Posts Tagged ‘Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park’

Spruced up SS Red Oak Victory ship comes home to Richmond

posted on November 16, 2011

Shipyard No. 3 fire truck towed to the dock from Spanish Fork, Utah

SS Red Oak Victory coming back into Richmond Shipyard No. 3 dock

By Ginny McPartland

Heritage writer

Plenty has been happening lately at the site of the World War II Kaiser Richmond Shipyards where the decade-old Rosie the Riveter national park is taking shape. Maybe the most exciting event for the community and history buffs was the recent return and the ceremonial relaunch of the SS Red Oak Victory ship.

Red Oak Victory edges up to the Richmond dock after its facelift.

The ship, built in 1944 in the Richmond shipyards, was greeted by a small enthusiastic crowd when it returned from BAE Systems dry dock in San Francisco where it got a major facelift. The Red Oak was towed back across the bay on Oct. 14, just one day before the annual Home Front Festival, an event celebrated both on the ship and at the Craneway Pavilion just across the channel.

The Home Front festival honors workers who helped build ships in Henry Kaiser’s WWII Richmond shipyards. The shipyard’s medical care program for workers and their families was the genesis of today’s Kaiser Permanente Health Plan.

Old recovered shipyard fire truck part of the fun

Arriving almost simultaneously on the Red Oak dock was a newly recovered shipyard wartime fire truck found by chance in Spanish Fork, Utah. The Richmond Museum of History, savior of the Red Oak from the Mothball Fleet 13 years ago, is also sponsoring the restoration of the long-lost Ford fire truck, which the museum purchased and volunteer Anthony D’Ambrosio of Potenza Transport towed back to Richmond.

1940s era Ford insignia on shipyard fire truck to be restored.

Headlight on the old fire truck

The fire truck still sports the original, yet time-worn, shipyard designation: “Kaiser Co. Inc., Richmond Shipyard No.3, but the interior, engine and other moving parts are in pretty bad shape. Lois Boyle, president of the Richmond Museum Association, estimates the relic can be restored for about $5,000, funds the association hopes to collect from donors.

Marian Sauer, matron of honor, cracked the champagne bottle across the replica bow of the Red Oak Victory.

The community excitement over the Red Oak’s restored grandiosity gave rise to its Veterans’ Day rechristening attended by an audience of about two hundred. Guests climbed the gangplank to the deck and descended the steel ladders to squeeze into the ship’s former cargo hold that today houses a gift shop and museum.

Lois Boyle, president of the museum association and a key figure in the acquisition and renovation of the ship

The crowd made up of veterans, former shipyard workers, museum volunteers, local dignitaries and lovers of history were entertained by color guards, World War II singers and a reenactment of the ship’s blessing.

Marie Sauer, a Rosie and the day’s matron of honor, shattered the ceremonial champagne bottle over a flag-draped replica of the Red Oak bow, exploding the bubbly over herself and revelers standing nearby. Chevron Oil Company, whose wartime role in Richmond parallels the shipyards, hosted a buffet lunch following the ceremony.

Red Oak Victory fans greeted the ship as it returned to its home on the Richmond waterfront. They also had a chance to inspect the recovered 1940s shipyard fire truck.

More chances to visit park

If you missed the recent doings at the Richmond waterfront, you still have a chance to experience the Rosie park and the Red Oak Victory ship in upcoming events. A Vision for Victory ship tour, conducted by museum volunteers, is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 3. You can also take a bus tour of the far-flung historic park with ranger Betty Soskin on Saturdays, Dec. 3, Dec. 10 and Dec. 17.

Park rangers also conduct Wednesday and Saturday afternoon tours of the newly restored Maritime Child Development Center at Florida Avenue and Harbour Way in Richmond, also part of the Rosie park. An upcoming tour is scheduled for Dec. 17.  You need to make a reservation for the school tour and the bus tour. For more information, call 510-232-5050, ext. 0, or go to www.nps.gov/rori.

For more about the Red Oak Victory go to: http://www.richmondmuseumofhistory.org/.

