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Mary E. Stuckey, http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/collections/fdrspeeches.html, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum - Copyrighted

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Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum

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The FDR Library, with support from AT&T, Marist College and the Roosevelt Institute launches online one of its most in-demand archival collections - FDR's Master Speech File - over 46,000 pages of drafts, reading copies, and transcripts created throughout FDR's political career. Presented alongside the Speech File is the Library's complete digital collection of Recorded Speeches of FDR.

Article by Mary E. Stuckey
Professor of Communication, Georgia State University

Franklin D. Roosevelt was one of the great orators of the twentieth century. He could explain complicated policy with clarity and precision, entertain and enlighten audiences with stories that ranged from the poignant to the humorous, and attack his opponents with invective that was often sharp and occasionally vicious. His rhetoric soars with eloquence, educates with charm, and evokes the everyday concerns of U.S. citizens with palpable grace. His political speech fueled national partisan change, crafted a political coalition of unmatched durability, and constituted a communal sense of national self.

We continue to remember his Presidency and his era through the rhetoric he bequeathed to us. Phrases like "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," and "the money changers [and their] high seats in the temple" evoke for us the Depression and its causes. Similarly, we know that the Second World War began for the U.S. on "a date which will live in infamy" and the prayer he offered in the midst of the D-Day invasion is as fine a description of the more elevated of American war aims as we will ever hear.

Americans continue to understand the Great Depression as an event that both affected and united the entire nation because FDR continually schooled them in that understanding. Through his depiction of the Nazi threat as "the hand that held the dagger" plunging it "into the back of its neighbor," he taught Americans that the threat was both real and proximate. Through analogies like the need to lend a garden hose to a neighbor whose house was on fire, he encouraged the nation to accept and act on its international responsibilities as well. And in both foreign and domestic matters, his depictions of a nation burdened by depression and resolutely at war were always accompanied by images of faith and hope and community. He united the nation in the face of depression and war and helped its citizens to see themselves as joined in a great communal enterprise.

" A date which will live in world history infamy"

Changes to the famous "infamy" line appear on the first page of the first draft of Franklin D. Roosevelt's historic Address to Congress delivered December 8, 1941, following the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Hear a clip of the famous line

There were policy downsides to this as well, of course, and not all citizens were treated equally, either politically or rhetorically. Those issues, absences, and inequalities are also an important part of the historical record.

This collection makes that record, in all of its eloquent grandeur, occasional overreaching, and political exclusion and obfuscation available. Presidential rhetoric, whether grandly evocative or tediously mundane, does not come easily. Evidence do this effect exists in the many visible changes, edits, and amendments -- often in the president's own hand - written into the speech drafts contained in these files.

This president's voice, once heard, is difficult to forget. Rich with the tones of Hyde Park and Harvard, that voice reached out to the people of the Appalachian hills, the dust-filled prairie, the rural South, and the mountainous West. Clearly a product of the aristocratic East, over the radio Franklin Roosevelt reached for and often found a common vernacular that spoke to all Americans.

That voice alone does justice to Roosevelt's rhetoric, for it was written with his distinctive style in mind; it is rhetoric that is meant to be heard rather than read, and both the man and his words are brought into sharper relief when we hear him. So it is especially important to have so much of his rhetoric available here for the listening.

Franklin Roosevelt's presidency was pivotal. He changed the way we understand governance at home and the U.S. role abroad. The policies he espoused were explained and defended through his rhetoric. This collection enables access to the ways that these important elements of this most important presidency were created and defended.

Access FDR's Master Speech File and Recorded Speeches

Mary E. Stuckey, Ph.D., is the author of nine books focusing on presidential communication and rhetoric, national identity, strategic failures, the pre-presidential and presidential rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, the Challenger address, and the theory and practice of political communication research. Among her recent books is Jimmy Carter, Human Rights, and the National Agenda (Texas A&M Press, 2008), which won the Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award, and Defining Americans: The Presidency and National Identity (Kansas 2004), which won the Gronbeck Prize for Scholarship in Political Communication. Her more than 50 articles and book chapters expand understanding of the presidency, the media, and governmental rhetoric aimed at American Indians. She is currently working on a book on Franklin Roosevelt.

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The FDR Library, with support from AT&T, Marist College and the Roosevelt Institute launches online one of its most in-demand archival collections - FDR's Master Speech File - over 46,000 pages of drafts, reading copies, and transcripts created throughout FDR's political career.

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Poster showing figure of Liberty with the American flag.

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Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2001698256/, Public Domain

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Be a Big Wheel- The Male Breadwinner - "Jap...Your'e Next! We'll Finish the Job!"

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Brandon T. Locke, http://brandontlocke.com/projects/militarymasculinitycomplex/bigwheel_breadwinner_japyourenext.html,CC BY 3.0 US

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Executive Order 9066 dated February 19, 1942, in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt Authorizes the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas; 2/19/1942; Executive Orders 9041 - 9070; Executive Orders, 1862 - 2011; General Records of the United States Government, Record Group 11; National Archives Building, Washington, DC. [Online Version, https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/executive-order-9066, August 6, 2021]Public Domain Mark 1.0

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The online tool for teaching with documents, from the National Archives

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Franklin Odo, http://www.asjournal.org/59-2015/the-good-war-and-japanese-america/, CC BY-SA 3.0

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For some time now, the notion of World War II as "The Good War" has been disputed and complicated by the scholarly community. While few have gone so far as to posit both Allies and Axis as moral equivalents, it is commonly acknowledged that Winston Churchill tolerated massive civilian destruction to preserve the British Empire and that Franklin Roosevelt supported Stalin's brutality in order to blunt Hitler's blitzkrieg in Western Europe. We know, too, that the fire-bombings in Germany and atom bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were calculated to raze those cities to the ground and terrorize civilians (Kirsch). Certainly the scholarly world knows that FDR's Executive Order 9066, signed on February 19, 1942, launched America's radical experiment in ethnic cleansing by forcible removal and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans, the Nikkei, from the entire West Coast absent any semblance of due process (cf. Robinson). Still, many Americans, including those of Japanese descent, continue to believe in World War II as the "Good War" fought by "The Greatest Generation" (Brokaw).

The Nikkei community waited several decades after the end of World War II before confronting contradictions between images of the "Good War" and its own humiliating incarceration. Indeed, a similar lag existed before substantial celebration of the heroics of its World War II veterans. Beginning in the 1970s, however, there was increasing focus on the wartime racism directed towards Nikkei, two thirds of whom were American citizens. This new attention was largely due to the emergence of radical community activity and significant gains in Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies on an increasing number of American college campuses (see Quon; Huen).

