Hazards on the Home Front: Injuries in America's World War II Defense Plants

"Follow Safety Rules": "More American workers were killed and wounded in industrial accidents last year than all the casualties from bombs in Britain in two years of war." Office of War Information, about 1941–1945. National Archives (NAID 514271), public domain.

In World War II the danger was not only overseas. The historian Andrew E. Kersten argues that defense industry jobs could be more dangerous than the front lines: the Bureau of Labor Statistics counted more than 2 million disabling industrial injuries, deaths included, every year of the war. It sorted them as "partial" or "total" and "temporary" or "permanent" — categories meant mainly to predict who would return to work, but which also reflected attitudes that equated dependency with deficiency.

Speed over safety

Three things made home-front production dangerous: rewards for speed, unsafe conditions, and inexperienced, often untrained workers.

• Rapid growth: the government helped build new factories; plants that had made cars and refrigerators switched to ammunition, guns and tanks.
• New hands: experienced foremen left for the war. Their places went to workers new to industry — women taking jobs outside the home for the first time, and people from rural areas unfamiliar with factories, let alone with chemicals and explosives handled at close range.
• Crowding: new machinery was squeezed into existing plants, packing people and machines ever tighter.
• Round-the-clock shifts: two or three shifts a day left little time for maintenance, while hastily adapted older machines were run harder and faster. Some companies grew lax about safety codes, and many workers, once trained for the job, still had no safety training or protection.

Welder-trainee Josie Lucille Owens on the Liberty ship SS George Washington Carver. Office of War Information, about 1941–1945. National Archives (NAID 535803), public domain.

What efficiency cost

At the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California, where women worked as riveters and welders, first aid stations and local field hospitals recorded 13,261 fractures — mostly of hands, feet and ribs. One woman fractured her skull in a 60-foot fall from the top deck of a hull. Women welders breathed vaporized toxic metals such as copper and zinc. The records show the injuries, not the lives afterward: some women recovered fully, but many likely lived with complications for good.

Women suffered many of the same severe injuries as men, but the government's concern was mostly the rising injury and death rates among men of fighting age — though most men at Kaiser were over draft age or already judged unfit for service. Women workers were essential all the same: they kept production at pace and freed more men for the front.

Safety — or shame?

To cut accidents, the government and private companies ran safety campaigns. Many blamed workers rather than providing training or fixing hazards. In 1942, General Motors' Allison Division used a character called "Otto Nobetter" to promote safety at small Chicago defense plants; others, "Axidunce" and "Egghead," showed what carelessness cost.

"Egghead Plays with Dynamite." Office of War Information, about 1941–1945. National Archives (NAID 514204), public domain.

"Axidunce." Office of War Information, about 1941–1945. National Archives (NAID 513908), public domain.

Other posters leaned on stereotypes of women as vain and more concerned with looks than safety. Meant to be funny, they humiliated. By stressing individual responsibility, the campaigns drew attention away from the unsafe conditions and the drive for maximum output that made the work dangerous — and helped employers sidestep the cost of workers' compensation.

"You can't snub safety clothing without inviting accidents... Glamorous but unsafe!" Office of War Information, about 1941–1945. National Archives (NAID 516218), public domain.

"Jewelry is dangerous." War Production Board, about 1942–1943. National Archives (NAID 535336), public domain.

Patriotism and productivity

Posters tied safe, efficient production directly to victory. But injuries on the assembly line earned none of the honor of wounds at the front; campaigns used patriotism to shame workers hurt and taken off the job. "Don't get hurt — it may cost his life," beside images of fallen soldiers, made time off to recover look like a failure of duty. Another poster declared that "Idle hands work for Hitler."

"Don't Get Hurt. It May Cost His Life." Office of War Information, about 1941–1945. National Archives (NAID 514144), public domain.

For workers and families, an injury was also an economic blow: lost wages could be critical, and workers' compensation rarely kept anyone out of poverty. After compensation laws arrived in the 1910s and 1920s, many companies claimed disabled people were more prone to accidents and reinjury; between the wars, employers cited efficiency to exclude disabled workers and avoid paying for their accommodation and care.

An office worker's wrist is X-rayed at North American Aviation's hospital in Inglewood, California. Photograph by Alfred T. Palmer, October 1942. Library of Congress, LC-USE6-D-006409.

Afterward

The war removed some barriers to employment for disabled workers, but many people still assumed they could not — and should not — work. On-the-job injuries were treated as a burden and a disgrace, and some companies refused claims when a disabled worker was hurt. Most defense injuries were temporary, but they added to the growing awareness of disability the war brought; those left permanently disabled joined a rising number of people who would face — and challenge — discrimination in the decades that followed.

Sources

Based on "Hazards on the Home Front: Workplace Accidents and Injuries during World War II," researched and written by Jade Ryerson, Consulting Historian with the Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education, funded through the National Council on Public History's cooperative agreement with the National Park Service, part of its series Disability and the World War II Home Front; rewritten in hubnx's own words. Its sources: A. E. Kersten, Labor's Home Front (2006); M. H. Hansen, Statistical Abstract of the United States no. 67 (1946); M. F. Collen, B. Culp and T. Debley, "Rosie the Riveter's Medical Records," The Permanente Journal (2008). The article dates the injury counts "between 1942 and 1945" while the table it cites covers 1943–1945, so no years are given here. It captions one poster "Eggmhead"; "Egghead" is meant. Posters and photographs are U.S. government works in the public domain.