Hastings, Nebraska: The Naval Ammunition Depot That Remade a Prairie Town

Navy personnel in the mess hall lines at the Naval Barracks Area, Naval Ammunition Depot Hastings, 1944. National Archives and Records Administration.

Hastings, Nebraska — an American World War II Heritage City — was a small city still struggling with the Great Depression and a falling population when war came. Towns everywhere saw war production as a path to recovery, and many residents welcomed news that Hastings would get a defense plant.

Naval Ammunition Depot Hastings

• Scale: NAD Hastings was the largest of the Navy's four inland ammunition depots and the second-largest naval ammunition depot in the country.
• Output: working 24 hours a day, it made bombs, mines, rockets, 40mm shells, depth charges, torpedoes and 16-inch projectiles. By 1944 it made more 40mm shells than any other Navy depot and supplied 40% of the Navy's ammunition.
• Building it: work began on July 14, 1942, took 18 months and employed more than 5,000 workers. Planned at 30,000 acres with six loading plants and 700 bunkers, it grew to over 48,000 acres: 207 miles of railroad, 274 miles of road, 2,200 buildings, warehouses and bunkers, and hundreds of igloo-shaped explosives magazines.

Women munitions workers at NAD Hastings, 1942–1945. National Archives and Records Administration.

A labor boom

At peak production the depot employed nearly 10,000 military and civilian workers — eventually 15% of them African American and 20% women.

• Shortages: farmers and local businesses, including five manufacturers with defense contracts, lost workers. Recruiters crossed state lines, and newcomers grew the city's population by more than 40% in the first year. The War Manpower Commission declared Hastings a class one labor shortage area.
• Housing: rents doubled almost overnight, big houses were split into apartments, and small homes went up in and around town. The War Production Board approved several hundred new homes, trailer camps and housing additions on the north and east sides, and the Office of Price Administration imposed rent controls in 1943.

Social strain

Before the war Hastings was insular and almost entirely white. The depot brought:

• more than 1,500 African American enlisted men by 1943, many with families;
• about 100 Lakota and Chippewa families on the construction crews;
• German prisoners of war for non-military jobs;
• Depression-poor families living in government trailer camps.

The result was heightened racial tension and segregation, suspicion of poorer newcomers, and more policing by military personnel.

A town at war

Residents ran scrap drives, planted victory gardens and bought war bonds. Stores, banks and offices stayed open late for depot workers, and dances, variety shows and intramural sports brought soldiers and civilians together. Many left after the war; those who stayed made Hastings home.

Visiting today

• The depot site now holds Central Community College (using some old depot buildings), the Nebraska National Guard, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and industry. Much of the perimeter fence is gone, and public roads let visitors take in its size; a historical marker stands where the main security gate was.
• Hastings Museum of Natural and Cultural History: ammunition made at the depot, personal items and tools — and an annual bus tour remembering the home front and the strains of rapid growth.
• Adams County Historical Society: WWII oral histories and copies of the Powder Keg, the depot's weekly newspaper.

Sources

Based on "Hastings, Nebraska," American World War II Heritage Cities, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Photographs: National Archives and Records Administration. An uncredited photograph of a trailer-camp family is left out.