It took some time before the incarceration narrative could be joined with stories, at times ironic, of military heroism to produce a powerful formula in a Redress Movement seeking an official apology and reparations. When President Ronald Reagan signed HR 442, he triggered payments of $20,000 to each of the surviving Nikkei who had been incarcerated during World War II-approximately one-half of the original 120,000 individuals. This became the only occasion in American history when the U.S. Congress and the White House assumed full responsibility and provided formal apologies with monetary reparations for their own unconstitutional actions.

Reagan's signing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 on August 10 was a major turning point in the Nikkei embrace of the "Good War" narrative. This official action apologized on behalf of the nation for the dozens of military, Department of Justice, War Relocation Authority, and other camps which operated during the war in every region of the country from Hawai'i to New York City. The earliest arrests, on or soon after December 7, involved more than one thousand individuals, overwhelmingly male and immigrant, who had been identified by the FBI as potentially "disloyal." They had been profiled, beginning in the 1930s, years before Pearl Harbor. At least in Hawai'i, most of those arrested by the FBI were screened individually and provided the opportunity to "prove" their innocence. And, in Hawai'i, a token 2,000 individuals, half of whom who were family members of the suspects, were incarcerated, of a total Nikkei population of nearly 160,000. This community comprised over one-third of the civilian population and over one-half of some of the most critical skilled labor sectors like construction workers as well as food producers such as hog farms, poultry ranches, truck crop farms and vital sugar plantation workers (Odo 148-49). These hard facts on the ground convinced military leaders in Hawai'i and several influential civilian leaders that mass incarceration would have made the war effort in the Pacific untenable. Removing the entire Nikkei population to concentration camps on the North American continent would, in addition, overburden critical shipping capacity between Hawai'i and the West Coast. Later, legal scholars would realize the incongruity of the fact that nearly every Nikkei in Hawai'i, the point of actual attack and the likely site of any potential Japanese invasion, had been spared forced removal and incarceration. At the least, relative stability in Hawai'i gave the lie to the government's assertion that military necessity dictated that every West Coast resident with a drop of Japanese blood be escorted at gunpoint to concentration camps. This policy followed the rationale that the Nikkei were so inscrutable that there were no reliable means to separate the loyal from the potentially disloyal.

In the meantime, there was a complex series of events which culminated in a narrative of Nikkei wartime heroism during World War II. Soon after the draft was imposed on the country in 1940, hundreds of Nikkei were already serving in the U.S. Army. Shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Army began recruiting men who could speak and read the Japanese language, anticipating the need for intelligence operations. Some 60 students, almost all Nikkei, began intensive Japanese classes at the Presidio in San Francisco. When the Nikkei were forcibly removed from the West Coast, the school moved to Minnesota. The University of Hawai'i Army ROTC had been mobilized, armed, and sent to repel Japanese paratroopers who were reported preparing to storm Honolulu. Fortunately, this proved to be one of many rumors then circulating. But many of the cadets, university undergraduates, were Nikkei. They were soon invited to join the Hawai'i Territorial Guard (HTG) and relieved Army units guarding reservoirs, hospitals, food depots, power stations, and other vital installations. But on January 21, 1942, just over a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the HTG was dismissed; it was reformed the next day but the Nikkei were personae non gratae (Odo 148-49). Soon thereafter, the Nikkei were classified 4-C, enemy aliens, and prohibited from serving in the military. But the Nikkei already in the HI National Guard had been assembled and constituted a separate unit. On June 4, 1942, as the critical Battle of Midway began, a group comprised of over 1,400 Nikkei was ordered to sail to San Francisco. En route, it became the 100 th Battalion Separate (Separate, because it had no affiliation). It went into training and became the first Nikkei unit to enter combat in Europe in 1944. In the meantime, the war demanded more bodies and the War Department eventually allowed the formation of the 442 nd Regimental Combat Team, expecting roughly equal numbers of volunteers from mainland concentration camps and free Nikkei in Hawai'i. But the call for volunteers from within barbed wire enclosures was a difficult and controversial policy and not many incarcerated Nikkei were motivated to enlist. Far greater numbers joined from Hawai'i and the unit trained in Mississippi before shipping to Italy where it joined the 100 th Battalion which became part of the 442 nd; the 442nd went on to compile a bloody record of heroism and sacrifice, becoming the most decorated military unit, for its size and length of service, in American military history. This too, was a story largely untold, even within the Nikkei community, especially on the mainland.

To be sure, some attention had always been provided to the combat record of the Nikkei, especially in Hawai'i, where the distribution of lists of wounded and killed were becoming a daily routine by late 1944. Upon return to the Islands, veterans made good use of the GI Bill to attend college and proceed to advanced degrees in law, medicine, business, and the liberal arts. By the early 1950s, so many had secured elected Territory-wide office that anti-Japanese American fears would resurface. Indeed, by 1954, the Japanese American veterans, in tandem with powerful organized labor, led a newly resurgent Democratic Party to a stunning takeover of the previously solidly-Republican legislature, a phenomenon dubbed the "Bloodless Revolution" (Coffman 8). On the West Coast, Nikkei returning from camps or combat were sometimes greeted with hostility and gunfire.

With the rise of popular elected officials to the U.S. Congress, especially highly decorated combat heroes, even more attention was focused on the military exploits of the segregated 100 th Infantry Battalion/442 nd Regimental Combat Team which fought in Europe with great distinction. In contrast, during those first postwar decades only bits and pieces of information were released about the Military Intelligence Service which was credited with securing more information against a wartime enemy than ever before in the history of modern warfare. Eventually, some six thousand men, and dozens of women, nearly all of whom were Nikkei, provided a secret weapon through Japanese language interception, interrogation, and translation of captured documents from the Japanese military, thus securing tactical combat advantage as well as strategic superiority. But since the Army had sworn the men to secrecy, few reports of their extraordinary service and heroism became public knowledge after the war ended. This silence ended when the Nikkei war record was joined to the incarceration experience in the highly politicized drama leading to Redress in 1988.

The military record compiled in general, by World War II Nikkei was indeed extraordinary. In 2000, some 55 years after the end of the war, President Bill Clinton awarded 21 Medals of Honor to Nikkei who had fought in World War II. To put this into perspective, the U.S. awarded 465 Medals of Honor for World War II service; Japanese Americans thus earned over 20 percent of the total although comprising a miniscule portion of combat troops. The Congressional Gold Medal (CGM) is the highest honor conferred by the U.S. Congress. George Washington was its first recipient. On October 5, 2010 the CGM was presented by the 111th Congress to veterans of the segregated 100th Infantry Battalion, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the Military Intelligence Service by Public Law 111-254.

