January 27, 2025 • 38 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, while the men served in WWII, women also served by filling the spots in factories that men left behind. Unmatched in their value, these women provided an essential service that would help bring us to victory and make America the most powerful country in the world.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
and our favorite thing to talk about is American history.
And up next, we'll be hearing from an actual World
War Two Rosie the Riveter Milka Baymon. He tells her
early life story and details her World War II experience
(00:30):
as a riveter in airplane factories. He also chronicles her
post war experiences and describes being part of the Rosie
the Riveter coalition.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Hears Milka, well, my family is really tiny. I was
born in Fairmount, West Virginia, a child of an illiterate
coal miner who lost his life when I was six
months old, so I never got to know my father.
After that, my mother was fortunate enough to have someone
send her a train fair come to Detroit, and then
(01:01):
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 and I knew that
even though it was an effort to come to America,
because I don't think that anyone can leave their homeland
(01:24):
without a wrenching feeling of your leaving everything behind, everything
that who you are, everybody who is responsible for your
being on the planet. But whatever the reason and however
they got here, I'm very grateful, And I think because
I knew of their hardships that it gave me a
special feeling. And especially when the war was going on
(01:47):
and so many of our young men were drafted. They
were going to Europe to try to resolveage whatever they
could have of Europe. But then when Japan struck, that
was a real wake up call. And I think that
even then I was not quite eighteen, I realized that
the Japanese had miscalculated. They thought we were very weak.
We didn't have much of a war machine. The Depression
(02:11):
put a dent in that, and so catching up was
very difficult. So I guess they thought if they attacked
us on the other side of the planet, we would
just be easy pickings. They had to have Hawaii, they
wanted to expand, but they met an enemy that they
never expected, and it was a patriotism that kept us going.
(02:33):
I get used bumpy right now thinking about how important
it was my own background, because my parents said, oh,
we thought we were escaping the Balkan Wars. We hope
it doesn't happen in America. So there was a sense
of fear living in Detroit. In particular, all the automobile
factories had converted to arming America, building planes and other jeeps.
(02:58):
That was logical for motor time, but it was a
very heart felt fear. We didn't know whether our factories
would 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 the silhouettes of aeroplanes enemy aircraft, that in case
(03:20):
an airplane flew overhead, we'd know that it was an
enemy plane. So all of that added to the kind
of insecure feeling that we all had. We had no
idea because up to then we were since the Civil War.
We felt like we're doing really okay. But you can't
take it for granted. So when the Cold Arms came,
(03:41):
I heard it from a classmate and she said, I'm
going to be working and I said where, and she
said the brigs and Stratton plant. I said, to have
room for more women. They said, they're clamoring for more women.
So the next day I was on the trolley and
got myself down to the factory and they signed me
up for a three week course and uh whatever I
(04:01):
needed to know in in riveting and the other side
of it, the bucking person who flattens that rivet and
uh s some minor blueprint scanning. It wasn't as thorough
as I expected it to be, but it prepared me
for what I had to do. I started in early
nineteen forty three, but the a big surprise when I
(04:23):
finally got to the The classes were held at Briggs
and Stratton in some areas that they had reserved for
that because they were training welders and a lot of
other women to do different kinds of jobs. But when
I actually saw how they said, no, that's a tip.
I'm a B seventeen and what do you mean the tip, Well,
that's the end of the wing. But it was on
(04:45):
a platform three feet up off the ground, very heavy
duty superstructure of lumber, the whole this massive framework. It
was just a skeleton to begin with. They took us
from the very beginning of what it looks like and
then and they put on the skin, which is aluminum
that's rolled out to particular thinness and sheets that were
(05:06):
already precized to fit the skeleton the rounded portion, and
there was a crane that held women overhead to do
their But we started at the bottom and there were
two tiers 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
(05:27):
American Africans were working side by side with white folks,
and there was never anything that would register as disharmony.
We had a mission and it did a lot to
bring us together. Also, a lot of young women were
coming from the Southern States, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and they
(05:47):
brought a culture with them that we Detroiters were not
accustomed to. They were more genteel, they had better manners,
They brought wonderful food items with them. They taught us
all about pies and fried fish and iced tea, sweet
iced tea. It was a real addition to the culture.
(06:09):
So I think you tried got a real sampling of
people from pretty much all over the country, but mostly
from the southern area, and that was to Detroit, I
should say mostly from the southern area. But that was
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're going to be working
(06:32):
seven days a week. We can't guarantee how many hours
it could be ten or twelve. Are you up to that?
And of course you're up to whatever you have to
do it.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
And my goodness, what storytelling by Milka and a collision
of cultures and women in the workforce too. That's a
huge cultural change in the country, one that came fast
and hard and would change the country forever. And by
the way, Milka's story is brought to us with permission
from the Veterans History Project at the Atlanta History Center.
(07:03):
The Veterans History Project provides unedited first person interviews from
men and women who served our great country. When we
come back more of Milka's story of Rosie the Riveters
story here on our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Folks.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
If you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith are brought to us by the great folks.
At Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the
things that are beautiful in life and all the things
that are good in life. And if you can't get
to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free
(07:54):
and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to
learn more. And we continue with our American stories in
the story of Milka Baymen of real life, Rosie the Riveter.
(08:16):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
We were just the other arm of the military. It
was 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.