Photos by Ginny McPartland

 

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New novel tracks lives of fictional Kaiser Shipyard Rosies

posted on October 11, 2011

By Ginny McPartland

Heritage writer

Dorothea Lange photo on the cover of "Wax"

At first glance, one would think the newly released novel “Wax” is about women working in the West Coast shipyards during World War II. Famed photographer Dorothea Lange’s powerful photo of proud, bold “girls” stomping through the yard implies a story about their struggles and triumphs in that setting.

Once inside, however, the reader pretty quickly understands that the stories to be told play out far from the shipyards. Three young women who met in Henry J. Kaiser’s Richmond Shipyards in 1943 formed friendships that endured for decades. The “Rosies” earned a bit of freedom and independence that they would refuse to relinquish when they returned home.

First-time novelist Therese Ambrosi Smith says she wrote the book about “Rosie the Riveter” to spark an interest among today’s young people, especially girls. Rosie national park Ranger Elizabeth Tucker turned Smith on to actual Rosie oral histories, and the would-be author was off on her quest.

World War II’s sociological impacts explored

Smith proclaims the novel’s premise on the front cover: “Pearl Harbor Changed Everything.” Historians know this fact, and they have written millions of words about the social, economic and political effects of World War II.

Author Therese Ambrosi Smith

Smith’s approach is to place a spotlight on personal lives. She creates three main characters, Tilly Bettencourt from a small town near Half Moon Bay, California; Doris Jura from Pittsburg, PA, both in their early 20s; and slightly older Sylvia Manning, 32, from Kansas City. She shows a smattering of their shipyard employment experiences and then places them back in their peacetime lives. These war-time experiences will color all they do from then on.

Author Smith takes the theme of women’s independence full bore as the young women return home and establish a candle factory on their own. (Yes, that’s where the book title comes from!) Such a bold move had seemed impossible before the war. Despite obstacles, Doris and Tilly’s dream comes to fruition.

Life lessons learned in the shipyards

Other life lessons are to be learned as well. At the shipyards, the girls awaken to the idea that blacks should be treated equally with whites. Smith writes of Tilly’s encounter with a caring black coworker who helps her to the clinic when she receives a serious eye injury and is temporarily blind.

Later, Tilly ponders the experience: “I don’t know why,” she (Tilly) told Doris, “but this whole thing has rattled me. I mean being helped by a colored.” Smith as narrator explains: “There weren’t any coloreds in Montara or Moss Beach; she had no history with them.”

Tilly then comes to the realization: “The work was dangerous and difficult, and everyone who did it, regardless of color or background, was helping to win the war. They were all in it together.”

Doris chimes in with: “I feel like we are seeing the world up close here. It looks different.”

The racial theme doesn’t play out when the girls return home after the war. But another issue – sexual orientation – looms large for Tilly. Feeling attraction to other women, the beautiful Tilly has to fight off the eligible bachelors of her home town. She lives in her own personal hell as her parents and others push her toward marriage. In a 1940s world, she has no idea where to turn for help or understanding.

Although this book is fairly light on the historical significance of the Rosie experience, I enjoyed it. The characters are creditable and the description of the settings took me there. At times, I felt like I was sitting in Tilly’s uncle’s comfortable café perched on the coast near Half Moon Bay.

The Red Oak Victory has been renovated and will be open for the Home Front Festival Oct. 15

More about Rosies at the Home Front Festival Saturday October 15

Learn more about the Rosie experience from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. this Saturday at the Fifth Annual Home Front Festival in the Craneway Pavilion at the southern end of Harbour Way in Richmond, California. Admission is free.

Area historical societies, the Rosie national park and the Pacific Region of the National Archives will have exhibits and information to share with visitors. Kaiser Permanente Heritage Resources will have displays highlighting the pioneering medical staff who launched the Permanente Medical Care Program in the Kaiser Shipyards during the war.

The Red Oak Victory, a World War II ship built at the Richmond Kaiser Shipyards, will be open on Saturday for visitors to tour. The ship, owned by the Richmond Museum of History, is just returning to the shipyard Friday from dry dock where it has received an extensive renovation.

