Milka Bamond: The Real-Life “Rosie the Riveter”

This is Lee's leave and this is our American stories we tell stories about everything here in the show in our favorite thing to talk about is American history and up. Next will be hearing from actual World War II Rosie the riveter milk. Damon tells her early life story details World War II experience as a riveter airplane fifth. He also chronicles her postwar experiences in describing part of the Rosie riveter coalition years. My family is really tiny. I was born in Fairmount, West Virginia child of an illiterate coalminer lost his life when I was six months else. I never got to know my father after that my mother was fortunate enough to have someone send her train fare so she can come to Detroit and then her life started all over again. She had a very very harsh background and a part of Europe that was not developing very well living very, almost in a primitive way so I heard all those stories. I knew that even though it was an effort to come to America because I don't think that anyone can leave their homeland without a wrenching feeling you're leaving everything behind everything that who who you are. Everybody who is responsible for your being on the planet.

But whatever the reason, however they got here. I'm very grateful and I think because I knew of their hardships that he gave me a special feeling and especially when the war was going on so many of our young men were drafted they were going to Europe to try to salvage whatever they could of Europe. But then, when Japan struck them as a real wake-up call and I think that even then I was not quite 18. I realize that the Japanese had miscalculated. They thought we are very weak. We didn't have much of a war machine. The depression put a dent in that and so catching up was very difficult so I guess I thought if they attacked us on the other side of the planet just easy pickings. They had to have Hawaii. They wanted to expand but they met an enemy that they never expect and it was a patriotism that kept us going. I get you something right now thinking about how important it was my own background because my parents at all. We thought we were escaping the Balkan wars.

We hope it doesn't happen in America so there was a sense of failure.

Living in Detroit. In particular, all the automobile factories had converted to low arming American building planes and other it'll jeeps that was logical for motor town but it was a very heart felt fear. We didn't know whether our factories should be bombed because that's what we're doing to Germany and so there are always rumors.

We don't know what might hit us so we were studying and from the newspapers and silhouettes of airplanes enemy aircraft that in case of an airplane flew overhead. We know that it was plain so that added to the kind of insecure feeling that we all had you had no idea because up to then labor since the Civil War. We felt like we are doing really okay, but you can't take it for granted silicon arms came I heard it from a classmate and she said I'm going to be working and I said where and she said the Briggs & Stratton plan. I said to have room for more women.

They sit there clamoring for more procurement. So the next day I was on the trolley and got myself down to the factory and they sign me up for a three week course in the whatever I needed to know and in riveting the other side of it. The bucking person who flattens that rivet and set some minor blueprint scanning. It wasn't as thorough as I expected it to be better prepared me for what I have to do.

I started in early 1943, but the big surprise when I finally got to the classes were held at Briggs & Stratton and some areas that they had reserved for that because of retraining welders and a lot of other women to do different kinds of jobs but when I actually saw how they said no that's the tip of a B-17 blaming the tip.

That's the end of the wing, but it was on a platform 3 feet up off the ground. Very heavy duty superstructure of lumber wholeness, massive framework, just a skeleton to begin with. They took us from the very beginning of what it looks like and then they put on the skin, which is aluminum that's rolled out to particular thinness and seats are already pre-size to fit the skeleton. The rounded portion and there was a crane that held women overhead to do that but we start at the bottom and they went to tears of scaffolding. It was so crowded. We were shoulder to shoulder we could hardly move.

But everybody knew their job and it was for the first time that American Africans are working side-by-side with white folks and there was never anything that would register his disharmony. We had a mission and did a lot to bring us together. Also, a lot of young women were coming from the southern states, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and it was and they brought a culture with them that Whitney three Detroiters were not accustomed to. They were more genteel had better manners. They brought wonderful food items with the blade taught us all about pies and fried fish and iced tea sweet iced tea and it was it was a real addition to the culture. So I think Detroit got a real sampling of people from pretty much all of the country but mostly from the southern area and that was to Detroit why she say mostly from the southern area, but that time is a very amazing experience. We were behind in production to begin with. That was the reason that they had so many people so they said you be working seven days a week. We can't guarantee how many hours a 10 or 12.