From 1945 into the early 1970s, a period of nearly three decades, critical constitutional and civil rights issues emanating from the largest forced removal of a population on the basis of race in the history of the United States, were largely silenced, even within Japanese American communities. Stories began to emerge, in Asian American studies classes in college, from students who had just learned that the World War II "camps" in which their parents had been confined, had not really been summer camps like the ones they enjoyed. Scholars soon began publishing a torrent of articles and books denouncing the euphemisms used to describe the forced removal ("evacuation") and the concentration camps ("relocation centers") which masked the unconstitutional, race-based, official actions (see, e.g., Yamamoto et al.). In one of the earliest public demands for redress, Edison Uno called upon his fellow Japanese American Citizens League members to pursue federal government action-but "his really lone call for redress in the early 1970s" went unheeded at the time ("Uno").

But once the nation blessed the recognition of Nikkei World War II heroism "in spite" of the forced removal and incarceration, dozens of new exhibits, memorials, and monuments began to emerge. Two major historical interpretations formed a linear master narrative for the Nikkei and World War II: first, the Nikkei were indiscriminately and unconstitutionally removed from homes and work and placed wholesale in barbed wire enclosed camps; in spite of this humiliating rejection by their own country, the only one they knew, the community served heroically by refraining from behavior which would disrupt the war effort and, moreover, by serving in combat with ferocity, skill, and determination. Second, the 1988 Civil Liberties Act, which formally apologized for the nation's action and provided $20,000 to each individual who had been incarcerated and who was still alive at the date of the signing, was a testament to the correctness of the historical narrative presented to the American public over the past half-century. It was also politically palatable and extremely useful to suggest that such an apology and redress were hallmarks of a truly "great nation" able and willing to bear responsibility for its own wrongdoing. The Nikkei narrative thus became further justification for proclaiming World War II as "The Good War" via "The Greatest Generation."

These interpretations may reflect the positivist attitude of many, if not most Nikkei but it is now widely contested by scholars whose publications over the last four decades have tended to emphasize the casualties of the war and the narrative. On the domestic front: there has been much more documentation of acts of resistance to the incarceration, whether judicial cases, including the famous Supreme Court cases of Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui and Mitsuye Endo or the equally famous coram nobis cases which vacated the convictions of Korematsu, Hirabayashi, and Yasui in the 1980s (see Yamamoto et al, 221-327). Memoirs of internees/survivors including Yasutaro Soga and Otokichi Ozaki have been published; and documentaries like Emiko Omori's Rabbit in the Moon (2001) and Frank Abe's Conscience and the Constitution (2000), have provided award-winning versions of the camp experience. The latter famously included the young men who, when the U.S. determined to conscript Nikkei in 1944, directly from the concentration camps in which they were then being held, decided to protest by resisting the draft (until released) and were tried, convicted and imprisoned. This counter-narrative has not yet peaked and promises to continue into the near future.

The military heroism narrative, however, has continued largely intact even though there was an early scholarly study of a Japanese American military unit which was notorious for its negative behavior when angered by racial provocation, demonstrating that not all Nikkei were model soldiers. Tamotsu Shibutani's The Derelicts of Company K: A Sociological Study of Demoralization has been conspicuously ignored since its publication by the University of California Press in 1978. Nikkei who publicly and militantly protested the incarceration of their families did so in other military units as well. The 1800 th Engineer General Service Battalion included a large company of Japanese Americans who were kept under surveillance while serving in construction projects in the South ("1800th Engineer"). This story, too, has largely been ignored. In the meantime, a deluge of books and films honoring the heroism of Nikkei combat troops continues to inundate the nation.

The master narrative of the "good Japanese American" community which endured unjust incarceration with dignity while their young men nonetheless fought in the U.S. military with splendid courage and to great effect thus continues its journey. There are signs of contestation: much of the recent scholarly literature on the World War II incarceration experience focuses on protest and continues to erode earlier accounts of heroic and fatalistic endurance (see Muller; Lyon). But on balance the mainstream narrative maintains its hold on the population, including the Nikkei communities now increasingly evident in public history venues including numerous memorials, monuments, films/videos, and exhibitions now gracing half-a-dozen states and the Nation's Capital.

Notes

Works Cited

"1800th Engineer General Service Batallion." Densho Encyclopedia: The Japanese American Legacy Project. 1997-2014. Web. 7 Jan. 2015. < http://encyclopedia.densho.org/1800th%20Engineer%20General%20Service%20Battalion/>.

Brokaw, Tom. The Greatest Generation. New York: Random House, 1998. Print.

Coffman, Tom. Catch A Wave: A Case Study of Hawaii's New Politics. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1972. Print.

Conscience and the Constitution. Dir. Frank Abe. DVD. 2000.

Daniels, Roger. Concentration Camps North America: Japanese in the United States and Canada during World War II. 1971. Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1993. Print.

Gessner, Ingrid. From Sites of Memory to Cybersights: (Re)Framing Japanese American Experiences. Heidelberg: Winter, 2007. Print. American Studies - A Monograph Series 141.

Hawaii Nikkei History Editorial Board. Japanese Eyes American Heart: Personal Reflections of Hawaii's World War II Nisei Soldiers. Honolulu: Tendai Educational Foundation, 1998. Print.

Honda, Gail, ed. Family Torn Apart: The Internment Story of the Otokichi Muin Ozaki Family. Honolulu: U of Hawai'i P, 2012. Print.

Huen, Floyd. "The Advent and Origins of the Asian American Movement in the San Francisco Bay Area: A Personal Perspective." Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment. Ed. Steve Louie and Glenn Omatsu. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 2006. 277-83. Print.

Lyon, Cherstin. Prisons and Patriots: Japanese American Wartime Citizenship, Civil Disobedience, and Historical Memory. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2012. Print.

Kirsch, Adam. "Is World War II Still 'the Good War'?" The New York Times, Sunday Book Review 27 May 2011. BR 10. Print.

Louie, Steve, and Glenn Omatsu, eds. Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 2006. Print.

McNaughton, James. Nisei Linguists: Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service during World War II. Washington, DC: U.S. Army, 2006. Print.

Muller, Eric. Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001. Print.

Murray, Alice Yang. Historical Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2008. Print.

"Museum Exhibitions on Incarceration." Densho Encyclopedia: The Japanese American Legacy Project. 1997-2014. Web. 7 Jan. 2014. < http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Museum%20exhibitions%20on%20incarceration/>.

The National Japanese American Memorial Foundation. 2014. Web. 7 Jan. 2015. http://www.njamf.com/.

"Nikkei." Densho Encyclopedia: The Japanese American Legacy Project. 1997-2014. Web. 7 Jan. 2015. < http://encyclopedia.densho.org/Nikkei/>.

Odo, Franklin. No Sword to Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawai'i during World War II. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2004. Print.