Lena Horne helped launch the SS George Washington Carver in Richmond, May 1943

Historian Steve Gilford will debut his new book on Saturday aboard the ship. Gilford will be signing the book, “Build ‘Em by the Mile, Cut ‘Em off by the Yard, How Henry Kaiser and the Rosies helped Win World War II,” from 2 to 4 p.m. on the ship. Shuttles will ferry visitors between the Craneway and the Red Oak.

Lena Horne tribute at USO Dance Friday, Oct. 14

The Home Front party actually starts on Friday night with the Rosie the Riveter 1940s USO Dance, featuring a tribute to Lena Horne, also in the Craneway Pavilion. Robin Gregory will play the role of the legendary singer. Also on the bill are the Singing Blue Stars, Junius Courtney’s Big Band and the dance group Swing or Nothing!

Tickets for the dance may be purchased online at www.HFF2011.com or by calling the Richmond Chamber of Commerce at 510-234-3512. Advance tickets are $20 general and $15 for seniors; tickets may be purchased at the door for $25 general, $20 senior. Anyone showing a military i.d. or wearing an armed forces uniform will be admitted for free.

Event: Home Front festival

Description: Historical exhibits and 1940s-era entertainment

When: Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Oct. 15, 2011

Where: Craneway Pavilion (end of South Harbour Way [1414] in Richmond, California)

Admission: Free

Information: www.HomeFrontFestival.com

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Richmond rejuvenation champions enjoy fruits of their labor

posted on September 24, 2011

By Ginny McPartland

Heritage writer

Rosie park curator Veronica Rodriguez explains the set up of the child care center's dining area.

The Bay Area community of Richmond – birthplace of Permanente medicine – has been bustling this year with activities related to the commemoration of the California city’s role as a World War II shipbuilding hub. The economically depressed and high-crime community is pulling together to create positive change in its image and livability. Recent achievements give its diverse population reason to be proud and to celebrate.

Two major developments – renovation and reopening of the stellar Maritime Child Development Center and significant progress on the conversion of a shipyard oil house into a visitor’s center for the Rosie national park – can be called milestones in the city’s quest for its place in the sun.

The renovated Maritime Child Development Center rear view. Note portholes. The bottom was the end of the fire escape chute for kids in the early days.

These successes are putting smiles on the faces of Richmond’s movers and shakers who have worked for years to bring them to fruition.

The $9 million renovation of the child care center, built in 1943 by Henry Kaiser with federal funds, was a collaboration of many community groups – The Richmond Community Foundation’s Nystrom United Revitalization Effort (NURVE), the city of Richmond, the Rosie the Riveter Trust, Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park, Richmond College Prep Schools and West Contra Costa Unified School District. (For more on the preschool program, see “Sounds of children return to Richmond historic child care center”  posted here on August 25.)

Local champions play major role

Colorful play equipment is part of the center's new look.

Richmond City Councilman and local architect Tom Butt has been a constant cheerleader for the project for the past six years. Rosie Trust leaders Jane Bartke and Diane Hedler, Kaiser Permanente’s representative on the trust, among others, have been relentless in efforts to secure federal financing for restoration of the national historic landmark. The trust hired its first executive director, Marsha Mather-Thrift, this year to help with its continuing fundraising work to support the park.

The restored center’s future will be celebrated with a grand reopening 10 a.m. Thursday, September 29, at 1014 Florida Avenue (on the corner of Harbour Way). Host Joan Davis, president and chief executive officer of the Richmond Community Foundation whose office is in the center, has invited the public to come to see the jewel of a school inside and out.

The renovation features the reuse of many of the original materials, including the transforming of bunk bed wood into office partitions. The inside also features: the original redwood on the stairways, double banisters – one at a child’s level and one at an adult’s level – as well as the preservation of a fire escape chute intended for the children in the event of a fire. (It was never used and has been closed up at the outdoor end.)

Note double bannisters, one for children, one for adults.

The Maritime center is considered a part of the multi-site Rosie the Riveter national park, and park service curators have created a time warp for visitors to get a glimpse of how the original preschool classrooms looked. The center was the site of an exemplary child care program for the children of Kaiser Richmond Shipyard workers and was considered way ahead of its time.