Are you up to that, of course, whatever you have to do. My goodness, what storytelling by nuclear collision of cultures women in the workforce who, that's a huge cultural change in the country, one that came fast and hard to change the country forever and by the way, no good stories brought to us permission from the veterans history Project at the Atlanta history Center veterans history Project provides unedited first-person interviews for men and women who served our great country. When we come back more local story arose in the riveter story you on our American story stories tell about this great country and especially the stories of America's rich past. Know that all of our stories about American history toward innovation culture and faith brought to us by the grateful place for students studying all the things of the beautiful one. All the things if you can't get the Hillsdale bills that will come to you with your freedom. Terrific online courses go to Hillsdale.edu learn more.and we continue with our American stories and the story of milk abatement real-life Rosie the river, but the couple we last left off the arm of the military is like being in the military you could not quit your job if it was too much for any girl or woman to handle. They just put you in another department that you're still working in the war effort that you're not quitting.

And so that's how it went.

I also realized early on, much to my chagrin on that first I thought it was just a nasty rumor, but there's a certain element of men who resented the women are taking over men's jobs.

Although we were the only resource at that time. These are harsh men who really not only disrespect but physically attacked women.

One particular evening, I was asked to substitute for man was that he had to leap what we call the tool shadow tool crib is made out of the chain link fencing say could see right through and shelves on drawers full of all kinds of tools. So we came in to do your job.

You picked up the tools you had a slip for what you needed and at the end of your shift, you turned it in, because people walk up with things so that is guaranteed and so he set up and be away for about an hour. Would you mind this yet for me not to be a nice change because it was a low in my production line so that was okay but along comes this man on a bicycle light seen him around the shop and he was a messenger and that was the only way to get messages to different department heads with him on his bicycle and he was dressed like a jockey in the jockey silk Melanie had a little Salvador Dali mustache and a silk Jockey but when he pulled up, I knew that he had a bad reputation, but I never really questioned and they said look out for Dr. Frenchy found some French so when he pulled up the doorway he sent. I come by to say hello and I said what your real purpose and that was when he pushed me between two bins. I was so paralyzed with fear. I could even scream I could make a sound, but all of a sudden I got this bright idea. I hooked my footer on his leg and he fell and I fell on top of the was like this for a few moments and I start punching him in the face. That's how I started to scream and help came where the best thing that came out of that was that incident spread through the shop like wildfire for the first time the women knew they wouldn't have to take it anymore.

They were going to organize amongst themselves and it went to other shops as well, but a lot of the union men were there, you know, they are always well you have to join the union. I Say no I don't have to join the Constitution doesn't say so Chinese. It might have benefited us, but they were part of our abusers intimidate others so women really took over because this abuse was not only coming confined to shipbuilders. I don't know if you want your somewhat ugly stories of what happened to Rosie's on the job.

It was not an easy ride by any means.

Women who build ships out on the West Coast.

We know the armor plate of the hull of a ship is very thick steel and there was a skeleton there that they had to work at and I had to put after these assemble the hell that I had put a steel floor and there which had holes predrilled where they would run electric wires under that flooring. The men actually urinated into the hall. The women had no recourse but to work under those conditions, so there were men who were so hostile to us.

We began to wonder if they are enemies of the country of some sort. They wanted to discourage us, but nothing you just went on. I mean, you are almost stoic, almost robotic. At the end of the day it's a 12 hour day there glad to get on the streetcar and go home. But seven days of his required lead and complaint that the city did so much to keep us going the Fox theater was open 24 hours a day if you finished your shift at 2 AM in the morning you brought fresh close and fresh makeup you put on your clothes and went downtown he went to the movies you go to nightclubs. Everything was there for us so that we didn't feel left out. Everything was to boost the civilians in whatever we were doing so this may sound silly, but there was a girl from West Virginia and she's alive from West Virginia and I'm hillbilly and I said well I was born in West Virginia so she wont know.

