idea of women working and what happens to women after. And i want to make 1 final point on this idea of women at work. Everyone during world war ii is able to change their opportunities, right, the work that they do. So youve got women that are working at this level. Theyre working at this level before the war. And men are working here, right . Well, as the men are able to move up into different positions the women are able to move up into the positions the men were, right . And so after the war as the men come back down in the types of positions and the pay of the positions that they have the women are going to come back down, too. Theyre always going to stay a notch below when it comes to pay, when it comes to opportunity. Thats going to be the same for women of color especially theyre going to be below white women on the pay scale, but theyre going to be higher than they were before. Women as domestic laborers drops by over 15 during world war ii. The idea of how many many women were working as domestic laborers, and thats going to be a lot of women of color doing those jobs. During the war are able to take better paying jobs. And after the war theyre going to get bumped back down to which types of jobs they can have, okay . So questions about women at work . This idea of women working . Okay. Well, well switch to our third topic here. And our third and final focus today is going to be women at war. This idea of women at war. One of the biggest things i want you to walk away with today is the idea that we have between 350 and 400,000 women are going to serve in the American Armed forces during world war ii. It depends who you count and who you dont. Again between 350 and 400,000 women serving in the American Armed forces. And the thing i want you to remember about them is that they were all volunteers, right . We talk about the millions of men that served in the armed forces during world war ii. The vast majority of those were drafted. Many of them volunteered. But every woman veteran from the beginning of time in the United States to today, every woman veteran youd meet is a volunteer. I think thats important to know about women in the military and women who are veterans. So in world war ii youve got that 350 to 400,000 women serving in world war 2. This is my little Public Service announcement, if you will. Have you guys been to Arlington National seamitary . Have you seen this . This is the womens memorial, women in American Military service. This is right at the doorstep when you pull up and find it there. Its really a museum and an archive. They gather oral histories and documents of women in world war ii, and its really just a terrific nonprofit organization. It was started by congress, unfortunately not funded. So of course so it gets a lot of donations and things like that. But its a really terrific organization. Its the only place in the country thats just for Women Veterans recognize them. So i think thats important and kind of a Public Service announcement for you there. So one of the first groups that we think of when we think of women serving in the military is of course nurses. This is a fairly idealized promotion. Very pure, very clean. Whos putting the hat on her . Uncle sam, right. We dont even need to know. And again this is very attractive young woman, very white, perfect makeup, all of this, very intelligent. But uncle sam saying we need you. Become a nurse, your country needs you. There were women doctors well. There was a very small group of women doctors as well. But all in all we get about 74,000 women who served in the army and nurse corps during world war ii, 74,000. So this is a lot. We had only 7,000 active duty army and navy before pearl harbor. So a huge increase. And again people still got sick in the United States. People still got sick on the home front. So finding that balance of adding all these additional nurses was important. And id like to contrast this imof the nurse being anointed there by uncle sam with this reality of what it meant to be a nurse in world war 2, right . These are a group of u. S. Army nurses that landed at normandy on dday plus four. Weve talked about the war in europe, about dday. A lot of men were being injured, of course. Theyd be taken out to the boats, to the ships. And arpy nurses are finally landing on the beaches at normandy. You can see the beaches are being improved a little bit, but its still very much a war zone. Throughout the war nurses get closer and closer to the front line and theyre always right in the thick of it because thats where the injured soldiers are, right . Theres a group of american women that are captured as pows. Were going to talk the second half of our semester were going to cover the war in the pacific. When the fill means falls in 1942 you have a group of american women, army and navy who are there who get captured. Theres about 79 women who are captured by the japanese. Theyre held as pows for 37 months. So this is just a couple of them that survived eating chocolate, but you can see how thin they are especially the woman on the left, how thin they are. Starvation rations, all of that. So when were talking about, you know, whos in combat, whos not that line gets pretty blurred especially when it comes to the nurses because theyre so close. Whos captured, whos not, what happens to women as pows, what happens to men as pows. So i think thats important to recognize these nurses, of course. So women serve in a number of different parts of the military. This one i mean could you get more girl next door. Shes just so perfect, but shes a good soldier. When you think of soldier, do you think of this . Is the the image that pops into your head . Well, this idea of women serving in the military, women being soldiers is something you have to get the women used to. So you have a lot of these images. Theres a Huge Campaign against these women. I dont know if it was a campaign as much as this idea that being in am military was a mans job, right. So if a woman wanted to serve in the military they must just want to be around men in a sexual say. Or they must be lesbians and want to be a male. Thats the two choices. So theres a lot of pushback against the idea of women serving with the military, that youd be with unsavory type of people if you served in the military. One of their biggest pushes is to convince parents that this was a good idea for their daughters to serve in the military because parents were the ones pushing back a lot. Theres a really good book lisa meyer has a really good book on women in the arm squethe campaign against them, right . So you have all these different branches of the military that have women in them. Theres a fierce competition. They all have a quota of how many women are supposed to become part of their forces. And so this campaign and they all promote different types of jobs. This is parachute rigor. What message are they trying to tell women, how are they trying to get women to join the navy with this type of message . By challenging them. Going to try to challenge them. This idea of you got what it takes, you think youre good enough . Look how important this job is. A parachute rigor, nobody uses a parachute in world war ii for fun. Thats not a pleasure thing or entertainment. So this idea this is incredibly important, can you handle it, this challenge to women. Then this idea of patriotism. People will be thanking you. Youll be able to say that you did it. So this is kind of a silly thing. The Womens Army Corp was first. First it was the Womens Auxiliary Corp and it got shortened to wac when they officially became part of the army. But people made fun of their name namely their acronym, wac, quack, this idea