But you're still working in the warf but you're not quitting,
And so that's how it went. I also realized early on,
much to my chagrin, and at first I thought it
(08:41):
was just a nasty rumor, but there was a certain
element of men who resented the women for taking over
men's jobs, although we were the only resource at that time.
These are harsh men who really not only disrespected, but
physically attacked women. One particular evening, I was asked to
(09:02):
substitute for a man who said he had to leave
what we call the tool shed or tool crib It
was made out of a chain link fencing, so you
could see right through shelves on drawers full of all
kinds of tools. So when you 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 off
(09:24):
with things, so that just guaranteed it. So he said,
I'm going to be away for about an hour, would
you mind the shed for me? And I thought, oh,
that'll be a nice change because there was a lull
in my production line. So that was okay. But along
comes this man on a bicycle. I'd seen him around
the shop and he was a messenger and that was
the only way to get messages to different department hits
(09:44):
with him on his bicycle. And he was dressed like
a jockey and the jockey silks, you know, and he
had a little Salvador Dali mustache and a silk cap.
You look like a jockey. But when he pulled up,
I knew that he had a bad reputation. He ever
really questioned it. They said, look lookout for Frenchy. He
(10:04):
called himself Frenchy. So when he pulled up the doorway
he said, I've come by to say hello, and I said,
what's your real purpose? And that was when he pushed
me between two bins. I was so paralyzed with fear
I couldn't even scream. I couldn't make a sound. But
all of a sudden, I got this bright idea. I
hooked my foot or on his leg and he fell
(10:25):
and I fell on top of him, and he was
like this for a few moments, and I started punching
him in the face. That's when I started to scream
and help came. Well. 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 among themselves,
(10:48):
and it went to other shops as well. But a
lot of the union men were there, you know, they
were always you know, well, you have to join the union.
I kept saying, No, I don't have to join the union. No,
the constitution doesn't say so not joining the union. It
might have benefited us, but they were part of our abusers, intimidators.
(11:09):
So the women really took over because this abuse was
not only confined to shipbuilders. I don't know if you
want to hear some ugly stories of what happened to
roses on the job. It was not an easy ride
by any means. The women who build ships out on
the West coast, we know the armor plate of the
(11:31):
hull of a ship is very thick steel, and there
was a skeleton there that they had to work and
they had to put after they assemble the hull, then
they had to put a steel floor in there which
had holes pre drilled where they would run electric wires
under that flooring. The men actually urinated into the hull.
(11:53):
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 were enemies of the
country of some sort. They wanted to discourage us, but
nothing did. You just went on. I mean you were
almost stoic, almost robotic. At the end of a day,
if it's a twelve hour day, you're glad to get
(12:14):
on a street car and go home. But seven days
it was required. We didn't complain, but the city did
so much to keep us going. The Fox Theater was
open twenty four hours a day. If you finished your
shift at two am in the morning. You brought first
clothes and fresh makeup, and you put on your clothes
and you went downtown and you went to the movies.
(12:35):
You could go to the nightclubs. Everything was there for
us so that we didn't feel left out. Everything was
to boost the civilians and whatever we were doing. So
this may sound silly, but there was a girl from
West Virginia and she said, well, I'm from West Virginia
and I'm a hillbilly. And I said, well, I was
born in West Virginia. So she wanted to know the Well,
(12:57):
she said, you were not a patriot, you didn't stay.
I said, well, my ruths are in Europe, not West Virginia.
But anyway, she said, it's okay with me if you
call me hillbilly and I said okay. I said, I'm
not quite comfortable with it, but she's and she's about
try it out. And I said, hi, hell billy, it
sounded okay. I said, what are you gonna call me?
(13:19):
She said, I'm gonna call you a honky. So that's
how it went. And Drew saida Duncan is her name,
and her husband was in the military, and she was
really quite when we would have lunch or time off
way because she was a smoker and I go outside
with her. She kept it going and she added a
(13:39):
lot of humor. We needed it. But because we were
so casual about calling each other's names, you know, and
the others kind of fell into that too. So that
was a happy time. Yeah, But for me, it was
particularly important that America survived. My parents said, oh my goodness,
(14:02):
can it happen here? We tried to escape all of
that coming from Europe said that, So anyway, everybody had
their own story somewhere there. Because one of the coworkers, Peggy,
she was forty four. I thought she was ancient forty four.
I considered her an old person. She was in for
(14:25):
the money, she said, I'm a patriot, but I'm here
because of the wages, and they were probably the best
that people were making at that point in time. I
started out as something like seventy five cents an hour,
but pretty soon I was promoted to inspector. Because I
was always curious about everything. So I was making a
dollar and a half an hour. So just imagine over
(14:48):
time and double time, I bought more war bonds. I
could almost paper a small room, wallpaper, small room, and
I never cashed in the first one until it was
ten years Who were but yeah, everyone really was very patriotic.
They're all young, and there are others who were first
(15:10):
generation as I was, and they have the same concerns
what's gonna happen to America. So anyway, at that point
in time, we're talking the nineteen forties, very little was
known about toxic fumes or ventilation or the effects it
has on humans. So about my second year, I started
(15:30):
losing my hair and I didn't think much of that,
but pretty soon my scalp was showing through, and then
I to disguise it. I wore my hair up to
hide that, and my hair was long anyway, so I
was camouflaging that. But when it got to be pretty bad,
you know, I was talking to other young women and
they also were losing their hair. Some of them had
(15:51):
twitches in their faces. We were having neurological problems, breathing problems.