Quon, Merilynne Hamano. "Individually We Contributed, Together We Made a Difference." Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment. Ed. Steve Louie and Glenn Omatsu. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center, 2006. 207-19. Print.

Rabbit in the Moon. Dir. Emiko Omori. Prod. Emiko Omori and Chizuko Omori. DVD. Wabi Sabi Production, New Day Films, 2001.

Robinson, Greg, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2001. Print.

Shibutani, Tamotsu. The Derelicts of Company K: A Sociological Study of Demoralization. Berkeley: U of California P, 1978. Print.

Soga, Yasutaro, Life Behind Barbed Wire: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawaii Issei. Honolulu: U of Hawai'i P, 2007. Print.

"Uno, Edison Tomimaro (1929-1976)." Japanese American History: An A-to-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present. Ed. Brian Niiya. Los Angeles: Japanese American National Museum, 1993. 400. Print.

Yamamoto, Eric, Margaret Chon, Carol Izumi, Jerry Kang, and Frank Wu. "Note: Terminology." Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment. Ed. Eric Yamamoto et al. 2nd ed. New York: Wolters Kluwer, 2013. 19-22.

Yoo, David. "Captivating Memories: Museology, Concentration Camps, and Japanese American History." American Quarterly 48.4 (Dec 1996): 680-99. Print.

Yamamoto, Eric, Margaret Chon, Carol Izumi, Jerry Kang, and Frank Wu, eds. Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment. 2nd ed. New York: Wolters Kluwer, 2013.

Author

Franklin Odo is the John Jay McCloy Visiting Professor of American Institutions and International Diplomacy at Amherst College. He was Founding Director of the Asian Pacific American Center at the Smithsonian Institution and Chief of the Asian Division, Library of Congress. Odo was on the faculty when Asian American Studies was established at UCLA. He has taught at the University of Hawai'i, University of Pennsylvania, Hunter College, Princeton, and Columbia. His book, No Sword to Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawai'i during World War II, was published by Temple University Press in 2004; he edited the Columbia Documentary History of the Asian American Experience in 2002. Voices from the Canefields: Folksongs from Japanese Immigrant Workers in Hawai'i was published by Oxford in 2013. He has a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Asian American Studies and a Distinguished Service Award from the Asian American Justice Center. Odo was Humanist in Residence at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities at Brown University in April 2013. He currently leads a "Theme Study on Asian American Pacific Islanders" for the National Historic Landmarks Project of the National Park System and is a member of the Curriculum and Training Committee of the National Council on Public History.

Suggested Citation

Odo, Franklin. "The Good War and Japanese America." American Studies Journal 59 (2015). Web. 6 Aug. 2021. DOI 10.18422/59-07.

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The Good War and Japanese America | American Studies Journal

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For some time now, the notion of World War II as "The Good War" has been disputed and complicated by the scholarly community. While few have gone so far as to posit both Allies and Axis as moral equivalents, it is commonly acknowledged that Winston Churchill tolerated massive civilian destruction to preserve the British Empire ...

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https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/United_States,_Japanese_Americans_Relocated_During_World_War_II_-_FamilySearch_Historical_Records, CC BY-SA 4.0

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United States

This collection includes records from 1942-1946.

This is a name index of Japanese Americans living in Washington, Oregon, and California who were relocated during World War II acquired from the National Archives, "Access to Archival Databases (AAD)." The index is part of Record Group 210, Records of the War Relocation Authority. Additional information about this collection may be found on the National Archives website.

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United States, Japanese Americans Relocated During World War II - FamilySearch Historical Records

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United States This collection includes records from 1942-1946. This is a name index of Japanese Americans living in Washington, Oregon, and California who were relocated during World War II acquired from the National Archives, "Access to Archival Databases (AAD)." The index is part of Record Group 210, Records of the War Relocation Authority.

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In 1940, Hitler did the seemingly impossible. Within a matter of weeks, Germany had managed to take the entirety of France and send the British army back across the channel. This remarkable success was widely put down to their new tactic: Blitzkrieg or 'Lightning War'.

Imperial War Museum, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yOPih9zRNs, CC-BY-SA 3.0  CC-BY-SA 2.5

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Blitzkrieg tactics explained | How Hitler invaded France WW2

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Enlargement of a section of a photo by an American F-5 plane on December 21st, 1944. Himmler had ordered the halt of gassings in November. 

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The photo shows the dismantling of the gas chambers in November-December 1944. The ruins of Crematorium IV, shown here, were destroyed by the uprising of October 7th, 1944. The picture also shows the decorative gardens planted at the end of each block in the BII area of the camp, which remained there throughout.
Yad Vashem Photo Archive, https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/auschwitz_architecture/overview.asp, Copyright by Yad Vashem (Fairuse for noncommercial and educational purposes)

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Mary Doyle Keefe was the model for the May 29, 1943, cover of the Saturday Evening Post. She died on April 22, 2015 at the age of 92.

Maria Cristina Santana, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2016.00016/full, CC BY 4.0

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Women's and Gender Studies Program, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA

During WWII, American women were asked to join in producing the "vital machinery of war" by working in factories building planes, by being nurses, and by being pilots among other jobs. Getting women to work in industries was a tremendous sales proposition as stated by Paul McNutt, the director of the War Manpower Commission in 1943. The war posters and magazine ads of the time reinforced the duty women had toward the war effort. Although women at the time were mostly occupying the private space, the war campaign of Rosie the Riveter inspired many of them to take their work to the public. This descriptive paper tried to answer the following two questions of inquiry: How did women's employment during WWII become a temporary empowerment and what short and long-term changes in women's lives were brought about by the war campaign of Rosie the Riveter. While the short-term changes brought women back to the private space and domesticity, some of the conclusions of the long-term changes in women's lives dealt with variations in the workspace, salary, and military benefits. The influence of how empowered women felt following Rosie the Riveter is an inconclusive collection of the voices of those women during and after WWII.

Introduction

The war campaign marketed to women during WWII made a significant contribution to gender roles in the United States. The campaign depicted women as loyal supporters of the "Boys" in the military by conserving resources, by keeping quiet, and by taking jobs with new skills. At the time of WWII most women, particularly married women, stayed at home taking care of their home and children. The gender roles of the time were divided between private and public space. Most women controlled and managed the private (home) space, while men easily navigated the public space. Nevertheless, not all women followed this pattern of domesticity since many poor and unmarried women had to work in the public space from an early age. Any improvement in working conditions and salary were a welcoming sight. Up to 6 million women joined the workforce between 1942 and 1945. This amazing number was a direct effect of the massive war campaign.

