The park is a partnership park, meaning that no land or buildings are actually owned by the National Park Service, which only administers the park. The historical park was established in 2000, and bus tours began in 2007.[2]
Park attractions
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Selected locations in the Rosie the Riveter Home Front park area
A feasibility study was authorized under P.L. 105-355 (Sec.505), sponsored by Rep. George Miller, to determine if the proposed park was suitable to be designated as a National Park Service affiliated site.[3] The subsequent feasibility study concluded "the collection of historic structures and sites in Richmond is nationally significant" and recommended that a National Historic Park be established, citing multiple historic structures that remained intact including Atchison Village, the Maritime and Ruth C. Powers child development centers, Kaiser Permanente Hospital, Richmond Fire Station No. 67A, Richmond Shipyard #3, Ford Assembly Building, and Oil House.[4]:1–2,4–5 Subsequently, P.L. 106-352 established the Historical Park, granting the United States Secretary of the Interior power to establish cooperative agreements with the owners of the listed historic structures and nearby local parks, including the Shimada Peace Memorial Park, Westshore Park, Sheridan Observation Point Park, San Francisco Bay Trail, and Vincent Park.[5]
The park's visitor center is in the Oil House, a small auxiliary building next to the restored Ford Assembly Building, with a number of permanent and temporary exhibits about the history of Richmond's wartime industries and workers. A film also illustrates the home-front battle. Rangers are available to answer questions, and also lead guided tours and conduct other interpretive programs.[6]
A self-guided auto tour with optional walking tour is available for downloading.[7] In the summer of 2007, preliminary bus tours began with a new guideless model, which instead filled half of the bus with residents who spoke of their experiences from the time to put what are otherwise everyday streets for residents into a greater historical perspective.[8]
The Rosie the Riveter Memorial in Marina Bay Park is open year-round, dawn to dusk, as are the other Richmond city parks within the National Park's boundaries.
Rosie Memorial
The Rosie Memorial in October 2007
The park's creation was spurred by the construction of a Rosie the Riveter memorial in Marina Bay Park along the city's shoreline, formerly Kaiser Richmond Shipyard #2. The memorial was intended to honor the "Rosies", women who made up much of the workforce at the shipyards, and started in 1997, three years prior to the creation of the national park. The effort behind the memorial was initiated by then-Councilwoman Donna Powers. It grew under Project Director Donna Graves to become the first national tribute to home front American women.[7] A competition was held, selecting the final design in November 1998.[9]
The four Richmond shipyards, with their combined 27 shipways, produced 747 ships, more than any other shipyard complex in the country. Richmond was home to the largest shipyard and 55 other war industries,[4]:1 more than any other city of its size in the United States.[citation needed] The city grew nearly overnight from 24,000 people to 100,000 people,[10]:3 overwhelming the available housing stock, roads, schools, businesses and community services.
The memorial was designed by landscape architect Cheryl Barton and visual artist Susan Schwartzenberg[11] and dedicated on October 14, 2000, in a ceremony hosted by Donna Powers and attended by more than 100 "Rosies".[12] It is the length of the keel of a Liberty ship, representing the skeletal form of a ship under construction. A simple metal pier serves as the stern at the south end, on the water's edge, proceeding north through a cylindrical framework as the smoke stack, and the bow as the main monument, made of prefabricated parts similar to those assembled by the shipyard workers. At the monument, there are 39 photographs, news clippings, and memorabilia. A timeline of World War II is presented in 25 panels laid along the Keel Walk, a 441ft (134m) walkway running the length of the memorial.[13] Interpretive signs and exhibits within the structures present information on women's history, labor history, and the home front.[14]
The Ford Assembly Plant is visible in the approximate center of this aerial photograph as the long building on the square point extending south into Richmond Harbor; to the east, the shoreline wraps around Marina Bay while Shipyard No. 3 is west across Harbor Channel.
The Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant was the largest assembly plant to be built on the West Coast.[15] One of only three tank depots in the entire country, approximately 49,000 jeeps were assembled and 91,000 other military vehicles were processed here. Ford employed thousands of workers at the site during World War II, many of them women who were entering the work force for the first time. "Rosie the Riveter" was a period song representing these women.
In mobilizing the wartime production effort to its full potential, Federal military authorities and private industry began to work closely together on a scale never seen before in American history. This laid the groundwork for what became known as the "military-industrial complex" during the Cold War years.