But my department was maybe like this far to where
the light is back there, and they were making parts
for the Votsikorski Navy fight her plane. No jets in
those days, but they to lighten the load. The the
(16:11):
plane had very very heavy UH armament on the fuselage
to protect the pilot, but they were trying to lighten
it a little bit by making the ailerons and the
flaps out of fabric over a very light UH aluminum frame.
So that was stretched over and fitted on the onto
the framework, and then they WU was spray painted and
(16:32):
put it in an area where the lights would dry
it quickly and then spray pay more so where those
spray guns. You know, the hares is settling on your hair,
on your arms, on your clothes. Nobody thought that that
was a problem. And yet there was a fan too,
which just blew it around. So anyway, I had UH
taken a day off from work, and you report to
(16:52):
the shop nurse if you're gonna be taking any time
off and when you're coming back. So when she talked
to me, she said, you're a candidate. She said, we've
been sending a lot of your young ladies who are
reporting illnesses to the YWCA camp. It's on the shore
of Lake Erie. And I said, you know, I spend
some time there as a preteen. She said, the YWCA
is rescuing you. The y w C a is making
(17:15):
it their job throughout America to rescue young women who
need to be rescued by sending them to camps all
across America.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
And you're listening to Milka Baymen, and she's a real
life Rosy the Riveter. For me, it was particularly important
that America survive. Milka 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 the money
(17:42):
was pretty good too. When we come back more of
this real life Rosy the Riveter story, Milka Bayman's story
here on our American stories, and we continue with our
(18:10):
American stories in Milka Bayman's story, a real life Rosie
the Riveter story. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
So the YWC 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
you need a little more rest. So it was very nice.
A lot of girls who actually depressed. Some worry that
they never gained their facial expressions back, you know, because
(18:41):
they'd be pulled up or the lips would be frozen. Well,
We were there recuperating and I was into my second month.
I was doing quite well. We were in the dining
room for dinner and there was a radio on the
ledgers just about the a Klean xbox. That's too you
(19:03):
would never imagine a radio is only this big. But
that went on and it was got our attention because
of the announcer was said, we have an announcement, an announcement.
He was like stuttering, he said, the Japanese have just surrendered.
When that was heard, we were so stunned. I'm telling you,
(19:23):
the whole room full of us fell to our knees.
We were just so grateful. So that was the end
of my rosing career right then and there. But it
was it was a wrenching experience, and yet the sense
of hope. But what happened after the war. The war
may have ended in nineteen forty five, but the residue
(19:48):
of the emotional records she was still there. And you
had to cope with it because so many of the
young men and women didn't come home, and you knew
which homes because when you had a memor your family
in the service, you would get a little flag about
eight by eight of the silver star on it. If
that flag showed up with the gold star on it,
you know that their military man, their soldier was never
(20:12):
coming home. He was either lost in auction or dead.
So you were looking at that all the time your schoolmates.
You could go into any neighborhood and that would be
the topic of conversation, you know, and they'd be counting homes.
You'd be counting homes, how many on a particular blocker section.
And so it was a black cloud that hungovers for
a long time. It really was. War didn't just end
(20:35):
automatically by any means. And then there was an awful
lot of controversy about the two bombs. How could we
do that? We kept saying, sure, they're the enemy. Well,
we understood that we were losing thousands of young boys
in the in the Pacific, in the Philippines and all
those islands, that we had to do something. It was
a massive, massive thing to cope with. After the war,
(20:59):
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
be ethnic background. Girls are sheltered. You never leave home
unless you're going to get married. So can you try
to imagine my mother's reaction I'm leaving home. She was humiliated.
(21:23):
She said, how can I face the Serbian sisters in
church and tell them that you're a bad girl? Am
i adopted stepfather? Said? My adoptive father said to me privately,
your mother will keep you till you're one hundred years old.
Go wherever your heart desires, live your life. So I
(21:46):
took out a map of the USMA with a knitting
needle in my hand, my eyes closed and punched a hole.
Up came Phoenix. That's how I want up in Phoenix.
So Barbara and I got on a bus, Greyhound bus
to Phoenix. Oh, I was just bumming around. Should I
tell them I did something that young women did not
(22:10):
do at that point in time. I met two girls
at the same house where I was renting a room
from a wonderful lady h and her daughter, and they
were Mormon, and they were so good to us, and
they had missus. Naylor had three sons and they were
in the occupational forces, scattered around between Japan and Germany,
(22:30):
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 fiancees
and also in the occupational forces. So Eleanor, who was
the very Adventures, she said, there's nothing to do here.
(22:51):
We've done everything that you can do. Horseback writing is
not going to do it. And so we were lying down.
There was no plastic in those days. We were lying
down on a oilcloth tablecloth. And we took off the
land Ladies lawnmower, and we had our bathing suits and
swim caps on. But the sprinkler going rotating. And Elinor says,
(23:11):
it must be crazy. We're cooking ourselves 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
in any differently. She said, we got thumbs, don't we?
And I said, ah, not for me. She said, well,
then Marianne and I are going. She said, oh, it'll
(23:33):
be perfectly safe. She said, my brother told me that
the Monterey Peninsula isn't exactly where we want to be
in California, because he had met He was like ten
or fifteen years older. Than she, and he said, oh,
he loved the colony of Swamis that we're in Monterey,
and he always insisted if I ever go to California,
we have to find out about them. Well, the Swamis
(23:53):
were long gone by the time we got there, but
we hiked from Phoenix, Arizona hitch to the coast. We
went to Tijuana, Mexico, and nearly got arrested because Marianne said,
what is that strange sight we're looking in? There was
this animal that looked like a donkey, but it had stripes.
