Women at the Kaiser Shipyards in Vancouver, Washington

A ship launching into the Columbia River. NPS photo, Fort Vancouver National Historic Site collection (FOVA 219207).

During World War II, Vancouver, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, became major shipbuilding centers. In January 1942, a month after the United States declared war on the Axis powers, industrialist Henry J. Kaiser signed shipbuilding contracts with the U.S. Maritime Commission that let him build seven shipyards in the western United States, producing ships for combat and transport in the Pacific. One was on the Columbia River at Vancouver; two more were nearby on the Willamette River in Oregon — the Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation yard where the Columbia and Willamette meet, and the Swan Island yard.

This page draws on an article by Fort Vancouver National Historic Site based on its collection of the Kaiser shipyards' magazine, the Bos'n's Whistle.

In the summer of 2024, American Conservation Experience Collections Assistant Tara Gibbs processed a recently donated collection of Bos'n's Whistle magazines and newspapers, images from which are included in this article. NPS Photo / M. Huff.

Recruiting a workforce

The quickly built yards needed thousands of workers — welders, riveters, electricians, office staff and more. Recruiters toured Midwestern and Eastern cities promising that no education or experience was needed, and thousands of men and women, alone or with families, moved to take the jobs. Some wanted to help the war effort, often because brothers, fathers or sons had enlisted; others came for bigger paychecks, which mattered especially to women, who earned much less in the office, social service and store jobs open to them before the war.

• Vancouver's yard peaked in early 1943 with well over 30,000 workers hired in total, and launched more than 130 ships by the war's end.
• The three Vancouver and Portland yards together produced more than 700 ships — 30% of all ships built under the U.S. Maritime Commission during the war.

A woman welder in safety gear, from the Bos'n's Whistle. NPS photo, FOVA 281696.

Women build ships

In 1939, women made up 2% of the U.S. shipbuilding workforce. By 1944, more than 31,000 women were building ships at the three Kaiser yards in Vancouver and Portland alone.

Before the war, many women described themselves as housewives, and those with jobs — as clerks, office workers or teachers — often saw that work as secondary to running a home. Historian Amy Kesselman, in Fleeting Opportunities: Women Shipyard Workers in Portland and Vancouver During World War II and Reconversion, notes that women who called themselves housewives may well have worked before the war, but regarded that work as temporary or less important than their family roles.

With men leaving for military service and ships urgently needed, companies turned to women, canvassing stores women shopped in and urging them to take on new challenges for the war effort. Women were expected to do "man's work" while remaining wives, mothers and girlfriends who would go "back to the kitchen" after the war.

When the Vancouver yard first opened, just 283 women worked there, as office staff and messengers. Then in April 1942 Mary Carroll became the first woman hired as a welder, at the Swan Island yard; her son, an Army soldier, was missing in action in the Pacific. Soon women at all three yards were training as welders, riveters and electricians, some rising to journeyman. By 1944 the Vancouver yard employed 10,600 women as shipbuilders.

Four women at the Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation model work clothes designed by women for women shipbuilders; before these, women often wore men's clothing. NPS photo, FOVA 281696.

Unequal treatment

• Race. Black women at the Vancouver yard were often assigned to clean-up crews and other lower-paid work needing little training, and were excluded from some roles regardless of qualifications. Some Black workers were electricians or welders, but far fewer Black women held those jobs than Black men or White women. The yard claimed it was not segregated, yet racism and sexism both shaped Black women's work.
• Sex. Women shipbuilders were unionized and paid the same as men for the same job, but sexism was rampant. Many were sexually harassed by male co-workers or supervisors, often forcing them to ask for transfers, and local media treated women welders and riveters as outsiders or a stopgap.

Women of color worked many jobs at the Kaiser yards, but their access to training, better-paid jobs and union protection was deliberately limited. NPS photo, FOVA 235975.

The Bos'n's Whistle

Kaiser's Bos'n's Whistle kept workers informed and entertained. Launched in 1941 as a biweekly magazine for the Portland yard, it expanded to Swan Island and Vancouver the next year and became a weekly newspaper, with an edition for each yard, in 1944. It reported ships launched, explained shipyard jobs, gave safety tips, stirred competition between yards, and carried interviews, photographs, picnic and launching coverage, sports and workers' stories. By its last issue in 1946 it had circulated more than 4 million copies.

It also reflected the attitudes of its time. Articles often dwelt on women workers' looks, calling them the yards' "pin-up" girls; beauty contests between former residents of different states were a picnic staple; and its popular "Stubby Bilgebottom" comic strip, drawn by a Swan Island electrician's aide, often made women workers the joke. One article credited women's housekeeping skills for their shipyard work. Still, its interviews offer a rare view of women's own thoughts about gender, work and war. One profile of Nora Leola O'Brian, a Swan Island guard, an expert pistol shot and former police officer and government agent, reported her view that most women in the yard were there out of patriotism, eager to help, and that they brought their problems to her, which headed off many difficulties early.

Two women welders at the Kaiser shipyards. NPS photo, FOVA 281696.

After the war

As the war wound down and demand for ships fell, workers faced losing their jobs. After victory in Europe in 1945, thousands had to decide whether to go home or stay in Portland or Vancouver. Both cities had set up postwar planning committees as early as 1943, but many excluded women, and women were laid off at higher rates than men. The Bos'n's Whistle reported many women saying they would become housewives — and a May 1945 cartoon showed a woman rushing home to trade her work clothes for an apron — though many wanted or needed to keep working.

Wartime work was nonetheless a turning point. Though often framed around motherhood and marriage, or dismissed as temporary, it showed women from all walks of life — and their colleagues — how capable and ambitious they were, and its legacy lives on in the fight for women's and workers' rights.

About the collection

Many of the source article's images come from a donated collection of Bos'n's Whistle magazines and newspapers, processed into Fort Vancouver National Historic Site's museum collection in summer 2024.

Sources

• National Park Service, Fort Vancouver National Historic Site: "Working Women at Vancouver's Kaiser Shipyards," by Tara Gibbs, American Conservation Experience Collections Assistant.
• Kesselman, Amy. Fleeting Opportunities: Women Shipyard Workers in Portland and Vancouver During World War II and Reconversion (cited in the source; paraphrased here).
• The source's words "electricians of welders" are read here as "electricians or welders." Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.