Duty and love for country were two very moving reasons for women to answer the call to work defending the United States. Betty Jeanne Boggs worked in a plant making planes at age 17. She describes her experience performing her patriotic duty as " I worked on a war plant and it was one of the things you did when your country was at war, and it had been an enjoyable experience. Even today, I am very proud of that (war) job. I can always say, 'Hey, I was a riveter during World War II'" ( Gluck, 1987).

This descriptive paper is trying to answer the following two questions of inquiry:

* How did women's employment during WWII become a temporary empowerment?

* What short- and long-term changes in women's lives were brought about by the war campaign of Rosie the Riveter?

Definition of Womanhood

In the latter part of the nineteenth century women in the United States strived to be true by following the definition of womanhood at the time. Women tried to be pious, chaste, domestic, and subservient. Historian Welter (1966) defines womanhood and places women on the verge of perfection when she explains that any sensible woman would follow the four pillars of true womanhood (piety, chastity, domesticity, and subservience). If we were to examine each one of those pillars, we could see that each one was tied to the relationship a woman had with the church, her husband or father, and later with her own children. These pillars restricted woman on choice and on destiny while, at the same time, giving a false sense of achievement and belonging.

The definition of womanhood was not only dependent on women's ability, choice, or skills but also on rules of behavior. As a child is guided on how to behave, women were also instructed on what to do in order to be respectable. The issue here is not that the norms were spelled out but that any infraction was considered deviant. Averting from the expected behavior paid a very high price. At the time, women had no legal standings to inherit, own property, retain child custody, or maintain full wages. The same rules of engagement did not apply to men of any social class.

Problem

This inherited behavior for respectable women lingered into the twentieth century. Albeit women had many advances, including the right to vote in 1920 with the 19th Amendment, they continued to occupy most of the private spaces.

Background

In the United States, 1848 marks the beginning of the fight for Women's rights with the Seneca Falls convention in New York. The now famous "Declaration of Sentiments" was drafted at the convention. Local feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton planned this convention with women and men of similar beliefs. Some of those present included Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony's sister Mary Anthony, and their father. In this convention at the Wesleyan Church, local citizens and anti-slavery leaders met to proclaim women's rights. This marks the beginning of the First Wave of Feminism, and the social revolution it fueled until the 1970s when the Second Wave of Feminism started.

This First Wave had two main issues that proved to be a dividing force for most female leaders: women deserved rights as citizens of the United States and women should be granted the right to vote. Education was perhaps the stronghold of Stanton's argument for women's rights. Stanton was an advocate for all women to be educated in other matters besides home keeping and entertaining ( Stanton, 2007). In her essay " The Solitude of Self," Stanton speaks of self-reliance for all individuals because "we come into the world alone." Furthermore, Stanton says, "No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone..." (Stanton, p. 34). Just a few miles away, Harriet Tubman was busy safeguarding slaves into freedom and taking in many of the local aging residents. It is a matter of class division that prevented them to know one another and build coalitions. Instead, Elizabeth Cady Stanton became friends with the most prominent woman of the times, anti-slavery advocate Susan B. Anthony.

Anthony and Stanton built a long career as activist for women's rights. Anthony did most of the traveling in speaking circles, while Stanton wrote speeches and corresponded with Anthony from home. In May 1869, Stanton and Anthony formed the National Women Suffrage Association (NWSA). Their vision was to lead an association comprised solely of women, since they believed that "men in the anti-slavery movement had consistently betrayed women's interests" ( Dicker, 2008, p. 40). Although the organization was created for women's rights, the NWSA's efforts were too slow and widespread among the nation for leaders of the National Women's Party organization. Activists of the National Women's Party Alice Paul and Lucy Burns took different approaches and fought President Wilson's refusal to hear women's messages by concentrating on Washington, DC and pursuing a federal amendment. The members of the National Women's Party picketed silently outside of the White House gates for months, paraded through the streets of Washington, DC, and were harassed by the public and the police ( Dicker, 2008). Arrested, imprisoned, and force fed, Alice Paul endured very difficult conditions. But she was able to see her triumph in 1920 with the nineteenth Amendment of the United States granting the right to vote for all women of the land. Susan B. Anthony was unfortunately unable to witness this event as she passed a few years earlier.

Women and Domesticity

During the 1940s, factory work introduced hourly rate wages that gave better-paying jobs than domestic positions. Domestic help was a very popular job for poor women at the turn of the nineteenth century. Live-in domestics still regularly worked 72 or more hours a week, and "those who lived out often worked that much or more to make ends meet" ( Coble, 2006, p. 55). But working in a factory for 44-55 h a week gave twice the amount of wages to women. It is a matter of economic benefit that working in a factory or laundry was seen as a more suitable election.

Women like Marye Stumph enjoyed the mechanical work they did during the war but understood that those jobs were men's jobs that were only temporarily hers and by 1945 after massive layoffs, she then took a traditional lower paying women's work ( Gluck, 1987). Marye was not the only woman to leave her factory job or fight the layoff. Many women would have rather stayed in a higher paying job but understood the cultural code of accommodating men back in their jobs. The First Wave of Feminism completed a cycle with the right to vote and the right for education. Competitive wages with men would later be a topic during the Second Wave of Feminism. Women's work in the war industry was seen as an extension of their domestic duties. The number of marriages surged, and women were getting married at earlier ages. Scholar Ruth Milkman from CUNY says, "If there was a dominant ideology, it was patriotism. There was a real gap between the actual lifestyles and ideology for women at that time" ( Mudd, 1985, p. 16).

War jobs found women anywhere. Margarita Salazar McSweyn found out about war jobs through her customers at the beauty salon in her Latino East Los Angeles neighborhood ( Gluck, 1987). The stories about women working in the defense effort told while at the shop complemented the billboards and articles in the Spanish-language paper La Opinión.

As most men went to war, many women did too but as nurses, pilots, and factory workers-"and everyone went cheerfully, nobody had to be pushed" was the impression of flight nurse Ivalee (Lee) Holtz from Texas ( Barger, 2013).

During the war, female masculinity provided for an expansion of people's ideas of what women should be and how they might look and behave "leaving a canon of images to inform future versions of feminism" ( Knaff, 2012). One article in the Navy shipyard newsletter counseled women to "be feminine and ladylike even though you are filling a man's shoes" ( Anderson, 1981, p. 60). Women were receiving confusing messages, such as their instruction in charm courses at Boing airplane plants. This temporary empowerment allowed women to dress differently, behave in different ways, and allow for different career choices.