(24:15):
It looked like a seabra. So it was a strange
looking animal. But it was hooked up to a small
cart with flowers on it, and for a dollar you
could take a little ride around the area. And so
we were joking, No, we didn't need to do that,
so I said, I'll just take pictures. Well, I took
pictures and we were walking away and all of a
sudden we hear this very male boy, said senior read it.
(24:39):
And he was so good looking we didn't care what
he had to sit. Oh, really gorgeous, young Mexican man.
And he said, you took a picture without permission. You're
going to have to pay, and so that sounded okay.
And he said how much? How many photos did you take?
I said, well, I think one was okay and the
(24:59):
other one he said, I'll take a dollar. And he said,
while you're at it, why don't you take your caps off,
ladies and let your hair down. Because we had our
hair up, we dressed like men. We looked pretty bad,
and we had hunting knives in our waistbans. Eleanor was
very innovative. She was a brave one. Uh. I was
a follower, but pretty soon it seemed like the right
(25:22):
thing to do. And so we hiked along the coast
with the most amazing kind of experiences. Oh, so many
people wanted to shelter us and take us in. We
took jobs. Uh when in particular was with a a
packing plant, orange sun kiss orange packing plant. Uh. Sometimes
(25:42):
we we let we let we It was okay to
deceive people if we that we were men. We didn't
take our caps off, you know, And we stuck together
as stayed away. But and in uh the Monterey Peninsula
that it was not developed at that point two years
after the war, just small motels, a little business of
(26:04):
some kind here and there. But if you've ever been
to Monterey, it's the coastline that is so stunny, and
those jagged rocks, so we would find little ledges we
could sit on, our lots of sea lions hours we
slept on the.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Beach, And you're listening to milk A Bayman tell her
real life story for Rosie the Riveter's story. And what
happened after is my goodness, after working all that time,
making all that money, you didn't want to return to
the old life, in the old ways. And as her
male relative said, your mother will keep you until your
one hundred and so she picked a place on the map, Phoenix,
(26:42):
and then on the word of someone else, just picked Monterey.
And up she went, as breezy and easy as the wind,
having lived through something really hard and it weighing on
her and weighing on so many Americans. Is it's so
true the emotional wreckage was still there, she said. So
many of the men and women didn't come home, They
(27:03):
were lost in action or dead. It was a black
cloud that hung over us for a long time. And
her rebuttal live life get going when we come back.
More of this remarkable story. Milka Bayman's story, a real
life Rosy the Riveter's story here on our American Stories,
(27:37):
and we continue with the story of Milka Baymon, a
real life Rosy the Riveter story in her own words.
Let's return to Milka.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
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,
a full moon, and if that did look spooky, you
could see the ocean undulating. It looks sillery and then
there was these big round balls bobbing up and down.
(28:08):
But that we sut the night on the beach. There
was nobody there. We just lined up our suitcases for
a wind barrier. And that's the kind of stuff that happened,
you know, all along and in Monterey we were looking
for a place to sleep and and we also took
advantage of the YWCA's as we went along and Santa
Barbera on different places wherever we could clean up and
be human, be women again, you know, so that they
(28:31):
were a huge help. Uh. They never questioned our awful
you know, I mean, we're we're we're grubby from sleeping up.
So anyway they would take us in and the house
mothers were not approving. But you know, do your parents
know you're doing this, no, ma'am. So that's how it went. Yeah, Oh,
(28:55):
my goodness, takes me back. M I was making more
money than my papa. Wow. Wages were very low at
that point in time for me to be making a
dollar and a half, And of course everything was rashing shoes.
You know, if you want to find clothing and really something,
(29:18):
you could get on the bus and go through the
tunnel and go to Windsor Canada. They weren't rationally anything,
so you could buy all kinds of finery and whatever
you wanted in Canada, and it seemed kind of unpatriotic.
But shoes were no longer being made out of leather.
Everything was being saved for the military. So if you
go to a shoe store to buy shoes, it's made
(29:40):
out of a new product. No plastics has existed then,
so be compressed cardboard of some kind that would wear
the uppers might be made out of a fabric that
was flimsy, that was not destined to go into the
military for uniforms or anything else. No silk was available
because that went into the parachutes. Wool was not available
(30:01):
in clothing because all of that went to the troops
in Europe were might behold so but the shoes didn't
last very long. The arch would break down. But that
was all part of it, you know. It was just
we're living on shoe strings. But everybody swapped. You had
to have stamps for certain products. If you wanted coffee,
(30:21):
your butter or something like that, you could swap with
somebody who said, I don't drink coffee, you can have
my stamps for that, and give me your butter stamps.
And they said, oh, we eat margarine. My mother says, I
don't buy that junk. She couldn't understand it because it
looked like lard. And the margarine was in a plastic bag.
That was the first plastic that I saw it. It
(30:44):
was chalk white like criscal with a little tapsule and
then you'd break and then you could need the package
till it took on a yellow color. And my mother said,
my family's not going to eat that butter or nothing.
But she was from Europe. She didn't trust that stuff.
Every penny that I could, really, I had a serpent.
(31:05):
Can you imagine twelve hour days seven days a week.