of what a silly name. As the branches created other organizations they worked really hard to make better names. I know, right . But its about the names. When youre competing youre going to work on all levels. So the waves thats nice. Their uniforms were important, too. It matters. The army. Look how brown that is. Thats not pretty. Thats kind of pretty, right . Heres the spars. This is the coast guards. Always ready is the English Version of it. So spar. And the marines, they were just marines. Youve got to respect that. It was freedom of marines to fight. That was the whole thing about women in the military. The idea of free a man to do something more important. You dont go to combat, but the men can so lets do it. Theres a whole series of advertisements the wac especially had, but it has 239 kinds of jobs for women. Youre not just going to be a typist. You could work in a laboratory, do all sorts of Different Things, get work experience. The navy promotes you can be promoted, that you can get these different positions and talks about the fact youre going to get the same grade and same pay as men. So were about equal tale here in the navy. You have this opportunity. Again, very patriotic. Theres a man sized job for you in the navy. This is one of my very favorites. I love this image of the pioneer woman. She was out there defending her wagon with her rifle. Are you as good as she is . Can you live up to this legacy . And, again, in the wac you can work in a hospital. This one i think is interesting. This is ladies home journal ad for ivory soap, but how to win an engagement. Shes in the military, shes a wac, but its about the man. This is what youre fighting for. And you can still get your man even if youre in the uniform. She does look sassy, doesnt she . And this is competition as well. Youve got all these efforts to get women into the military, but we need women as ordinance workers. So they have their spot but you have yours, too. Theyre all equally important. So this competition to get women to have women doing these different jobs. Theres a push for africanamerican women as well. This was in remember weve got a lot of prominent newspapers in africanamerican communities, chicago and other places. And they would hire artists to draw cartoons to try to promote women of color to be a part of the military as well, to serve as nurses. And they did, right . This was the postal drerk of italian that was in paris, and they did stay segregated. And a group of africanamerican naval nurses, they were often worked with africanamerican navy and soldiers. They kept blood separated, all of that. And you know my Favorite Group here, the women airport pilots of world war ii. The archives are here. But these women worked to free men up so that they could go find combat. We have 25,000 women apply for the training program. The training starts in houston, but you guys have been to houston, right, the idea the weathers not great for flying, a lot of fog and rain decisively. So then they moved out to sweet water west of nort worth and they did their training there. When i did my research i thought that was made up. But ive seen them. Theyre in the National Archives, all these letters of women saying please i want to fly. 80 of the women had at least two years of college. They could be very selective. This is a in time when almost 4 of american women had college degrees. It was a very selective group. They did a wide variety of jobs. They started as paylets flying the planes from place to place within the continental United States. They did not go overseas. They did not fly in combat. They just stayed within the continental United States. A little peek into canada a couple of times and the caribbean a few times. And then they moved to different jobs. You can see the target back there. If youre going to send men overseas, youve got to tetch them how to shoot. Shooting from the deck of a b17 against an airplane is little different than duck hunting wrg, so youve got to give the men practice. But women often flew these planes. This is a shot of two women flying this b17 while it shoots at the target of the other plane. This is live ammunition of course. Its no good to use fake, live ammunition, color coded bullets. These women served as civilians until the 1970s when they started a Grass Roots Campaign to be recognized as veterans. Thats an incredible campaign, and they finally were given veterans benefits. This was at the congress after they testified. This was 1977 when president carter finally recognized them as veterans in the United States. All of their papers are here if you guys want to serve as interns in the womens collection, we have that, and you can work for their papers directly. Again, we could have an entire semester on women and war, and this a quick and dirty version of it. Think about women in these three waves of working here in the United States domestically and abroad and itll help you kind of organize your thoughts. You guys have any questions or thoughts and ideas about this . Thank you very much. And well continue our conversation in our regular class on thursday. Good job, guys. Thank you. Youre watching American History tv. Every weekend on cspan 3 explore our nations past. Cspan 3, created by americas Television Companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Were featuring American History tv programs as a preview whats available on cspan 3. Tonight a professor lectures on the vietnam war. He looks at the conflict from u. S. Military escalation in 1965 to the fall of saigon 10 years later and the competing interests of the americans, chinese and soviets in the region. Enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan 3. Coming up this Labor Day Weekend saturday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on the civil war historians discuss how we remember the civil war. Then sunday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on american artifacts well preview photographs of nativeamericans from the Smithsonian National museum of the American Indians collection which includes more than a half million images. At 8 00 p. M. On the presidency, a look at president ial retreats including abrahamlengthens summer cottage. Herbt hoovers shennen dougha mountains fishing camp. And august marked the 75th anniversary of the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki. American historyative and washington journal look back at the events watch American History tv this Labor Day Weekend on cspan 3. Sunday night on q a, the Washington Post former afghanistan, Pakistan Bureau chief Pamela Constable talks about her experiences covering the region. Sometimes people will say critical things of the United States or of the west. That is more common than somebody saying something offensive about being a woman or causing problems. I mean, people tend to be generally speaking im speaking very broadly now more helpful to a woman than to a man. They can also take advantage of you in various ways. But generally my experience has been if theyre not going to like something about you or going to mistrust something about you its not going to be because youre woman. Its going to be because youre an american. Watch sunday night at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspans q a. On lectures in history a class about u. S. Politics and economics in the aural ey cold war period of the late 1940s and 50s. He argues that extreme ideeism a consensus around centrist political views to a point where the Political Parties were barely distinguishable. All right, so the last couple of classes weve been talking about the red scare, kind of the impact of the red scare and policing the edges of american