This is why she said you are not a patron got you didn't stay well my roots are in Europe. What's the chick but anyway she said it's okay with me if you call me I hillbilly and I said okay, so not quite comfortable with her but she's trying out I so hillbilly sounded okay estimating and call me shall call you honky but I went and drew set up Duncan's name and her husband was in the military and she was really quite when we would have lunch you time off like she was a smoker and I got side. She kept going and she added a lot of humor we needed it, but because we were so casual about calling each other names and the others kindly fell into that too sometimes a happy time for me was particularly important that America survive. My parents said oh my goodness, can it happen here. We try to escape all of that coming from Europe so that so anyway everybody had their own story.

Somewhere there because one of the coworkers, Peggy. She was 44.

I thought she was ancient. 44.

I consider an old person. She was in for the money. She said I'm a patriarch but I'm here because of the wages and they were probably the best that the people were making at that point in time I started out as something like $0.75 an hour but pretty soon I was promoted to inspector because I was always curious about everything, so I was making a dollar and 1/2 an hour so just imagine over time and double time I bought more war bonds. I can almost paper a small room smoker and I never cashed in the first one until it was 10 years mature that you everyone really was very patriotic there all young and there are others who are first-generation as I was and they have the same concerns what can happen in America. So anyway at that point time when talking the 1940s. Very little was known about toxic fumes or ventilation or the effects it has on humans.

So about my second year I start losing my hair and I didn't think much of that appears in my scalp was showing through. And then I to disguise and I wore my hair up to hide that my hair was long anyway so I was camouflaging that only got to be pretty bad.

You know I was talking the other young women and they also were losing their hair.

Some of them had preachers and their faces were ratty neurological problems breathing problems, but my department was maybe like this far to bear. The light is back there and they were making parts for the about Sikorsky Navy fighter plane. No jets of Mother's Day. His butt they to lighten the load that the plane had very, very heavy armament on the fuselage to protect the pilot but they're trying to lighten little bit by making the ailerons and the flaps out of fabric over very light aluminum frame so that was stretched over and fitted onto the framework, then it is spray-painted and put it in an area where the lights were dry it quickly and then spray pay more somewhere spray guns.

You know the hairs settling on your hair on your arms on your close.

Nobody thought that that was a problem and that there was a plant to which is blue around so anyway I had taken a day off from work and you report to the shop nurse if you take any time off and when you're coming back so when she talked to me.

She said your candidate. She said we been sending a lot of young ladies are reporting illnesses to the YWCA campus on the shore of Lake Erie and I spent some time there is a preteen.

She said that my WCA is rescuing you the YWCA is making it their job throughout America to rescue young women who need to be rescued by sending them to camps all across America and you to milk the baby and she's a real life Rosie the riveter for me. It was particularly important in America survive said what's going to happen to America and so patriotism and a call to duty really drove her and so many women to serve and money was pretty good.

When we come back more of this real life. Rosie the riveter story milk abatement story here on our American story, and we continue with our American stories and milk abatement story real life. Rosie the riveter story what's pickup when we last left off. So the YWCA really rescued me and so I was okay and went back to work and then it started up again.

I became ill again so she said maybe need a little more rest. So it was very nice. A lot of girls who actually depressed. Some worried that they never gain their facial expressions back.

You know, because they be pulled up or are lips would be frozen well into their recuperating I was into my second month I was doing quite well. We are in the dining room for dinner and there was a radio on the ledgers just just about the size of a Kleenex box that's tooth you would never imagine a radio is only this place, but that went on and it was got our attention because of the nonservice said we have an announcement announcement. He can't. He was like stories of the Japanese. It just surrendered. When that was heard we were so stunned. I'm telling you the whole room full of us felt our knees just so grateful.