When I was making at overtime in double time, it
was a fortune. So I was buying one hundred dollars
bonds a month, and that you could get a hundred
dollar bond for seventy five dollars and that would be
deductive from my paycheck. A fifty dollars bond was thirty
(31:27):
seven to fifty. I would get those every other week.
For eighteen seventy five, I could get a twenty five
dollars bod. I got those every week. Sometimes I get more.
By the time the war was over, I had about
fifty eight hundred dollars in mature value and I wasn't
going to spend any of it. And when I got married,
my husband didn't know about it because I felt Rosy
(31:50):
made that money and it didn't hurt because there was
a lot that I could use it for. Actually, eight
hundred more than fifty dollars of it paid for a
heating system for the house in Lakewood. My husband said,
we can't afford to put a furnace in his house,
(32:10):
and the contractor kept saying, you won't be able to
heat the house with that little space heater. Bob. He said,
this is a big house. And my husband said, nope,
I've made up my mind. My mortgage is all set.
I'm not going to start with that again. And so
the contractor built, Peter Kanto, say still remember a nice
Greek man. He said, catch you persuade Bob to get
(32:31):
a heating system. We need to do duct work. We
should do that before we close up the ceilings. And
I said, no, he's out of it. I said, I'll
tell you what you price the 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 systems. You're gonna you can burn
number one oil, fine oil, or you can burn number
(32:53):
two oil, which is just as good. But the only
problem with number two oil. If you don't change the
filtering your furnace off enough, your ceiling will be black
around the ducks. I said, I'll take number two oil.
So it cost eight hundred and thirty two dollars and
I forget how many cents. And I never told my husband.
I don't think he even knew it. He moved in
(33:13):
the house. It wasn't it didn't cool the house, just heat,
and it did a great job of heating. But that
was my big expenditure of Rosy money, the first money
I spent. Imagine that, and for other needy things, furniture
as we needed. My husband could have lived with Orange crates. Well,
he took advantage of the GI bill and became an attorney,
(33:35):
and so it was frugal. So every once in a
while I'd say, how about I buy a Sophie said,
okay with me? How about I'd buy this? Okay with me?
It worked, It worked, it got us through it. I
think as we get older, it becomes more meaningful because
(33:59):
we're looking at the youth of America and we'd like
to preserve it, and we like to think that what
we did was important. But we're also fearful that unless
we keep some remnant of patriotism going, it might not
blast and so the whole patriotic idea. And I wrote
(34:24):
a book in which I have high hopes for it.
But there's a lot in it about with this one
character who is really a Rosy in disguise, but she's
kind of rough around the edges, and she's one of
the main characters that I named her Millie, which I
was called on occasion too. So Millie's big reason what
(34:49):
she did during the war fictionally was to take care
of some of the Southern girls 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 the
American legion. Rosie wants to go back to Detroit to
(35:11):
fire them up to do some of the things that
they used to because they started out in the eighteen
hundreds educating youth. They had scholarships of all kinds. They
also had campaing. They also were keeping the fires of
patriots and going. Little did they know that they were
going to be looking at World War two. I mean,
you know, and so right now the legions are dead
(35:35):
or dying. And so last year I thought, maybe I
could do something about that. Contact some rosies, Maybe we
could have some kind of programs to inspire the grandchildren
of what's left of the veterans, to keep us reminded
that it isn't free. Freedom is not free. You paid
(35:58):
for it. Everybody that knew, anybody lost the child, or
a lot of nurses died on the front lines. And yeah,
it still hangs over my head really because I'm afraid
with what's going on in the world. I'm not afraid
that America can't mobilize. We would, we didn't know anything
(36:21):
about mobilizing. Then we're practically without any armament. That our
spiritu hold us together. But the enemy is much bigger
at this point in time, and we could be hit
pretty hard. But I think Americans can survive. I shouldn't
say I think, I know. I know Americans can survive.
(36:43):
We have the spirit because we're so diversified is what
makes us strong. We're not just an isolated country with
one language, one religion, one government. We've got it all.
We're like a little package of Eminem's.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Listening to Milka Baymon and a real life Rosy the
Riveter and a special thanks to the Veteran's History Project
at the Atlanta History Center. They do great work and
you can go to Atlantahistory dot com and click Veterans
History Project under the research tab. And great job as
always to Greg Hengler. Am I goodness some of the
(37:22):
things that Milka said, I was making more money than
my pops. I had fifty eight hundred dollars saved. I
didn't spend any of it. That was rosy money, and
the rosy money she deployed whenever she felt like it again,
that independence that she got, that so many women in
this country got, becoming Rosie the Riveters. By the way,
(37:43):
she was also fearful, unless we keep some remnant of patriotism,
it might get lost, she said. Everyone who knew anyone
lost someone, she said, and that it hangs over all
of our head still to this day. Milka Bateman's story
a real life Rosie the Riveters story. Here on our
(38:07):
American Stories
This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories,
and we tell stories about everything here on this show,
and our favorite thing to talk about is American history.
And up next, we'll be hearing from an actual World
War Two Rosie the Riveter Milka Baymon. He tells her
early life story and details her World War II experience
(00:30):
as a riveter in airplane factories. He also chronicles her
post war experiences and describes being part of the Rosie
the Riveter coalition.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Hears Milka, well, my family is really tiny. I was
born in Fairmount, West Virginia, a child of an illiterate
coal miner who lost his life when I was six
months old, so I never got to know my father.