A welder looks up from her work at Richmond shipyard, 1943
The four Richmond Shipyards were part of the Kaiser Shipyards; construction started in early 1941 and the shipyards were completed by 1942.[4]:12 The construction of 747 ships during the war here is a feat not equaled anywhere else in the world, before or since.[16] In 1997, the Richmond City Council began the effort to build the Rosie Memorial and passed Resolution 203-97, authorizing the submittal of Shipyard No. 3 for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places and as a California Historic Landmark. The park's Rosie memorial is located on the former grounds of Shipyard No.2. Shipyard No.3 was listed on the NRHP in April 2000.[17]
Both Liberty and Victory ships were constructed here. These ships were completed in two-thirds the amount of time and at a quarter of the cost of the average of all other shipyards. The SS Robert E. Peary was assembled in less than five days as a part of a special competition among shipyards; but by 1944 it was only taking the astonishingly brief time of a little over two weeks to assemble a Liberty ship by standard methods.
The SS Red Oak Victory is a Victory ship preserved as a museum ship. It was one of 414 Victories built during World War II (constructed at the Richmond Shipyards), but one of only a few of these ships to be transferred from the Merchant Marine to the U.S. Navy. The vessel issued cargo and munitions to various ships in the fleet throughout 1945. During a hazardous tour of duty in the Pacific, SS Red Oak Victory handled many tons of ammunition, supplying the fleet without a single casualty.[18]
The huge influx of workers coming to live in cities like Richmond, caused intense strain on city infrastructure. One of these strains was the severe lack of housing. Workers arriving in these rapidly expanding urban centers were forced to find what they could. They slept in all night movie houses, shared "hot beds" (i.e. when one person got in bed, it was still hot from the last person getting out), or just camped out.
Aerial view of Atchison Village, directed southeast
Atchison Village Housing Project is an example of the local-Federal collaboration that provided much needed housing and domestic support for defense workers and their families. The modest, wood-frame buildings clearly reflect the constraints (time, money and materials) placed on publicly funded housing construction during the period. Just prior to and during the war, the Lanham Act of 1940 provided $150 million to the Works Progress Administration, which built approximately 625,000 units of housing in conjunction with local authorities nationwide. These were highly sought after and company managers were the most likely to be able to procure housing in Atchison Village.[7]
Due to racial discrimination, minorities fared very poorly in gaining housing.[7] They often lived in shacks, in the crates that brought the raw materials to the city, in trailers, or in automobiles. They and other lower income earning workers were lucky when they were able to move to barrack-like dormitories constructed for the mass of World War II workers.
The Richmond Housing Authority was selected to be the first authority in the country to manage a defense project. Atchison Village represents one of 20 public housing projects built in Richmond before and during World War II. Constructed in 1941 as Richmond's first public defense housing project, it is the only project funded by the Lanham Act that still exists in Richmond, and one of the few in the nation not destroyed after the war.[19]
Today, Atchison Village is a collection of privately owned houses managed by a cooperative of the homeowners. While most of the dormitories and other low income housing of World War II are gone, Atchison Village, built as permanent housing, remains.
Prior to the invasion of Europe in June 1944, more Americans were dying in Home Front accidents than on World War II battlefields.[7]Henry J. Kaiser, founder of the Richmond Shipyards, recognized that only a healthy work force could meet his deadlines and construction needs. He institutionalized a revolutionary idea, pre-paid medical care for workers, which soon expanded beyond workers. For many workers, this was the first time they had seen a doctor.[7]
The Kaiser Richmond Field Hospital for the Richmond Shipyards was financed by the U.S. Maritime Commission, and opened on August 10, 1942.
By August 1944, 92.2 percent of all Richmond shipyard employees had joined the plan, the first voluntary group plan in the country to feature group medical practice, prepayment and substantial medical facilities on such a large scale. By 1990, Kaiser Permanente was still the country's largest nonprofit HMO.[19]
In part due to wartime materials rationing, the Field Hospital is a single-story wood-frame structure designed in a simple modernist mode. The Field Hospital operated as a Kaiser Permanente hospital until closing in 1995, after a new hospital was built downtown.
Maritime and Ruth Powers Child Development Centers
Midnight-shift shipyard worker Arlene Corbin (right) brings her daughter to a day care facility before going home to sleep
The Maritime and Ruth Powers Child Development Centers were two of approximately 35 nursery school units of varying sizes established in the Richmond area during World War II in order to provide child care for women working in the Kaiser shipyards. The Maritime center was funded and constructed by the Maritime Commission as part of a larger development that also included housing, an elementary school and a fire station. The temporary housing was demolished after the war but a larger permanent housing complex remains as do the other buildings.
The Maritime Child Development Center, a wood frame, modernist style building operated by the Richmond School District, incorporated progressive educational programming, and was staffed with nutritionists, psychiatrists and certified teachers. It had a capacity of 180 children per day. At its peak, with 24,500 women on the Kaiser payroll, Richmond's citywide child care program maintained a total daily attendance of 1,400 children. Unlike the federally funded WPA day care facilities implemented during the New Deal, the World War II centers were not intended for use by the destitute, but for working mothers.
