Photo courtesy of Red Oak Victory
By Ginny McPartland
If you grew up in the Bay Area, or anywhere in America for that matter, you’re missing the boat if you haven’t been out to experience the Red Oak Victory ship docked on the Richmond waterfront. Granted it’s difficult to find, and in fact, you may never have heard of it. Not to worry, most people haven’t yet visited the Rosie the Riveter National Park where the ship is found.
The Red Oak Victory, built in the Kaiser Richmond shipyards in 1944, is a huge hulk of seaworthy steel that embodies a million stories pertinent to our society’s past. The ammunition ship, saved from scrap in 1998 by the Richmond Museum of History, serves as the chief artifact of the home front city’s museum collection. Volunteers have renovated much of the ship, which carried essential cargo for battles in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. www.ssredoakvictory.com
Richmond, and other Bay Area shipyards, figured fantastically in WWII home front America. The Bay Area was radically changed forever by the phenomenal influx of 200,000 shipyard workers and their families from around the nation. Every type of individual was represented in the newly configured social structure of California.
The legacy of World War II’s sociological impact is fully explored and documented in books and other items in the Red Oak’s museum gift shop. Notable examples are: “To Place Our Deeds” by Shirley Ann Wilson Moore; and “World War II Shipyards by the Bay” by Nicholas A. Veronico.
Red Oak mast
Just a few changes nudged by the war: Women working with men in industrial settings for equal pay; blacks and minorities working with whites for comparable pay; the emergence of professional child care centers; employment for the disabled; and affordable prepaid preventive health care provided by employers.
The medical care program started in the wartime shipyards lives on as Kaiser Permanente and is well documented in Tom Debley’s book “Dr. Sidney R. Garfield: The Visionary Who Turned Sick Care into Health Care,” published in 2009 by Permanente Press.
Changes in the status of women and minorities largely reverted after the war, but the seeds were deeply planted for the civil rights and women’s liberation movements of the 1960s.
Now for my confession: I grew up in Richmond, and I had never seen the shipyards or the Red Oak Victory until recently. My first visit to the floating museum was only a few weeks ago. Bay Area Historian Steve Gilford, a director on the museum board, gave me two tours of Shipyard 3 and the Red Oak. My eyes were opened to the treasure that is preserved in the depths of this honey-combed hunk of war grey welded and riveted steel.
The ship experience starts with a climb up the gangplank, a portable, suspended aluminum staircase to the main deck. From there, you step over the raised rims of the hatchways and navigate steel ladders to the various compartments of the midship house and the deckhouse. Down from the main deck you’ll find the museum, gift shop, and meeting room in a cleaned-up cargo hold.
Industrial mixer for batter
Ship's galley griddle ready for pancakes
One cheery way to introduce yourself to the historic waterfront is to partake of the $6 pancake breakfast offered on the Red Oak Victory once a month from April to October. The first one for 2010 is April 11.
To get to the Red Oak Victory, take I80 to 580 West. Stay on the freeway past the Rosie the Riveter park exit and take Canal Boulevard instead. Follow Canal all the way to the bay and wind your way through the industrial area to Berth 6A.
