During World War II, millions of men served in the armed forces and millions of women worked in war-related industries. A generation later, some of these women workers recounted their wartime experiences to historians in oral interviews.

Evelyn Gotzion

Becoming a Union Activist

Evelyn Gotzion went to work at Rayovac, a battery company in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1935; she retired in 1978. While at Rayovac, Gotzion and her working husband raised three children.

I had all kinds of jobs. [During the war] we had one line, a big line, where you’d work ten hours and you’d stand in one spot or sit in one spot. It got terrible, all day long. So I suggested to my foreman, the general foreman, that we take turns of learning everybody’s job and switching every half hour. Well, they [the management] didn’t like it, but we were on the side, every once in a while, learning each other’s job and learning how to do it, so eventually most all of us got so we could do all the jobs, [of] which there were probably fifteen or twenty on the line. We could do every job so we could go up and down the line and rotate. And then they found out that that was really a pretty good thing to do because it made the people happier. …

One day I was the steward, and they wouldn’t listen to me. They cut our rates, so I shut off the line, and the boss came up and he said, “What are you doing?” I said, “Well, I have asked everybody that I know why we have gotten a cut in pay and why we’re doing exactly the same amount of work as we did.” … So, anyhow, we wrote up a big grievance and they all signed it and then I called the president of the union and then we had a meeting. … At that point the president decided that I should be added to the bargaining committee so that I would go in and argue our case, because I could do it better than any of the rest of them because I knew what it was. … We finally got it straightened out, and we got our back pay, too. From then on I was on the bargaining committee all the years that I worked at Rayovac.

Source: Women Remember the War, 1941–1945, edited by Michael E. Stevens and Ellen D. Goldlust (State Historical Society of Wisconsin Press, 1993). Reprinted with permission of the Wisconsin Historical Society.

Donna Jean Harvey

Wartime Challenges and New Experiences

During the war Harvey raised her first child while working as a riveter and radio installer at a plant in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

I graduated from Cheyenne High School in 1940. I married Lewis Early Harvey in January 1941. He was drafted when the war broke out and was sent to the Aleutian Islands, and from there he transferred to the Paratroopers. In October I gave birth to my first son, Lewis Early Jr.

Labor force was critical at that time so I went to United Modification Plant and learned how to rivet, do installations of various kinds and etc. When the “new” radar system was implemented, I asked to be put on that crew. The F.B.I. investigated me and found me to be worthy and I proceeded to install radar along with my riveting duties, while waiting for the next shipment of planes to come in. … I was awarded the Army-Navy E Award and was presented with a pin. I’ve always been very proud of that!!! I certainly got educated in more ways than I ever expected, being a very young girl. But looking back I wouldn’t trade my experiences for anything.

My feeling about the war in most instances was a conglomerate of mixed emotions. I had lived a fairly sheltered life, but I listened and learned and managed to survive, but I must admit, it left a scar on my memory that can never be erased.

I was living in one of my parent’s apartments during the war and since they were both retired, they baby-sat my young son. My mother decided after a while that she too would like to do something in some little way to help. So she applied for maintenance and between my father and the girl next door, I managed to have a baby-sitter available at all times. The government was asking for rubber donations so my mother and I gave them our rubber girdles!! We liked to think that our girdles helped win the war!!!

My life took on a totally new perspective the longer I worked there. I saw many tragic accidents, none of which I care to talk about which haunt me to this day.

I couldn’t do much socializing as I had a small infant at home to care for when off work and besides I was really pooped. Those midnight shifts were “killers.” I hope I never have to do that again!! I tried to write weekly letters to my husband in between my other duties. …

Our community gathered together and collected scrap metals and such to help in the war effort and thanks to a good neighbor, who was growing a victory garden; we managed to get gifts of potatoes and lettuce etc. The government issued coupon books that allowed us two bananas a week, one pound of sugar and so many gallons of gas. We traded back and forth depending on our individual needs. I had a 1934 Ford and fortunately, it wasn’t a gas eater and it managed to get me where I was going when I needed it. …

There were no unions there at that time and no baby sitting service provided. The single people formed a club and they entertained themselves after work but I was a married person with a child and so I didn’t participate in any of their activities. …

After the war was over, most people went back to their previous jobs. I opened a beauty salon and when my husband returned home from the service he got a job with the Frontier Refinery.

Source: National Park Service, Rosie the Riveter: Women Working During World War II, nps. gov/pwro/collection/website/donna.htm.

Fanny Christina (Tina) Hill

War Work: Social and Racial Mobility

After migrating to California from Texas and working as a domestic servant, Tina Hill, an African American, got a wartime job at North American Aircraft. After time off for a pregnancy in 1945, Hill worked there until 1980.

Most of the men was gone, and … most of the women was in my bracket, five or six years younger or older. I was twenty-four. There was a black girl that hired in with me. I went to work the next day, sixty cents an hour. … I could see where they made a difference in placing you in certain jobs. They had fifteen or twenty departments, but all the Negroes went to Department 17 because there was nothing but shooting and bucking rivets. You stood on one side of the panel and your partner stood on this side and he would shoot the rivets with a gun and you’d buck them with the bar. That was about the size of it. I just didn’t like it … went over to the union and they told me what to do. I went back inside and they sent me to another department where you did bench work and I liked that much better. …

Some weeks I brought home twenty-six dollars … then it gradually went up to thirty dollars [about $420 in 2010]. … Whatever you make you’re supposed to save some. I was also getting that fifty dollars a month from my husband and that was just saved right away. I was planning on buying a home and a car. … My husband came back [from the war, and] … looked for a job in the cleaning and pressing place, which was just plentiful. … That’s why he didn’t bother to go out to North American. But what we both weren’t thinking about was that they [North American] have better benefits because they did have an insurance plan and a union to back you up. Later he did come to work there, in 1951 or 1952. …

When North American called me back [after I left to have a baby,] was I a happy soul! … It made me live better. It really did.We always say that Lincoln took the bale off of the Negroes. I think there is a statue up there in Washington, D.C., where he’s lifting something off the Negro. Well, my sister always said — that’s why you can’t interview her because she’s so radical — “Hitler was the one that got us out of the white folks’ kitchen.”

Source: Rosie the Riveter Revisited, by Sherna B. Gluck (Boston: G.K. Hall & Co., 1987). Used by permission of Susan Berger Gluck.