One of the jobs most transformed by war was that of the nurse. Their sense of improvisation and resourcefulness aided their work in less than ideal situations. Some army nurses opted for a 4-week training to become flight nurses. "Ideal situations don't exist in wartime...you don't have all the equipment...and you work with what you have" were some of the comments collected by author Judith Barger in her book Beyond the Call of Duty ( Barger, 2013, p. 212). Other jobs included clerical jobs and farming. More than 2 million new female workers entered clerical jobs ( Chafe, 1972). But yet the most remarkable leap was in farm workers. Women made up 8% of total workers in agricultural work in 1940 and 22.4% of total workers in 1945, a 14.4% increase ( Yellin, 2004, p. 66).

Women were asked to join in producing the "vital machinery of war" by performing hard labor contrary to their treatment during the 1930s, when they were told they had no right to take jobs from the men who needed to support a family ( Yellin, 2004, p. 39). The recruitment of women to war work was an open tactic enforced by newspaper ads using language inclusive of women such as, "Army ordinance, hiring inspectors, male or female. No high school education necessary." This is one of many similar messages women like Pennsylvania native Bessie Stokes read in the paper. Bessie worked at a steel mill inspecting bombshells with a pay around 75 cents an hour (more than three times from what she was making cleaning houses) ( Yellin, 2004). Getting women to enter the industry was a tremendous sales proposition as stated by Paul McNutt, the director of the War Manpower Commission in 1943 ( The Margin, 1943). The war posters and magazine ads of the time reinforced the duty women had toward the war effort.

Rosie the Riveter

In 1943, a popular song by a male quartet gave birth to the fictional character of Rosie the Riveter. The fictional Rosie was a riveter, that is, she would push a metal pin through holes in two or more plates or pieces to hold them together mostly while building bomber airplanes. The song by the Four Vagabonds talked about Rosie making history and not sipping dry martinis and munching caviar like other girls at the time. Rosie the Riveter was "everything the government wanted in a female war worker-she was loyal, efficient, patriotic, compliant and even pretty" ( Yellin, 2004, p. 43).

J. Howard Miller from Westinghouse created the "We Can Do It" war campaign and in 1942 created the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter. The Miller image had no copyright restraint and was reproduced in all sorts of formats and materials. That image of Rosie the Riveter is the one we are most familiar with today. Another Rosie image created by Norman Rockwell from 1943 illustrated the Saturday Evening Post Memorial Day weekend issue. This image is less known and captures, Mary Doyle Keefe, a telephone operator, who recently died in April 2015 at the age of 92 ( Izadi, 2015). Norman Rockwell, the most famous illustrator of the time, painted the name Rosie on Keefe's lunch box. It is very possible Rockwell heard the song for Rosie before he painted his version. Rockwell and Keefe were neighbors back in Arlington, Vermont. She was paid $10.00 to pose twice. Rockwell's image was reproduced during the war but afterward copyright issues did not allow it.

The war campaign glamorized war work, always showing that woman maintained their femininity while working in the plants. One aspect that researchers mentioned about this era is how women adapted to factory work without uniforms or safety equipment. Women shoes with metal tips were first manufactured in 1943 as a direct result of women becoming factory workers. Never before was there a need to produce such shoes on women's sizes ( Rosie the Riveter, 2009). Women welders suffered chest burns because they wore regular attires without protective aprons or gear. "We had to wear our hair in a certain way" Betty Jeanne Boggs, who worked making planes, described her working hat as one with a large brim so in case the hat would hit the machinery it would hit the brim first and alert the woman ( Gluck, 1987). An interesting fact is that women began wearing pants socially, and this movement managed to spread to factory attire. Betty Jeanne Boggs recalls "Pants were just becoming fashion for women and I felt like, gee whiz, it made me look like I was different" ( Gluck, 1987, p. 111).

Assuming a different role, the woman plant worker continued using their makeup and nail color perpetuating the established femininity of the time. Advertisers such as Hold-Pin Bobs assured the public: " Beauty is her badge of courage. It's a tonic to the war-torn nerves of those around her" ( Delano, 2000). Surveys during wartime explained that beauty products served women not only esthetically but also psychologically. Mercedes Rosebery writes, "If deprived of face powder; that they could be brave only if allowed, in addition, their lipstick, rouge, face creams, and deodorants" ( Delano, 2000). We now have photographic evidence of women welders working the torch without protective gears or aprons but wearing their lipsticks.

The war effort also confronted an issue when it came to the "unnatural" female soldier. The enlistment of women provoked a dispute over the "naturalness" of certain behaviors for women ( Knaff, 2012). This "unnatural" state as author Donna Knaff describes, happens when woman feel too comfortable assuming a "male" role in any number of areas, including the workforce and sexuality. This "unnatural state" also affects the civilian and the military lifestyles ( Knaff, 2012). "It was felt that a woman entering the formerly all-male military was assuming a more masculine identity, and this 'deviant' female masculinity became associated with lesbianism; unfeminine or 'mannish' women were therefore widely assumed to be lesbian or otherwise 'abnormal'" ( Knaff, 2012, p. 59).

Women Empowerment

Women had chances to meet and befriend outside of their neighborhoods and regular social circles. For example, Margarita Salazar McSweyn was introduced to other people and other social circles different from their pre-war friends. For example, Salazar McSweyn, a Latino woman from East L.A., dated non-Latino servicemen and frequented the Hollywood Canteen with the Civilian Defense Corps ( Gluck, 1987).

Women were able to take newer risks within their profession. The flight nurses, for example, strived to follow their Nurse Creed " I will be faithful to my training, and to the wisdom handed down to me by those who have gone before me" ( Barger, 2013). The Aerial Nurse Cops of America (ANCOA) only allowed single women of 21-35 years old to join. In addition, volunteers had to belong to their state nursing organization and pass a physical examination ( Barger, 2013). ANCOA nurses served on active duty for 3 years and agreed to work in any aircraft. The flight nurses followed the same initial rank as nurses assigned to ground medical work. With very little supplies nurses stood by their patients in flight and cared for the wounded and sick. One of those women was Elsie Ott who nursed five patients on a flight from India to Washington, DC. Her devotion and courage won her an Air Medal in 1943 and another in 1944. Ott reflected, "They (soldiers) did not know it, but it was all aspirin." Due to the altitude and various conditions, men did not receive particular medication but only aspirin ( Barger, 2013, p. 35). Ott accepted her flight wings in 1943 shortly after receiving her first Air Medal. In 1943, the first class of flight nurses was created and composed of 39 army nurses. While waiting to be sent on flight, flight nurses continued working on land, in hospitals, and in laboratories. Their work was significant to the war campaign, but it was not until 1944 that a presidential executive order named flight nurses United States Army commissioned officers, and awarded them the rights and benefits given to male officers.

Scholar Emily Yellin states that there were 11.5 million women working prior to 1940 with an additional 6.5 million who joined the workforce during the war. For a brief moment, American society considered women as fitting alternatives to men in all sorts of jobs, including building planes. Although not all jobs were working in plants, 2.5 million women went into wartime industrial jobs ( Yellin, 2004). At the height of the war in the years 1943 and 1944, 50% of all adult women were employed in this country ( Hartman, 1944).