The Kaiser-sponsored Child Care Centers, particularly those at Kaiser's industrial sites in Vanport, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, gained a reputation for innovative and high quality child care. The center is still in operation today.
Lucretia Edwards Shoreline Park
Lucretia Edwards Shoreline Park, named in honor of local community activist Lucretia W. Edwards, honors the wartime contributions made by the Bay Area Shipyards during World War II.[20]
Bay Area shipyards
In addition to the local Richmond Shipyards, shipworker's bootprints with plaques set in the sidewalks and long low seating walls point visitors to the other Bay Area shipyards.
The following inscriptions are engraved into the concrete walls:
Bethlehem San Francisco – The only privately owned shipyard in the nation to operate a submarine repair base, this 16th Street yard overhauled 31 subs in two years.
Moore Dry Dock handled the difficult jobs of production, repair and conversion that slowed overall output in other yards.
Mare Island Naval Shipyard – Mare Island built more than 400 vessels. Mare Island Naval Shipyard set a shipbuilding record for a destroyer that was never broken completing the USS Ward in just 171⁄2 days.
Marinship – The 75,000 Americans who poured into Marinship during the war years build 93 ships.
Richmond is a city in western Contra Costa County, California, United States. The city was incorporated on August 7, 1905, and has a city council. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area's East Bay region, Richmond borders San Pablo, Albany, El Cerrito and Pinole in addition to the unincorporated communities of North Richmond, Hasford Heights, Kensington, El Sobrante, Bayview-Montalvin Manor, Tara Hills, and East Richmond Heights, and for a short distance San Francisco on Red Rock Island in the San Francisco Bay.
The Mare Island Naval Shipyard (MINSY) was the first United States Navy base established on the Pacific Ocean. It is located 25 miles (40 km) northeast of San Francisco in Vallejo, California. The Napa River goes through the Mare Island Strait and separates the peninsula shipyard from the main portion of the city of Vallejo. MINSY made a name for itself as the premier U.S. West Coast submarine port as well as serving as the controlling force in San Francisco Bay Area shipbuilding efforts during World War II.
The San Francisco Bay Naval Shipyard was a short-lived shipyard formed in 1965 with the combination of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and the Mare Island Naval Shipyard. The combined yards were the largest naval shipyard in the world, but the desired cost savings did not materialize, and the two yards reverted to separate management in February 1970. The Hunters Point shipyard was used for radioactive testing when the United States was testing the atomic bombs. The site has since been contaminated. The Hunters Point Naval Shipyard became a Superfund site, as designated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is the Navy's requirement to clean up the site to "reasonable" levels to those who live adjacent to the shipyard.
The Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was a United States Navy shipyard in San Francisco, California, located on 638 acres (258 ha) of waterfront at Hunters Point in the southeast corner of the city.
Henry John Kaiser was an American industrialist who became known for his shipbuilding and construction projects, then later for his involvement in fostering modern American health care. Prior to World War II, Kaiser was involved in the construction industry; his company was one of those that built the Hoover Dam. He established the Kaiser Shipyards, which built Liberty ships during World War II, after which he formed Kaiser Aluminum and Kaiser Steel. Kaiser organized Kaiser Permanente health care for his workers and their families. He led Kaiser-Frazer followed by Kaiser Motors, automobile companies known for the safety of their designs. Kaiser was involved in large construction projects such as civic centers and dams, and invested in real estate, later moving into television broadcasting. With his wealth, he established the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, non-partisan, charitable organization.
Rosie the Riveter is an allegorical cultural icon in the United States who represents the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II, many of whom produced munitions and war supplies. These women sometimes took entirely new jobs replacing the male workers who joined the military. She is widely recognized in the "We Can Do It!" poster as a symbol of American feminism and women's economic advantage. Similar images of women war workers appeared in other countries such as Britain and Australia. The idea of Rosie the Riveter originated in a song written in 1942 by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb. Images of women workers were widespread in the media in formats such as government posters, and commercial advertising was heavily used by the government to encourage women to volunteer for wartime service in factories. Rosie the Riveter became the subject and title of a Hollywood film in 1944.
SS Red Oak Victory is a U.S. Victory ship of the Boulder Victory-class cargo ship used in the Second World War. She was preserved to serve as a museum ship in Richmond, California, and is managed by the Richmond Library of History and located near the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park. She was one of 534 Victories built during World War II, but one of only a few of these ships to be transferred from the Merchant Marine to the United States Navy. She was named after Red Oak, Iowa, which suffered disproportionate casualties in early World War II battles.. The ship was active during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
Permanente Metals Corporation (PMC) is best known for having managed the Richmond Shipyards in Richmond, California, owned by one of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser's many corporations, and also engaged in related corporate activities. These four of the seven west coast Kaiser Shipyards were known for their construction of Liberty ships and later Victory ships.