National park visitor’s center on the horizon

The Rosie park visitor’s center – in discussion stages for several years – is under construction and scheduled to open to the public early next year. With interpretive exhibits, a theater, offices, and a place to meet for tours, the long-awaited center will provide a focus for the far-flung national park.

Established in 2000, the park consists of the Rosie the Riveter Memorial on the Richmond waterfront, the Red Oak Victory ship docked at the former Shipyard 3 off Canal Boulevard, an office in downtown Richmond, the Atchison Village housing tract and community center, the Ford Assembly Plant, known today as the Craneway, and now the Maritime Child Development Center.

Child-sized sinks shined up for the new kids.

 

The oil house/visitor’s center is adjacent to the beautifully restored Craneway Pavilion, originally the Ford plant designed by the great industrial architect Albert Kahn in 1930.  The cavernous structure that once housed a World War II tank factory today hosts weddings, wine-tastings, conferences and festivals. Its owner, local developer Eddie Orton, has won a number of architectural awards for the integrity and impeccability of the restoration.

More good vibes out of Richmond

A number of other developments in the city of Richmond have to be considered positive harbingers for its future:

The Richmond Municipal Natatorium, also called the Richmond Plunge, an indoor swimming pool constructed in 1926, has been renovated and reopened with community funding. (You can actually go swimming there like I did in the 1950s and 1960s before it fell into disrepair.)

View from inside the indoor fire chute.

The Richmond Museum of History, in the old Carnegie Library on Sixth and Nevin, has a new director, Inna Soiguine, who was formerly with the centuries old Russian State Hermitage museum in St. Petersburg. Ms. Soiguine has brought wonderful exhibits to the museum, including the current Richmond Day at the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915 exhibit and a show of Dorothea Lange World War II Richmond photos opening on October 8. http://www.richmondmuseumofhistory.org/calendar.htm

Revitalization efforts continue

Even though this project was completed in 2009, it bears mentioning for those who haven’t been to Richmond in a while or at all. The bold brick structures known as the Richmond Civic Center have been revitalized and brought up to seismic standards. The remarkable part is that the renovated center, originally imagined by local architect Timothy Pflueger who also designed Oakland’s Paramount Theatre, looks exactly the same as it did in 1949.

Richmond Civic Center off Macdonald Avenue. Designed by Paramount Theatre architect Timothy Pflueger in 1946, the center was updated in 2009.

The Main Street Initiative, a dynamic Richmond group working to revitalize historic Macdonald Avenue, is always promoting the downtown area and bringing cheerful and uplifting events like the recent Spirit and Soul Festival to the people of the city. The group encourages downtown business development and sponsors workshops for entrepreneurs. http://www.richmondmainstreet.org/

The Macdonald Avenue “Main Street” commercial area has also benefited from the city of Richmond Community Redevelopment Agency’s 2009 streetscape renovation project, including new sidewalks, curbs, light stands, and the placement of “Macdonald Avenue Landmarks” monuments commemorating historic sites on five downtown street corners. The city and other agencies have also helped downtown residents with funding to renovate the Nevin Community Center, which reopened to fanfare in March.

On Saturday, Oct. 15, the public is invited to join in a celebration of Richmond’s rich past from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the Craneway Pavilion at the south end of Harbour Way.  The Fifth Annual Richmond Home Front Festival will feature exhibits sponsored by the National Park Service along with many other historical groups, such as Kaiser Permanente Heritage Resources and the National Archives, Pacific Region staff.  Festivalgoers will also be treated to a wide variety of music, food and fun activities. Admission is free.  http://rcoc.com/current-events/home-front-festival/

Photos by Ginny McPartland

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Sounds of children return to Richmond historic child care center

posted on August 25, 2011

Young boys played Chinese checkers at the Maritime Child Development Center while their parents worked at the Richmond shipyards

By Ginny McPartland

Heritage writer

The stomp of little feet can again be heard in the halls of the former Maritime Child Development Center in the World War II Home Front city of Richmond, California. After a $9 million restoration project, the hammers have stopped and the children again populate the school whose walls housed a progressive child care program for the pint-sized offspring of Kaiser Shipyard workers.