So that was the end of my Rosie career right then and there that it was it was a wrenching experience.

And yet the sense of hope. But what happened after the war, though I may have ended in 1945, but the residue of the emotional record she was still there and you had to cope with it because somebody in of the young men and women didn't come home and you know which homes because when you're you had it member your family in the service you get a little flag about eight by each of the silver star if that flight showed up at the gold star on it. You know that that there is a military man.

Their soldier was never coming home to see the loss in action are dead, so that you are looking at that all the time your schoolmates you could go into any neighborhood and that would be the topic of conversation, you know, maybe County Hosey County home so many on a particular blocker section and so it was a black cloud that hung over long time really was bored and just and automatically pennies and then there was an awful lot of controversy about the two bombs. How could we do that we kept saying sure that the enemy only understood that we are losing thousands of young boys in the in the Pacific in the Philippines and all those islands we had to do something. It was a massive massive think to cope with. After the war, I said to my mother.

I have met another girl who is also having a lot of trouble coping. We didn't date I was, not ever. I come from a Beth ethnic background. Girls are sheltered.

You never leave home. Unless you going to get married so can you try to imagine my mother's reaction. I'm leaving home. She was humiliated she said how can I face a Serbian sisters in church and tell them that you're a bad girl in my adopted stepfather said my adopted father said to me privately. Your mother will keep you to your hundred years old go wherever your heart desires. Live your life.

So I took out a map of the US obey with them. Knitting needle in my hand lies close link punched the hold up gave Phoenix that so I clocked up in Phoenix, so Barbara and I got on a bus Greyhound bus. We would.

I was just bumming around. Should I tell I did something that young women did not do at that point in time I met two girls at the same house or I was renting a room from a wonderful lady and her and her daughter and they were Mormon and they were so good to us and they have to.

Mrs. Naylor had three sons and they were in the occupational forces scattered around between Japan and Germany and she was so kind to us, but Eleanor and Marianne.

They were models from Chicago. They were taking a break from doing whatever they did in Chicago.

They had fianc�es in the also in the occupational forces. So, Eleanor, who is the very adventure she said there's nothing to hear. We've done everything that you can do.

Horseback riding is not going to do it so we were lying down. There is no plastic in those days we are lying down oilcloth tablecloth that we took off the landlady's lawnmower and we had our bathing suits and some Are Going Trading Cards Is Crazy Herself to Death and There's Still Nothing to Do Here.

Let's Go to California and I Think I Sat up and I Said Well I Arrived by Bus and I Don't Think You Came Any Differently That We Got the Snow Away and Eyes. Not for Me.

Just about That Marianne and I Are Going She Said Oh It'll Be Perfectly Safe. She Said My Brother Told Me That the Monterey Peninsula Is Exactly Where We Want to Be in California Because He Had Met.

He Was like 10 or 15 Years Older Than She and He Said All He Loved the Collie of Swami's Father, Ryan. He Always Insisted If Everybody California. We Have To Find out about Well the Swami's Were Long Gone by the Time We Got There, but We Hiked from Phoenix, Arizona Hitchhiked to the Coast. We Went to Tijuana Mexico and Nearly Got Arrested Because Marianne's and Garlic and There Was a Satellite Look like a Donkey but Had Stripes Look like a Super so It Was a Strange Looking Animal, but It Was Hooked up to a Small Cart. The Flowers on Them for a Dollar You Could Take a Little Ride around the Area and so We Were a Joke You Know We Didn't Need to Do That Size Just Take Pictures When I Took Pictures and We Are Walking Away and All Of A Sudden We Hear This Very Male Boy Said Senior's and He Was so Good Looking Meeting Care What He Really Gorgeous Young Mexican Man and He Said You Took a Picture without Permission.