In 1942, President Roosevelt ordered the construction of 60,000 war planes. Douglas Aircraft, one of the largest aircraft manufacturers, employed 22,000 women during the war to build bombers. The massive barracks in Southern California and in Seattle covered their rooftops with camouflage netting as well as with residential areas painted on them to simulate living spaces.

Plane building and finding pilots became an urgent necessity. Women were surprisingly called to serve as military pilots. American Ann Baumgartner Carl was a bomber test pilot in Ohio, conducting refueling tests and off-center flying in an XP-82 twin Mustang. She also conducted weight and distance tests in a B-29 in preparation for the later atomic bomb mission in Japan ( Merry, 2011). Once her children were school aged, Carl returned to aviation as a flight instructor. Other women like Teresa James from Pennsylvania never got used to flying and had no desire to return to the field. "The fear never left me to the point where I said I can be sure I can go up there and get back down. I was always on top of flying: I was fright conscious. Some people I talked to were never afraid. Maybe I was an oddball, but I was absolutely terrified" ( Merry, 2011, p. 174). The Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) and the Women Air force Service Pilots (WASP) both trained women pilots. Teresa James was a WAFS and was featured in the cover of Look magazine on February 6, 1943, as well as serving as the inspiration for the film Ladies Courageous. Teresa James was also interviewed for the film Women Combat Pilots where James said, "people's jaws dropped whenever she exited a plane at every base she flew during the war" ( Merry, 2011, p. 174). Later in life, James was denied work in American domestic airlines because she was a woman. She earned the rank of major in the Air Force Active Reserve in 1950, retiring later in 1976. Her WAFS uniform was donated to the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution. Brave women served the United States as pilots and 38 of them died while in service as a WASP ( Merry, 2011). Their positions were those of conflict, as they were needed and respected but still irrelevant when posed against male pilots.

Women and Domesticity

After the end of the war, the home front became once again the place for women. The definition of family was in jeopardy. Factors such as increased youth independence, women's labor force participation, and military service gave a sense of freedom never felt before by the young generation ( Levy, 2001). Once again, domesticity was celebrated in the postwar years as it had been in the Victorian Era. Women were asked to forget the skills they learned and the wages they earned, to once again make their families and homes the center of their lives. Magazines gave advice on laundry and preparing meals to women already burdened by raising children at home ( Dicker, 2008). Ads of shiny washing machines, dishwashers, and refrigerators enticed women to buy goods that supported their new domestic life. This was an orchestrated celebration to convince women of their renewed family obligations, taking away any dreams of moving up the ladder at work or even continuing working outside of the home. "American women also were under immense pressure from their country to protect and defend steadfastly the very idea of traditional home and family, and their central place in it, that was transforming so quickly" ( Yellin, 2004, p. 36).

Although the message was of submission, Scholar Sheila Tobias wrote in 1974 how the women working in the war effort were furious when they were forced out of the industrial work in favor of men returning from WWII ( Tobias and Anderson, 1974).

The 6 million women who worked during World War II did not return home to take care of their families but instead remained in the workforce, according to Tobias. Many left the factories for lower pay jobs. The war campaign of putting women to work outside of the home inevitably made a significant change in American women. The domesticity campaign once again used mass media to capture the attention of the population. If before, women were supporting the "boys" in war, now it was time to take care of them at home. An outpouring of psychological literature concerning the return of veterans to civilian life "reinforced women's crucial roles in the social readjustment of the veterans" ( Knaff, 2012, p. 137). Images, television shows, and advertising from the 1950s picture women back in their kitchen and taking care of children. Where are the images of women at work? Those images, while depicting reality, were not the popular messages necessary to sell kitchen appliances, new homes, and cars to the returning GI and his family. Women were "simply and utterly grateful to see their men back again, when roughly 360,000 American men had died," often happily embraced the return to traditional values ( Knaff, 2012, p. 136).

Men returned from battle to settle and marry. Many couples bought into the "American Dream" purchasing new homes and cars. Living communities utilizing concepts, such as Levittown planning, gave most White men and women a chance to own homes. Women began marrying younger and having an average of 3-4 more children than they had been in the 1930s. Additionally, the home buying market was at a relative peak. In the south of the United States, racial discrimination divided the country with segregated schools and services. The "American Dream" was not an attainable option for Black families at this time, even for Black service men returning home from the front. Scholar Bettina Berch from Barnard College talks about the experience of Black women during the war. "Often, Black men and White women were seen as equally undesirable to employers and were in competition for jobs," she said. Black women suffered the most severe discrimination, filing more than half of all suits to the Fair Employment Practices Commission during that time (1942-1945) ( Mudd, 1985). It was during the war years that most minority women shifted to blue-collar jobs with higher wages. After the war, they left less jobs compared to White women ( Mudd, 1985).

A look at the Black press at that time, according to Berch, did not show a preoccupation with the war. These publications were filled with news about the Black community; winning awards, and fighting discrimination/mistreatment of Blacks. Black women favored the movement for racial justice over the women's movement Berch said, furthering the tradition of identifying with race rather than with sexuality.

Discussion on Rosie the Riveter Effects

There were several short-term effects conveyed by the Rosie the Riveter war campaign. In naming a few, one should start with salary increase. Women made three times the amount per hour working in an assembly line than as a domestic or clerk worker. Women would never again consider domestic jobs as the only choice for work. Society would adapt to these choices. These simple actions brought changes in transportation, home building, and living spaces. Through their work in factories, women gained respect from their families, from other working men, and even from their spouses by taking a paying job and developing new skills. Women administered money, many for the first time, and were able to create budgets for the family to follow. During the time of war and in most of the new factories built for plane assembly, women gained a more relaxed gender role with more physical and emotional freedom ( Fields, 1980). Their labor extended patriotism as a direct contribution to the war effort. Women were doing their share and felt proud of it.

One of the long-term changes Rosie the Riveter's image and campaign brought to the women's movement is the fact that women became a powerful force in the public space. In scholar Joanne Meyerowitz's words, "women appropriated, transformed and challenged the stereotype and the competing voices" on the domestic stereotype constructed after WWII ( Levy, 2001). The war effort to bring women to work produced a change in home dynamics that would forever change women ( Meyerowitz, 1994). The majority of war jobs, despite being high paying jobs, were reduced due to lack of demand and therefore lost. Women who took on jobs during the war did not go back to working at home but took on lower paying jobs. Many of those women became clerks and worked in offices after the war, creating a tremendous impact on the connotation of being a secretary. This shift turned it into a gendered job, that is, more women were secretaries than men after this point. Such phenomena continue in today's workforce and are a direct result of those "after war" days.

