| Original caption: “Identified by her welding mask, a woman goes about her work at a Los Angeles plant.” With her name, “Anne,” on her protective facemask, a female arc welder at work is wearing a Huntsman Shield brand helmet. During World War II, Los Angeles was a central hub for aircraft and shipbuilding, with factories such as those operated by Douglas Aircraft, North American Aviation, and the California Shipbuilding Corporation (Calship) on Terminal Island, employing thousands and building crucial planes and cargo ships. At the height of production, women constituted about 40 percent of the workforce at Douglas Aircraft. “Wendy the Welder” became another lesser-known symbol of women in the workforce during World War II. In real life, she was modeled after Janet Doyle (February 24, 1920 – July 10, 1994), a welder working in the Kaiser Shipyards of Richmond, California. Women welders sold Chesterfield cigarettes, with the statistics “Women at Work – It is estimated that eighteen million women are employed in the United States industry today. You may be needed now – Ask at your nearest United States Employment Service Office.” On June 28, 1942, only 13 women were employed in San Francisco Kaiser shipyards, and they were unusual enough that men would stop work to watch them. Virtually all the women were married, but initially endured “wolf whistling” and harassment from a predominantly single male workforce. As more women were employed, by April 1943, a 100 women worked at Los Angeles Calship, with 40 of them arc welders. Men stopped harassing them as much, and women’s work became routinely accepted. That same month, Calship called for 300 more women who could verify their citizenship and had technical aptitude to apply for employment starting at $1.15 an hour. If hired, they were required to provide their own hoods, leathers, and coveralls. The Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California, built more ships than any other facility in the United States, employing thousands of people, many of whom were skilled female workers. Some were African American women from the rural South who left their homes in search of better job opportunities. The migration of workers to the Richmond Shipyards had a significant impact on the town of Richmond, where the population increased from 20,000 in 1941 to a 100,000 by 1943. Workers lived in tents, boats, and cars as they waited for houses to be built. American industrialist Henry J. Kaiser (May 9, 1882 – August 24, 1967) ran the shipyards. He offered medical care plans and established daycare centers where people could leave their children while they were at work. To produce 93 ships in 3 1/2 years, 20,000 workers at Marinship in Sausalito, California, took very little time off—even to be sick, Faiga Fram Duncan (September 7, 1913 – April 13, 2004) pointed out. “Absenteeism Aids Adolf,” warned the workplace posters. She compared her electrical welding to filigree jewelry. Her instructor chose another comparison: “Ladies, ” he said, “welding is like baking biscuits. The more you do it, the better you get.” “I attended a free class in electric arc welding, which involves the welder fastening steel plates together permanently with a high welding torch. It was an essential shipbuilding process. Only women were in the class; all but one were wives and mothers. “We began basic welding—horizontal, vertical, and overhead. Being left-handed, I had to translate mentally the teacher’s right-handed directions. “The day after we graduated, we were hired at Marinship as beginning electric arc welders at ninety-five cents an hour. We did flat or horizontal welding in a large shed. Soon, I had my most memorable experience. My supervisor asked me to help a man who was developing a new method for laying patterns on steel plates.” Experiences as welders were dangerous but exhilarating for women who had often never left their hometowns before. Mildred Admire Bedell (March 18, 1918 – September 18, 1997) was living in her Missouri home with her 3 children when her best friend, who was living in California, needed help with a new baby and asked if Bedell could come to her aid. She packed her clothes and loaded her youngsters on the train. “I hadn’t been with my friend very long when she and her husband suggested I take a job at the shipyards. So I went to the welding plant, and the next thing I knew, I was welding. The class was eight or ten days. You had to pass the test. I became a journeyman welder. I did very well. I loved it. It was like crocheting or something. You lay the weld horizontally, but when you had to build on it and go up into a corner, you had to be very precise. If you’re a good welder, it looks real pretty, because it’s so precise.” Evelyn M. Lanham Foote (1917 – ????) appreciated the anonymity of the welding mask. A welder at the Lyon Metal Company in Aurora, Illinois, she received a phone call at work on April 19, 1943. Her husband, United States Army Corporal David W. Foote (March 19, 1918 – March 26, 1944), 129th Infantry Regiment, 37th Infantry Division, died on Hill 260 during the Battle of the Perimeter on Bougainville. They had been married just a short time, since March 23, 1942, when David was home on leave for his mother’s funeral. After finishing her telephone call, Lanham Foote returned to her work, and with her welding mask covering her face, she completed the task at hand. As she cried, her welding mask hid her tears. The story of Lanham Foote finishing her welding job before asking for relief to go home was nationally circulated as a paragon of duty. Another woman recalled her 1st day on the job as a welder in a shipyard when her face mask hid her emotions. She was 18 years old. “Well, I got in the little compartment, see, it was either the officers’ head or the shower, I forget which, and I got in there and so I got my hood down. I got the stinger out, and I started to run aweld up this bulkhead. So I took the [hood] off and [the weld] had all run down, and it looked terrible. I didn’t know what to do. 1 just put my hood down and sat there and cried. I said, Tm too young. I’m too little to do this job.’ And so I sat there about fifteen or twenty minutes and said, Well, I’m going to try it anyway So I worked my way up, and lo and behold, I worked my way up to the top, and it got better and better all along.” Phyllis Gould (October 7, 1921 – July 20, 2021) recalls, “I was a good welder and I loved it.” It was so satisfying. I had always done embroidery, and you want your stitches all to be even and look nice. Well, it was the same with welding. As you overlapped each pass, you wanted them to be the same-the spacing—and to look nice and be good, too. So eventually I became, I guess, a prima donna on the crew, and I got to do pretty much what I wanted to do.” Another welder, Polly Russell (October 13, 1924 – October 12, 2022), also describes her positive feelings about her work: “Now I think back, I says, ‘How did I do it?’ Evidently, I was young and capable… I used to be very proud of my welds. I did them just perfect. The men, they just weld – boom, they don’t care — it was a good weld, but messy. I was very particular.” Mary Todd Droullard (February 26, 1920 – August 8, 2013) worked as both a coppersmith and a welder under working conditions that she found to be less than ideal. She also had a unique solution to the problem of using precious shoe ration stamps on work boots. Droullard started at Associated Shipyard in Seattle, responding to a newspaper ad. Tired of harassment by her boss, she left Associated for Todd Shipyard, also in Seattle, where it became apparent that her sheltered life had inadequately prepared her for the harsh realities of factory work. “I didn’t want to use shoe stamps for work boots. So I got majorette boots because they didn’t require stamps. The boots girls use for twirling. I wore them under my leathers, which weighed about 40 pounds. “Sometimes when you’re welding over your head, sparks would fly and burn through your brassiere. I have a lot of scars there. “I would be working out on the decks in the awful cold and damp, and would often get electrical shocks because of the electric welding. I’d climb up and down the ladders and go down in deep tanks and work down there all by myself in the dark. There’d be a lightbulb hanging on a cord down there. That was kind of scary, working over the engine room, which, if you fell down in 1 of them, you’d really be in a mess. When the war ended in 1945, the Richmond Shipyards closed just as quickly as they had opened. Today, the site of the old shipyards is home to the Rosie the Riveter Memorial Park, which was built to honor the women who worked on the home front during World War II. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0943.jpg |
| Image Size | 126.81 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1013 x 1298 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | September 1, 1943 |
| Location | |
| City | Los Angeles |
| State or Province | California |
| Country | United States |
| Archive | |
| Record Number | |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
Author of the World War II Multimedia Database