After that, my mother was fortunate enough to have someone
send her a train fair come to Detroit, and then
(01:01):
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 and I knew that
even though it was an effort to come to America,
because I don't think that anyone can leave their homeland
(01:24):
without a wrenching feeling of your leaving everything behind, everything
that who you are, everybody who is responsible for your
being on the planet. But whatever the reason and however
they got here, I'm very grateful, And I think because
I knew of their hardships that it gave me a
special feeling. And especially when the war was going on
(01:47):
and so many of our young men were drafted. They
were going to Europe to try to resolveage whatever they
could have of Europe. But then when Japan struck, that
was a real wake up call. And I think that
even then I was not quite eighteen, I realized that
the Japanese had miscalculated. They thought we were very weak.
We didn't have much of a war machine. The Depression
(02:11):
put a dent in that, and so catching up was
very difficult. So I guess they thought if they attacked
us on the other side of the planet, we would
just be easy pickings. They had to have Hawaii, they
wanted to expand, but they met an enemy that they
never expected, and it was a patriotism that kept us going.
(02:33):
I get used bumpy right now thinking about how important
it was my own background, because my parents said, oh,
we thought we were escaping the Balkan Wars. We hope
it doesn't happen in America. So there was a sense
of fear living in Detroit. In particular, all the automobile
factories had converted to arming America, building planes and other jeeps.
(02:58):
That was logical for motor time, but it was a
very heart felt fear. We didn't know whether our factories
would 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 the silhouettes of aeroplanes enemy aircraft, that in case
(03:20):
an airplane flew overhead, we'd know that it was an
enemy plane. So all of that added to the kind
of insecure feeling that we all had. We had no
idea because up to then we were since the Civil War.
We felt like we're doing really okay. But you can't
take it for granted. So when the Cold Arms came,
(03:41):
I heard it from a classmate and she said, I'm
going to be working and I said where, and she
said the brigs and Stratton plant. I said, to have
room for more women. They said, they're clamoring for more women.
So the next day I was on the trolley and
got myself down to the factory and they signed me
up for a three week course and uh whatever I
(04:01):
needed to know in in riveting and the other side
of it, the bucking person who flattens that rivet and
uh s some minor blueprint scanning. It wasn't as thorough
as I expected it to be, but it prepared me
for what I had to do. I started in early
nineteen forty three, but the a big surprise when I
(04:23):
finally got to the The classes were held at Briggs
and Stratton in some areas that they had reserved for
that because they were training welders and a lot of
other women to do different kinds of jobs. But when
I actually saw how they said, no, that's a tip.
I'm a B seventeen and what do you mean the tip, Well,
that's the end of the wing. But it was on
(04:45):
a platform three feet up off the ground, very heavy
duty superstructure of lumber, the whole this massive framework. It
was just a skeleton to begin with. They took us
from the very beginning of what it looks like and
then and they put on the skin, which is aluminum
that's rolled out to particular thinness and sheets that were
(05:06):
already precized to fit the skeleton the rounded portion, and
there was a crane that held women overhead to do
their But we started at the bottom and there were
two tiers 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
(05:27):
American Africans were working side by side with white folks,
and there was never anything that would register as disharmony.
We had a mission and it did a lot to
bring us together. Also, a lot of young women were
coming from the Southern States, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and they
(05:47):
brought a culture with them that we Detroiters were not
accustomed to. They were more genteel, they had better manners,
They brought wonderful food items with them. They taught us
all about pies and fried fish and iced tea, sweet
iced tea. It was a real addition to the culture.
(06:09):
So I think you tried got a real sampling of
people from pretty much all over the country, but mostly
from the southern area, and that was to Detroit, I
should say mostly from the southern area. But that was
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're going to be working
(06:32):
seven days a week. We can't guarantee how many hours
it could be ten or twelve. Are you up to that?
And of course you're up to whatever you have to
do it.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
And my goodness, what storytelling by Milka and a collision
of cultures and women in the workforce too. That's a
huge cultural change in the country, one that came fast
and hard and would change the country forever. And by
the way, Milka's story is brought to us with permission
from the Veterans History Project at the Atlanta History Center.
(07:03):
The Veterans History Project provides unedited first person interviews from
men and women who served our great country. When we
come back more of Milka's story of Rosie the Riveters
story here on our American Stories.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Folks.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
If you love the stories we tell about this great country,
and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that
all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation,
culture and faith are brought to us by the great folks.
At Hillsdale College, a place where students study all the
things that are beautiful in life and all the things
that are good in life. And if you can't get
to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free
(07:54):
and terrific online courses. Go to Hillsdale dot edu to
learn more. And we continue with our American stories in
the story of Milka Baymen of real life, Rosie the Riveter.
(08:16):
Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
We were just the other arm of the military. It
was 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.
But you're still working in the warf but you're not quitting,
And so that's how it went. I also realized early on,
much to my chagrin, and at first I thought it
(08:41):
was just a nasty rumor, but there was a certain
element of men who resented the women for taking over
men's jobs, although we were the only resource at that time.
These are harsh men who really not only disrespected, but
physically attacked women. One particular evening, I was asked to
(09:02):
substitute for a man who said he had to leave
what we call the tool shed or tool crib It
was made out of a chain link fencing, so you
could see right through shelves on drawers full of all
kinds of tools. So when you 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 off
(09:24):
with things, so that just guaranteed it. So he said,
I'm going to be away for about an hour, would
you mind the shed for me? And I thought, oh,
that'll be a nice change because there was a lull
in my production line. So that was okay. But along
comes this man on a bicycle. I'd seen him around
the shop and he was a messenger and that was
the only way to get messages to different department hits
(09:44):
with him on his bicycle. And he was dressed like
a jockey and the jockey silks, you know, and he
had a little Salvador Dali mustache and a silk cap.