A neighborhood charter school program designed to radically improve educational success of low-income minority kids opened a new site this month in the renovated Maritime structure. Richmond College Prep Schools, chartered for kindergarten through Grade 6, welcomed two classes of first graders and two classes of kindergarteners on August 11.

The two-story, 1943-built school is located at Florida Street and Harbour Way, a short distance from the former shipyard sites. Richmond College Prep Schools serve families in the Santa Fe and Coronado neighborhoods in the Iron Triangle, an area including Central Richmond known for its high rate of crime.

Maritime center as it looks today

As a joint venture among Richmond Community Foundation, the Rosie the Riveter national park, and the fundraising Rosie the Riveter Trust, the center also features a museum memorializing the original character of the center. The National Park Service staff has gathered and preserved child-sized tables and chairs, art easels, wooden toys and other artifacts from the World War II Richmond child care centers to re-create an authentic classroom environment.

The interpretive exhibits honor the female shipyard worker – the iconic Rosie the Riveter – and her male counterparts whose efforts contributed vastly to the war effort.  The exhibits will also address California’s role in World War II and its impact on civil rights, health care, child care and labor. The park service will offer public tours of the museum beginning this fall.

Renovation project not that smooth

The $9 million restoration of the historic Maritime Child Development Center was funded with federal grants and donations through the Rosie the Riveter Trust and with contributions from the city of Richmond and the West Contra Costa County school district. Rehabilitation, including the use of green techniques to preserve the building’s historic designation, began in the spring of 2010 and was expected to be completed in the spring of 2011.

The original Maritime Child Development Center had child-size furniture and fittings.

Unfortunately, the almost 70-year-old building offered unexpected problems. The 17,000-square-foot center was described in 2004 as: “Threatened and endangered, vacant and abandoned, with water damage, not seismically safe, with mold, asbestos and lead-based paint to remove, and not compliant with the American with Disabilities Act.” Add to these problems rain delays and utilities issues and it is no wonder the completion was delayed.

Child development center a historic treasure

At stake was one of the first federally built child service centers to be funded by the U.S. Maritime Commission. The center was established at the behest of industrialist Henry J. Kaiser who ran the four Richmond Shipyards. The workers in Kaiser’s West Coast shipyards in Richmond, California, and Portland, Oregon, set records for building war ships faster than any other yards. Richmond workers completed 747 Liberty and Victory ships during the wartime emergency.

To keep up the pace, Kaiser needed every worker he could get, including women and men of all ages and abilities. For the first time in history, women were performing industrial jobs formerly only done by men. That meant someone needed to take care of the children of the workers, many who had migrated away from their extended families in other regions of the U.S.

Henry Kaiser was not happy with mediocre care for the children. So he hired child care experts from UC Berkeley and elsewhere to develop an educational program and nurturing care program, including medical care, for the children. He funded the centers with federal Lanham Act money allocated for community services for war industry boom towns, such as Richmond, which had grown from a sleepy town of 23,000 people to more than 100,000.

Veronica Rodriguez, Isabel Jenkins Ziegler, and Pavlos Salamasidis of the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park with child's art easel and furniture from World War II Kaiser Shipyards child care centers.

The centers were designed with the advice of Catherine Landreth, a child development expert at UC Berkeley. Landreth recommended indoor and outdoor space for children to get plenty of fresh air and exercise. Music and art were incorporated into the educational program. Children who attended preschool at the Kaiser centers enjoyed warm meals, warm beds and plenty of attention throughout the day. Parents could leave their children while they worked any shift at the shipyards, and hot meals could be purchased at the center and taken home for the family.

Maritime center stayed open for six decades

When the war ended in 1945, federal funds were withdrawn for child care, and most centers across the country closed. In Richmond, however, the parents pleaded with the school district to keep the about 30 Richmond centers open. In the end, the state of California and the local school district funded the centers for many years after the war. The Maritime center and the Ruth Powers Child Development Center nearby on Cutting Boulevard are the only two remaining World War II child care facilities in Richmond. They continued to operate until 2004 with funding from the state of California Department of Education.