Point Richmond, also sometimes referred to locally as The Point, is a neighborhood in Richmond, California, United States, near the eastern end of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, between Interstate 580 and the San Francisco Bay.
The Ford Richmond Plant, formally the Ford Motor Company Assembly Plant, in Richmond, California, was the largest assembly plant to be built on the West Coast and its conversion to wartime production during World War II aided the United States' war effort. The plant is part of the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It currently houses the National Park Service visitor center, several private businesses and the Craneway Pavilion, an event venue.
Marinship Corporation was a shipbuilding company of the United States during World War II, created to build the shipping required for the war effort. Founded in 1942, the shipyard built 93 cargo ships and oil tankers, before ending operations in 1945.
The Kaiser Shipyards were seven major shipbuilding yards located on the United States west coast during World War II. Kaiser ranked 20th among U.S. corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. The shipyards were owned by the Kaiser Shipbuilding Company, a creation of American industrialist Henry J. Kaiser (1882–1967), who established the shipbuilding company around 1939 in order to help meet the construction goals set by the United States Maritime Commission for merchant shipping.
Atchison Village is a community in Richmond, California which was originally built as housing for defense workers from the Kaiser Shipyards. It lies at an elevation of 13 feet. Constructed by the Richmond Housing Authority in 1941 as Richmond's first public defense housing project, it is one of the only projects funded by the Community Facilities Act of 1940 that still exists in Richmond and one of the few in the nation not destroyed after the war. It is one of 20 public housing projects built in Richmond before and during World War II. The Village was sold by the government to its residents for $1,512,00.00 February 28, 1957, remaining mutual housing to this day under the ownership of the Atchison Village Mutual Homes Corporation. Many think it would be covered under Proposition 13 as a single unsold parcel, thus limiting tax increases to 2%, but the Tax Assessor does not treat it that way.
Marina Bay, is located in Richmond's protected Richmond Inner Harbor. It was developed in the mid-1980s in an effort to clean up what had been up to that point the defunct World War II-era Kaiser Shipyards.
Kaiser Richmond Medical Center is a large Kaiser Permanente hospital in downtown Richmond, California which serves 77,000 members registered under its medical plans. It opened in 1995 replacing the historic 1942 Richmond Field Hospital that serviced Liberty shipyard workers and thus gave birth to the HMO. However it was deemed seismically unsafe and this new campus was built.
Thomas King Butt is an American politician and architect and the former mayor of Richmond, California. He was vice-mayor in 2002 and 2012 and a member of the Richmond City Council for over 20 years before being elected mayor. He is the longest continuously serving council member in Richmond's history.
The four Richmond Shipyards, in the city of Richmond, California, United States, were run by Permanente Metals and part of the Kaiser Shipyards. In World War II, Richmond built more ships than any other shipyard, turning out as many as three ships in a single day. The shipyards are part of the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park, whose Rosie the Riveter memorial honors the shipyard workers. Shipyard #3 is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is a California Historical Landmark # 1032.
The Emergency Shipbuilding Program was a United States government effort to quickly build simple cargo ships to carry troops and materiel to allies and foreign theatres during World War II. Run by the U.S. Maritime Commission, the program built almost 6,000 ships.
The Kaiser Richmond Field Hospital was the first Kaiser Permanente Hospital and is a historic site resource of the city of Richmond, California, and a contributing property to Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The hospital provided health services for surrounding communities until 1995 when it was replaced by the then state-of-the-art Richmond Medical Center in downtown Richmond. The field hospital is now closed and remains in its original location in South Richmond along Cutting Boulevard.
California during World War II was a major contributor to the World War II effort. California's long Pacific Ocean coastline provided the support needed for the Pacific War. California also supported the war in Europe. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, most of California's manufacturing was shifted to the war effort. California became a major ship builder and aircraft manufacturer. Existing military installations were enlarged and many new ones were built. California trained many of the troops before their oversea deployment. Over 800,000 Californians served in the United States Armed Forces. California agriculture, ranches and farms were used to feed the troops around the world. California's long coastline also put the state in fear, as an attack on California seemed likely. California was used for the temporary and permanent internment camps for Japanese Americans. The population grew significantly, largely due to servicemen who were stationed at the new military bases/training facilities and the mass influx of workers from around the U.S. in the growing defense industries. With all the new economy activity, California was lifted out of the Great Depression. Over 500,000 people moved to California from other states to work in the growing economy. California expanded its oil and mineral production to keep up with the war demand.
1 2 3 4 5 6 "Self-Guided Auto Tour". Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park. National Park Service. Retrieved April 4, 2007.
↑ Graves, Donna (July 2004). Mapping Richmond's World War II Home Front(PDF) (Report). National Park Service, Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park. Retrieved March 8, 2023.
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