You're Going to Have To Pay so That Sounded Okay and He's How Much How My Photos Did You Take.

I Said Well I Think What Was Okay and the Lord May Not. He Said I'll Take a Dollar and He Said by Your at It Wanted to Take Your ladies and let your hair down because a better era.

We dress like then you look pretty bad and we had a nice in our ways. But that's Eleanor was very animated. She was a brave woman. I was a follower, but pretty soon it seemed like the right thing to do and so we hiked along the coast with the most amazing kind of experiences out so many people want to shelter us and take us and we took jobs.

One in particular was with a young a packing plant orange Sunkist orange packing plant. Sometimes we'd we let we let we okay to deceive people. If we that we were men we didn't take our you know it and we stuck together estate away, but an end of the Monterey Peninsula that it was not developed at that point in time two years after the war. Just small motels a little business of some kind here and there, but if you've ever been a moderate is this a coastline that is so stunning and those jagged rocks that we would find little legends we could sit on a rock to see lines, hours that we slept on the beach and you're listening to milk the baby and tell her real-life story.

The routers story and what happened after is my goodness.

After working all the time, making all that money you want to return to the old life in the old ways and as her male relatives said your mother will keep you your hundred and so she picked a place on the map Phoenix and then on the word of the of someone else. Just pick Monterey and up, she went as breezy and easy as the wind removed from something really hard and it weighing on her waiting on so many Americans is so true. The emotional wreckage was still there.

She said many of the men and women didn't come home.

They were lost connection or good was a black cloud that hung over us for a long time in her rebuttal, live life going when we come back more of this remarkable story. Note the Bremen story real-life Rosie, the routers story here on our American store and we continue with the story of Mildred Bremen real-life Rosie, the routers story in her own words. Let's return to milk.

Actually our first ride from Phoenix was with an old man. We left at seven in the morning and we arrived at midnight on Long Beach and no development at all off all moon and it didn't look spooky. You can see the ocean undulating. It looks silvery and then there was a big round balls bobbing up and but that we slept the night on the beach.

There was nobody there. We just lined up our suitcases for when barrier and that's the kind of stuff that happened all along and then Monterey. We are looking for place to sleep in and we also took advantage of the YWCA since we belong in Santa Barbara on different places wherever we could clean up and be human. Be women again so that they were huge help.

They never question are awful.

You know anywhere where where gravity so anyway they would take us in on the house mothers were not approving but yell to your parents know you're doing this. No, ma'am. So that's how it went. My goodness takes me back. I was making more money than my Papa wages were very low. At that point in time for me to be making a dollar and 1/2 and of course everything was ration shoes you know if you want to find clothing and maybe something you can get on the bus go to the town will then go to Windsor Canada.

They were rationing. Thank you so you could buy all kinds of finery in whatever you wanted in Canada's same kind of unpatriotic but shoes are no longer being made out of leather. Everything was being saved for the military. So if you got a shoe store to buy shoes is made a new product, no plastics existed, then so be compressed cardboard of some kind that would the uppers might be made out of the fabric that was flimsy, that was not destined to go into the military for uniforms or anything else.

No silk was available because I went into the parachutes will was not available in clothing because all of that went to the troops in Europe were my behold so I but the shoes didn't last very long. The art should break down some part of it you know it was just we are living on shoestrings but everybody swapped you had have stamps for certain products you wanted coffee or bladder like that you can swap with somebody so I don't drink coffee, you can have my stamps for that year, but are stamps and they sell wheat margarine met my mother since I don't buy that junk understand because it looked like a large enough semirigid and was in a place that was the first plastic that I saw it was it was chocolate like Crisco with a little capsule and they you break and then you can need the package to lift took on a yellow color and my mother said my families on the link that bladder are nothing itself. Every penny that I could. I assume can you imagine 12 hour days seven days a week, but I was making at overtime and doubletime was a fortune. So is buying hundred dollar bonds a month and that you could get $100 bond for $75 and that would be deducted from my paycheck and $50 bond is 3750 I would get those every other week for 1875 I can get a $25.