How did 6 million women adapt to lower salaries? Women workers would not refuse their high paying jobs without complaints. It was in this act that women again were targeted for a mass communication campaign, calling them to take care of their homes. It is no coincidence that marriage licenses and birth certificates increased during the 1950s. Domesticity might have made a comeback completely if it was not for those brave women who changed their roles during the war. For instance, after the war, women veterans were not given military benefits because they were considered dependents and not providers ( Knaff, 2012). A decade after the war ended women pilots were pinned with stars and medals. Military women today receive all the same benefits as men. Their participation in WWII allocated them into a separate category, although not fighting on the front with the Army, women became a part of the war effort as nurses, pilots, and engineers.

Another long-term effect of the war campaign of Rosie the Riveter was the fact that gender roles and reconversion took a social backseat to the needs of the veterans returning home. Although the women's movement was not dead, it was definitely not in the minds of thousands of women living during this time period in the United States. The hard lesson to be learned was that women had to relinquish the jobs and the new opportunities they experienced during the war to reward men.

Yet, a long-term effect for women came as traditional femininity. Scholar Donna Knaff discusses how the gender reconversion took place and took away any masculinity given to women during the war period. The temporary empowerment of using men's tools and wearing men's trousers was gone. Women went back to the skirt and petticoat keeping their hair long and their lipstick on. Normalcy for women meant a return to the home and domesticity as dependents and not providers. Although women were given the message of empowerment by taking powerful work positions as a patriotic stand, now their patriotic duty was to contribute to the return to all things "normal" and their place back at home ( Knaff, 2012).

In the workforce, Rosie the Riveter and the rest of the WWII war campaign urging to bring women to work, provoked massive changes in work regulations-from shifts, to clothing, to bathroom space. Women working outside of domestic life were accepted, encouraged, and looked upon as patriotic during a short period in time. But it opened the possibilities for married and single women, young and old, poor and rich, White or Black, to work and become providers for their homes. Those women interested in the military joined the armed forces and received military benefits like men did during WWII. It took longer for women than men in this process of recognition of merit and benefits, but without the Rosie the Riveter campaign it would have taken longer.

Some women went to other low-paying jobs, others went back to the home, while others fought to keep their work. No matter how you see it, the women of the pre-WWII era were transformed into a new type of women ( Kerber, 2002). The Second Wave of Feminism was two decades away waiting for homemakers to understand their feelings of unfulfilled existence. A middle class woman would awaken the public discussion on gender roles when she wrote "The Feminine Mystique."

Betty Friedan, although not a perfect feminist, was a strong activist for the educated woman turned mother and homemaker. She found a point of tension between a woman's life-lived for others-and her individual pursuit of happiness. She became a symbol of empowerment and, although her efforts were neither inclusive nor diverse, she gave a voice to the growing concern of the Women's Movement. This movement would go on to be seen as a struggle against sexual harassment, reproductive freedom, work rights, and sexual preference acceptance. Friedan brought feminism back into the mainstream discussion and in politics. It was never dormant, it never died, and it was only alive in the minds of many activists who continued fighting in unions, state and local governments and in the fields of education. The Rosie the Riveter campaign showed women the way to change and improve their lives, not as wives or daughters but as individuals. Once that revolution started, nothing remained the same. Publicity, mass communication, popular media, and even television shows incorporated the same message of protecting family structure and the future of a whole nation. The women who worked in those factory lines building ships and planes still remember the feeling of achievement after finishing work. Their voices and comments were shared in this paper. Many are dead today but their story is alive, their contribution is remembered and their legacy continues.

Further Studies

Although some literature has been written about the every day lives of women living in the United States during WWII more academic work should be published on the subject. The timing is of primary importance since many women who witnessed those days die annually without leaving their stories. Their sacrifices, lifestyles, and gender roles can guide a whole generation on the implications of gender roles and what it means for a nation to be at war.

Study Limitations

This researcher read accounts of WWII women's stories given by them to other authors. No original interviews were conducted for this paper. The author is aware that it is imperative to save their stories. Perhaps an idea for another study could be comparing WWII women to other war period women (Cold War, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, and Iraqi Freedom) and to shed some light into the changing roles of women in the military and during war times. In light of recent violence against women in the military by military personnel, a study of women in the military continues to be of importance to the fight for equality.

Conclusion

War campaigns are usually dismissed as propaganda instruments. While war posters and propaganda messages are not exclusive to the United States or WWII, the campaign of Rosie the Riveter gave face to a timely change in gender roles. It portrayed a woman figure dressed as a riveter and showed physical strength. Both symbols of physical strength and factory work are a commodity of the times. It remains unusual to see women doing mechanical work. Despite the country's need for workers in the assembly line, women made a conscientious decision to better their financial situation and to contribute to the war machine. It was not an easy task. Women had to look for outside support in the case of raising children and keeping house. Others had to adapt to a work schedule and changes in their lifestyle. Women factory workers were not even dressed properly, leaving them at the mercy of work accidents. Many women never worked side by side with men. Others were new to higher salaries and new developed skills. It is not coincidence that some women felt rancor by leaving their high paying factory work for less pay once men returned from the war.

A temporary empowerment gave birth to a massive war effort to bring women to the workforce-not in all capacities but in areas needed by the war machine. During WWII, their involvement moved them a step closer to equality. Women were flight nurses, pilots, riveters, builders, and educators. It is unfortunate that women during WWII had to wait on benefits and accolades. Some women have only recently been given the commanding stars they deserved. But their legacy is irrevocable. The women of today would be unable to imagine serving in the military without having the precedence of so many other "Rosies" and of their work and sacrifice.

Author Contributions

Dr. Santana is the Director of the Women's and Gender Studies program at the College of Arts and Humanities. Her area of teaching is First and Second Wave Feminism. She presented this paper in the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow in May 2015.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding

The author would like to thank the reviewers of the conference "Zverev Conference on War" (2015) at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow, for their insight and comments to this manuscript.

References

Appendix

Mary Doyle Keefe was the model for the May 29, 1943, cover of the Saturday Evening Post. She died on April 22, 2015 at the age of 92.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS.

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From Empowerment to Domesticity: The Case of Rosie the Riveter and the WWII Campaign

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During WWII, American women were asked to join in producing the "vital machinery of war" by working in factories building planes, by being nurses, and by being pilots among other jobs. Getting women to work in industries was a tremendous sales proposition as stated by Paul McNutt, the director of the War Manpower Commission in 1943.

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Whitehall, https://www.maxpixel.net/Memorial-Women-London-Whitehall-Ww2-Wwii-36450, CC0 1.0