Richmond College Prep Schools, run by a private corporation called Richmond Elementary Schools, Inc., continues the tradition of progressive early childhood education at the site. “(Our) educational philosophy is centered on preparing students, beginning at four years of age, to succeed academically and emotionally in a college educational environment. This philosophy requires nurturing the expectations of academic success in families as well as students,” according to the school’s web site.

The Maritime center renovation is part of the Nystrom Urban Re Vitalization Effort (NURVE) that includes the Nystrom School modernization and a new athletic field for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Park. Both projects are around the corner from the Maritime building on Harbour Way.

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Mending Lives in the WWII Kaiser Richmond Shipyards

posted on August 28, 2010

by Jacqueline Brown

Jacqueline Brown, Communications Associate in Kaiser Permanente’s Brand Strategy Communications and Public Relations, is a 2010 graduate in Rhetoric and Media Studies from Willamette University, Salem, Oregon.

People from all over the country flocked to Richmond, California, in 1941 to work at the Kaiser Shipyards. Having endured the hardscrabble years of the Great Depression, migrant workers flooded Richmond by the thousands seeking employment in the suddenly booming World War II Home Front economy.

For most of these workers the yards provided a much needed stable income. More than a few arrived in frail health, without family network support, and challenged by economic necessity.  They found a helping hand in the community benefit programs of Kaiser Industries.

Helen Amy Mason in “Welfare Services for Members of the Permanente Plan of Prepaid Medical Care,” a graduate thesis submitted in 1946 to the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Berkeley, offers a view into the circumstances that challenged many of these workers.

Henry Kaiser visits a shipyard worker at the Oakland Permanente Hospital

Mason describes the hardships and the liberal assistance Henry Kaiser offered through the Department of Employee Welfare of the Richmond Shipyards and the Hospital and Medical Care Program of the Permanente Foundation.

The Department of Employee Welfare provided personal and financial services to those who fell ill or who were injured on the job, especially those without the support of family. The staff made bed-side hospital calls and offered essential meal and child care arrangements, banking, shopping, and transportation services throughout convalescence to recovery.

The Department also administered the “Help a Buddy Fund,” a voluntary community service chest funded through a worker payroll deduction (about 25 cents per week) and distributed according to need for groceries, rent, child care, etc., with no restrictions attached.

The Hospital and Medical Care Program of the Permanente Foundation provided emergency financial assistance to workers who could not meet medical expenses, either because they had elected not to enroll in the health plan, or because they were confronted with circumstances not covered by the plan, long-term hospitalization (the plan provided 111 days) for mental illness or tuberculosis, for example.  The ill or injured breadwinner was often the beneficiary, or his children, the comprehensive “family” plan coverage debuting late in the war effort.

One example is that of a woman who was admitted to the hospital with a heart condition that caused frequent attacks that required numerous and extended hospitalizations for two to four weeks at a time. She was the mother of two children and the sole source of income for her family.  The Foundation covered the cost of her frequent and extended hospitalizations.

The Department of Employee Welfare and The Permanente Health Plan in the Kaiser Shipyards – today’s Kaiser Foundation Health Plan – mended more than broken bones in the Richmond shipyard community. As Dr. Clifford Kuh, a Permanente physician in the Richmond yards, put it: “The distinguishing characteristic of the Permanente Health Plan, besides prepayment, is it’s focus on the community.”

The tradition continues to the present day. Last year, for example, Kaiser Permanente gave a $5.2 million gift to the UCLA School of Public Health to endow the UCLA Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Equity—a center dedicated to improving the health of underserved populations through research, community collaboration and leadership development.

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Opening a Prepaid Health Plan to the Public 65 Years Ago this Month, Kaiser Permanente Begins Its Post-World War II Life

posted on July 22, 2010

By Tom Debley
Director of Heritage Resources

This Oakland Tribune clipping is one of many news stories when Kaiser Permanente began opening its doors to the public.

Sixty-five years ago this month the curtain was about to fall on the dreadful years of World War II, and Dr. Sidney R. Garfield and industrialist Henry J. Kaiser were raising the curtain on their plans to expand their prepaid Permanente Foundation Health Plan—later renamed Kaiser Foundation—beyond Kaiser’s employees to the general public.