You look like a jockey. But when he pulled up,
I knew that he had a bad reputation. He ever
really questioned it. They said, look lookout for Frenchy. He
(10:04):
called himself Frenchy. So when he pulled up the doorway
he said, I've come by to say hello, and I said,
what's your real purpose? And that was when he pushed
me between two bins. I was so paralyzed with fear
I couldn't even scream. I couldn't make a sound. But
all of a sudden, I got this bright idea. I
hooked my foot or on his leg and he fell
(10:25):
and I fell on top of him, and he was
like this for a few moments, and I started punching
him in the face. That's when I started to scream
and help came. Well. 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 among themselves,
(10:48):
and it went to other shops as well. But a
lot of the union men were there, you know, they
were always you know, well, you have to join the union.
I kept saying, No, I don't have to join the union. No,
the constitution doesn't say so not joining the union. It
might have benefited us, but they were part of our abusers, intimidators.
(11:09):
So the women really took over because this abuse was
not only confined to shipbuilders. I don't know if you
want to hear some ugly stories of what happened to
roses on the job. It was not an easy ride
by any means. The women who build ships out on
the West coast, we know the armor plate of the
(11:31):
hull of a ship is very thick steel, and there
was a skeleton there that they had to work and
they had to put after they assemble the hull, then
they had to put a steel floor in there which
had holes pre drilled where they would run electric wires
under that flooring. The men actually urinated into the hull.
(11:53):
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 were enemies of the
country of some sort. They wanted to discourage us, but
nothing did. You just went on. I mean you were
almost stoic, almost robotic. At the end of a day,
if it's a twelve hour day, you're glad to get
(12:14):
on a street car and go home. But seven days
it was required. We didn't complain, but the city did
so much to keep us going. The Fox Theater was
open twenty four hours a day. If you finished your
shift at two am in the morning. You brought first
clothes and fresh makeup, and you put on your clothes
and you went downtown and you went to the movies.
(12:35):
You could go to the nightclubs. Everything was there for
us so that we didn't feel left out. Everything was
to boost the civilians and whatever we were doing. So
this may sound silly, but there was a girl from
West Virginia and she said, well, I'm from West Virginia
and I'm a hillbilly. And I said, well, I was
born in West Virginia. So she wanted to know the Well,
(12:57):
she said, you were not a patriot, you didn't stay.
I said, well, my ruths are in Europe, not West Virginia.
But anyway, she said, it's okay with me if you
call me hillbilly and I said okay. I said, I'm
not quite comfortable with it, but she's and she's about
try it out. And I said, hi, hell billy, it
sounded okay. I said, what are you gonna call me?
(13:19):
She said, I'm gonna call you a honky. So that's
how it went. And Drew saida Duncan is her name,
and her husband was in the military, and she was
really quite when we would have lunch or time off
way because she was a smoker and I go outside
with her. She kept it going and she added a
(13:39):
lot of humor. We needed it. But because we were
so casual about calling each other's names, you know, and
the others kind of fell into that too. So that
was a happy time. Yeah, But for me, it was
particularly important that America survived. My parents said, oh my goodness,
(14:02):
can it happen here? We tried to escape all of
that coming from Europe said that, So anyway, everybody had
their own story somewhere there. Because one of the coworkers, Peggy,
she was forty four. I thought she was ancient forty four.
I considered her an old person. She was in for
(14:25):
the money, she said, I'm a patriot, but I'm here
because of the wages, and they were probably the best
that people were making at that point in time. I
started out as something like seventy five cents an hour,
but pretty soon I was promoted to inspector. Because I
was always curious about everything. So I was making a
dollar and a half an hour. So just imagine over
(14:48):
time and double time, I bought more war bonds. I
could almost paper a small room, wallpaper, small room, and
I never cashed in the first one until it was
ten years Who were but yeah, everyone really was very patriotic.
They're all young, and there are others who were first
(15:10):
generation as I was, and they have the same concerns
what's gonna happen to America. So anyway, at that point
in time, we're talking the nineteen forties, very little was
known about toxic fumes or ventilation or the effects it
has on humans. So about my second year, I started
(15:30):
losing my hair and I didn't think much of that,
but pretty soon my scalp was showing through, and then
I to disguise it. I wore my hair up to
hide that, and my hair was long anyway, so I
was camouflaging that. But when it got to be pretty bad,
you know, I was talking to other young women and
they also were losing their hair. Some of them had
(15:51):
twitches in their faces. We were having neurological problems, breathing problems.
But my department was maybe like this far to where
the light is back there, and they were making parts
for the Votsikorski Navy fight her plane. No jets in
those days, but they to lighten the load. The the
(16:11):
plane had very very heavy UH armament on the fuselage
to protect the pilot, but they were trying to lighten
it a little bit by making the ailerons and the
flaps out of fabric over a very light UH aluminum frame.