I got those every week. Sometimes I get more by the time the war was over I had about $5800 and mature value. And I wouldn't spend any of it.

When I got married, my husband didn't know about because I felt Rosie made that money and it didn't hurt because there is a lot that I could use it for actually $850 on a paper for heating system for the house in Lakewood has is that we can't afford to put a furnace in his house and the contractor kept saying you will be able to heat the house with that little space heater.

Bobby said this is a bakehouse and the husband said no. I made up my mind. My mortgage is all set on my goodness start with that again. And so the contractor built Peter Cocteau say-so member nice Greek man seeking to persuade Bob to get a heating system we need to do. Ductwork should do that before we close up the ceilings nice and now he's adamant I cannot tell you what you price a heating system and I'll see what I can do. So he priced it down to the penny and he said you have a choice of two kinds of assistance your money. You can burn number one oil fired oil or you can burn number two oil which is just as good but the only problem with number two out if you don't change a filtering furnace often enough.

Your ceiling will be black around the docs I saw take number two so it cost $832 and I forget how many cents and told my husband house and wasn't it didn't cool the house just heat and they did a great job of heating, but that was my big expenditure of Rosie money. The first money I spent.

Imagine that, and for other needy things furniture as we need in my house. He could've lived with orange crates take advantage of the G.I. Bill and became an attorney and so it was frugal, so every once in a while I say how about I buy a sofa he said okay when they come highlight by this okay with it where it worked, got us through it.

I think as we get older, it becomes more meaningful because were looking at the youth of America and we like to preserve it and we like to think that what we did was important, but were also fearful that unless we keep some remnant of churches and going that might not last. And so the whole patriotic idea and I wrote a book in which I have high hopes for this. There's a lot in it thought. Let this one character who is really a Rosie in disguise, which is kind of rough around the edges and she's one of the main characters I need to really which I was called on occasion so Millie's think reason what she did during the warrant fictionally was to take care of some of the southern heroes who came to Detroit by having a small hotel but her goal was to go back to Detroit and to see what she could do by inspiring the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion of Rosie want to go back to Detroit to fire them up to do some of the things that they used to because I started out in the 1800s, educating youth, they had scholarships of all kinds.

Yes, I had campaign day also was keeping the fires of patriotism going. Little did they know that they were going to be looking at World War II. You know, and so right now the lesions are dead or dying, and so on. Last year I thought maybe I could do something about that contact some Rosie's.

Maybe we could have some kind of programs to inspire the grandchildren what's left of the letter to keep us reminded that it isn't free trade is not free. Thanks for it. Everybody that knew anybody lost the child.

A lot of nurses died on the front lines in it still hangs over my head, really because I'm afraid this what's going on in the world. I'm not afraid that America can't mobilize.

We would we do know anything about mobilizing then practically without any armament that are spare, but hold us together but the enemies much bigger at this point in time, we could be hit pretty hard, but I think Americans can supply I should say I think I know I know Americans can survive. We have the spirit because are so diversified is what makes us strong. When I just an isolated country with one language, one religion, one government, we've got it all like about little package of M&Ms and you're listening to milk a Bremen and real-life Rosie the river. Special thanks to the veterans history Project. If you win a history Center. They do great work and you can go to Atlanta history.com and click veterans history Project under the research to great job as always to Greg Hendler my go to some of the things that no cassette I was making more money than my pops.

I have $5800 saved didn't spend any of it was Rosie money the Rosie money she deployed whenever she felt like it become at independence that she thought that so many women in this country becoming Rosie the rivers of the way she was also fearful unless we keep some remnant of patriotism might get lost so everyone who knew anyone lost someone said hangs over all of our heads. Still to this day. Milk a Bremen story real-life Rosie the river story here on our American stores