So it was, in July 1945, that they announced that the “first large extension of the family health plan” beyond Kaiser workers would be in Vallejo, California, about 30 miles northeast of San Francisco.

The idea of going to Vallejo with a Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospital resulted from a grassroots invitation from citizens there—a sort of populist request for prepaid medical care. That should come as no surprise. The new medical care program—nicknamed “a Mayo Clinic for the common man” by one writer of the era—had been a hit with workers in the wartime Kaiser Shipyards in nearby Richmond and was getting nationwide media notice.

“I don’t see why this can’t be done everywhere, for everyone,” said one shipyard worker. “This should be for everybody,” added another. “We must organize and demand this not only for us workers but for all their families. It should be for everybody in America.”

Against that backdrop, Kaiser Permanente was invited to town by a tenants’ council of the Vallejo Housing Authority to provide care for residents of eight large wartime public housing dormitories. A doctor was assigned to each dormitory and a clinic was set up within an existing public health service infirmary.

Meanwhile, with the cooperation of local physicians, a citizen’s committee had unraveled wartime bureaucracies to get the government-sponsored Vallejo Community Hospital opened in 1944. It was needed because the Mare Island Naval Shipyard at Vallejo and the nearby Benicia Arsenal ordnance facility had drawn thousands of wartime civilian workers. The city’s few doctors had been swamped by a flood of new patients.

However, with the war ending, the government was no longer willing to support a community hospital. The military-style facility—long, low buildings spread over 30 acres—closed after the war ended in August, leaving thousands of civilian families without medical care.

Before long, the not-for-profit Kaiser Foundation Health Plan needed a full service hospital in Vallejo. So, on April 1, 1947, Kaiser Permanente re-opened the 250-bed Vallejo Community Hospital as its own, having first leased it as surplus property from the Federal Works Agency. Later, it bought the hospital at the site where Kaiser Permanente’s Vallejo Medical Center remains to this day.

“This…marks the beginning of efforts now underway by the Kaiser organization to offer Permanente Foundation facilities to all groups interested in complete prepaid medicine,” the July 1945 announcement read. The existing facilities were those on the Home Front of World War II serving Henry Kaiser’s shipyards and steel mill. They were in Richmond, Oakland, and Fontana in California and in Vancouver in Washington state.

Kaiser Permanente's Oakland Medical Center started with rebuilding of the burned out shell of a former hospital, seen here in 1942 with Dr. Sidney R. Garfield, at right, and Ned Dobbs, liaison between physicians and the architects.

A few days later, Clyde F. Diddle, administrator of the Oakland Medical Center, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the Oakland hospital was being opened to the public under four principles: prepayment, group medical practice, adequate facilities, and “a new medical economy.”

“This ‘new economy,’ strongly opposed in part by some factions favoring the traditional family physician-patient relationship, follows the old Chinese practice of paying the physician while you are well,” the Chronicle said.

Added Diddle, “We offer medical service from nasal spray to surgery—and all under one roof. The important thing is that there are no barriers to early treatment. …Patients are encouraged to come in early…”

The Chronicle article also reported that Henry Kaiser was preparing a proposal for Congress to establish a nationwide system of voluntary prepaid medical care.  This would be the first of many continuing efforts to support Sidney Garfield’s dream of health care for all Americans that have continued to the present day.

These historic events are honored today by the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, which includes historic sites of the wartime medical care program. Notes National Park Service interpretative materials: “Today, prepaid medical care is central to American culture—it is a legacy of the WWII Home Front.”

Forecasts in 1945 projected eventually serving about 25,000 people in Vallejo. Today, the Vallejo Medical Centers serves about 10 times that number in California’s Napa and Solano counties alone. The entire Kaiser Permanente multi-state program serves 8.6 million members.

The “official” date for Kaiser Permanente’s opening to the public became Oct. 1, 1945, but the work got under way in earnest starting in July.

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Tom Debley Earns National Park Service Award

posted on June 4, 2010

By Ginny McPartland 

RICHMOND – The National Park Service presented its Home Front Award to Kaiser Permanente’s Heritage Resources Director Tom Debley Monday (May 24) as part of the city’s 2010 Historic Preservation Awards.

Debley is being cited for leading “initiatives to create and support” the home front park, which is on the site of the World War II Kaiser Richmond shipyards. 

The National Park Service Home Front Award is to recognize people, projects, programs or publications that preserve a home front site or structure, or that promote recognition and understanding of the WWII era in Richmond’s and the nation’s history. 

The purpose of the city’s historic awards program is to increase public awareness of Richmond’s heritage by recognizing individuals, organizations, businesses and agencies whose contributions demonstrate outstanding commitment to excellence in historic preservation, local history or promotion of the city’s heritage. 

Click this link to hear Tom’s remarks on receiving the award 

 streaming video courtesy of the KCRT Information Network

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Henry J. Kaiser: America’s No. 1 Civilian Hero

posted on April 13, 2010

By Tom Debley, Director, Heritage Resources

Henry J. Kaiser was featured as "Shipbuilder No. 1" in a 1943 Real Heroes comic book.

Sixty-five years ago this year Henry J. Kaiser emerged on the American scene as the single most popular civilian hero of World War II, which came to an end in 1945.

It was a Roper Poll that spring that reported that—in the words of Stephen B. Adams, author of “Mr. Kaiser goes to Washington”—the American public “believed Kaiser had done more to help the president win the war than any other civilian.”

A Gallup Poll a few months later found Kaiser at the top of the list of people Americans thought should be president—with Kaiser trailing only Generals Douglas MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower. It is no surprise, then, that Kaiser was on President Roosevelt’s short list for vice president when he chose Harry Truman in the election of 1944.

Why not Kaiser? One answer comes from Michael Dobrin, guest curator of a special exhibit on Kaiser’s life at the Oakland Museum of California in 2004, who concluded Kaiser was too progressive for Democratic Party leaders.

“…Conservative party insiders—probably sensing coming postwar struggles over civil rights—balked at his overt advocacy of voter education, voters’ rights and support for unions,” Dobrin wrote in The Museum of California Magazine. “His name was dropped from the list.”

The public’s admiration for Henry Kaiser—whose most enduring legacy is co-founding with surgeon Sidney R. Garfield the medical care program that bears his name—lasted up to and beyond the end of his life in 1967. Indeed, he was so beloved that when he died in 1967 mourners flooded his memorial service with more than 20,000 white and red roses – said to be the entire supply of all florists in the San Francisco Bay Area. This was in addition to thousands of orchids and other flora from people in the Hawaiian Islands.

As President Lyndon B. Johnson said in condolences sent to Kaiser’s family, “Henry J. Kaiser embodied in his own career all that has been best in our country’s tradition. His own energy, imagination and determination gave him greatness—and he used that greatness to give unflaggingly for the betterment of his country and his fellow man.”

Today, of course, his efforts—and the legendary labor of almost a quarter million men and women of all races who worked for him in his West Coast ship building operations—are honored by the Rosie the Riveter / World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, Calif., which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.

In addition, the newly renovated Oakland Museum of California will reopen May 1 with its first major redo in nearly 40 years. Its completely new Gallery of California History will include Henry J. Kaiser. According to the museum, the theme of the gallery will be Coming to California—“an idea that evokes not only the arrivals and departures of people throughout human history and their interactions with the inhabitants already here, but also the notion of coming to terms with the influence of California on our individual and collective identities.”

Late last year, Kaiser also was inducted into the California Hall of Fame and is featured in an exhibit at The California Museum  in Sacramento.

Interested in learning more about Henry J. Kaiser? Here are three good books, any one of which you might find in a local library (or for sale online):

“Henry J. Kaiser: Builder in the Modern American West,” Mark S. Foster, University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas, 1991.

“Henry J. Kaiser: Western Colossus,” Albert P. Heiner, Halo Books, San Francisco, Calif., 1991.

“Mr. Kaiser Goes to Washington, The Rise of a Government Entrepreneur,” Stephen B. Adams, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1997.

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