So that was stretched over and fitted on the onto
the framework, and then they WU was spray painted and
(16:32):
put it in an area where the lights would dry
it quickly and then spray pay more so where those
spray guns. You know, the hares is settling on your hair,
on your arms, on your clothes. Nobody thought that that
was a problem. And yet there was a fan too,
which just blew it around. So anyway, I had UH
taken a day off from work, and you report to
(16:52):
the shop nurse if you're gonna be taking any time
off and when you're coming back. So when she talked
to me, she said, you're a candidate. She said, we've
been sending a lot of your young ladies who are
reporting illnesses to the YWCA camp. It's on the shore
of Lake Erie. And I said, you know, I spend
some time there as a preteen. She said, the YWCA
is rescuing you. The y w C a is making
(17:15):
it their job throughout America to rescue young women who
need to be rescued by sending them to camps all
across America.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
And you're listening to Milka Baymen, and she's a real
life Rosy the Riveter. For me, it was particularly important
that America survive. Milka 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 the money
(17:42):
was pretty good too. When we come back more of
this real life Rosy the Riveter story, Milka Bayman's story
here on our American stories, and we continue with our
(18:10):
American stories in Milka Bayman's story, a real life Rosie
the Riveter story. Let's pick up where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
So the YWC 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
you need a little more rest. So it was very nice.
A lot of girls who actually depressed. Some worry that
they never gained their facial expressions back, you know, because
(18:41):
they'd be pulled up or the lips would be frozen. Well,
We were there recuperating and I was into my second month.
I was doing quite well. We were in the dining
room for dinner and there was a radio on the
ledgers just about the a Klean xbox. That's too you
(19:03):
would never imagine a radio is only this big. But
that went on and it was got our attention because
of the announcer was said, we have an announcement, an announcement.
He was like stuttering, he said, the Japanese have just surrendered.
When that was heard, we were so stunned. I'm telling you,
(19:23):
the whole room full of us fell to our knees.
We were just so grateful. So that was the end
of my rosing career right then and there. But it
was it was a wrenching experience, and yet the sense
of hope. But what happened after the war. The war
may have ended in nineteen forty five, but the residue
(19:48):
of the emotional records she was still there. And you
had to cope with it because so many of the
young men and women didn't come home, and you knew
which homes because when you had a memor your family
in the service, you would get a little flag about
eight by eight of the silver star on it. If
that flag showed up with the gold star on it,
you know that their military man, their soldier was never
(20:12):
coming home. He was either lost in auction or dead.
So you were looking at that all the time your schoolmates.
You could go into any neighborhood and that would be
the topic of conversation, you know, and they'd be counting homes.
You'd be counting homes, how many on a particular blocker section.
And so it was a black cloud that hungovers for
a long time. It really was. War didn't just end
(20:35):
automatically by any means. And then there was an awful
lot of controversy about the two bombs. How could we
do that? We kept saying, sure, they're the enemy. Well,
we understood that we were losing thousands of young boys
in the in the Pacific, in the Philippines and all
those islands, that we had to do something. It was
a massive, massive thing to cope with. After the war,
(20:59):
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
be ethnic background. Girls are sheltered. You never leave home
unless you're going to get married. So can you try
to imagine my mother's reaction I'm leaving home. She was humiliated.
(21:23):
She said, how can I face the Serbian sisters in
church and tell them that you're a bad girl? Am
i adopted stepfather? Said? My adoptive father said to me privately,
your mother will keep you till you're one hundred years old.
Go wherever your heart desires, live your life. So I
(21:46):
took out a map of the USMA with a knitting
needle in my hand, my eyes closed and punched a hole.
Up came Phoenix. That's how I want up in Phoenix.
So Barbara and I got on a bus, Greyhound bus
to Phoenix. Oh, I was just bumming around. Should I
tell them I did something that young women did not
(22:10):
do at that point in time. I met two girls
at the same house where I was renting a room
from a wonderful lady h and her daughter, and they
were Mormon, and they were so good to us, and
they had missus. Naylor had three sons and they were
in the occupational forces, scattered around between Japan and Germany,
(22:30):
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 fiancees
and also in the occupational forces. So Eleanor, who was
the very Adventures, she said, there's nothing to do here.
(22:51):
We've done everything that you can do. Horseback writing is
not going to do it. And so we were lying down.
There was no plastic in those days. We were lying
down on a oilcloth tablecloth. And we took off the
land Ladies lawnmower, and we had our bathing suits and
swim caps on. But the sprinkler going rotating. And Elinor says,
(23:11):
it must be crazy. We're cooking ourselves 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
in any differently. She said, we got thumbs, don't we?
And I said, ah, not for me. She said, well,
then Marianne and I are going. She said, oh, it'll
(23:33):
be perfectly safe. She said, my brother told me that
the Monterey Peninsula isn't exactly where we want to be
in California, because he had met He was like ten
or fifteen years older. Than she, and he said, oh,
he loved the colony of Swamis that we're in Monterey,
and he always insisted if I ever go to California,
we have to find out about them. Well, the Swamis
(23:53):
were long gone by the time we got there, but
we hiked from Phoenix, Arizona hitch to the coast. We
went to Tijuana, Mexico, and nearly got arrested because Marianne said,
what is that strange sight we're looking in? There was
this animal that looked like a donkey, but it had stripes.
(24:15):
It looked like a seabra. So it was a strange
looking animal. But it was hooked up to a small
cart with flowers on it, and for a dollar you
could take a little ride around the area. And so
we were joking, No, we didn't need to do that,
so I said, I'll just take pictures. Well, I took
pictures and we were walking away and all of a
sudden we hear this very male boy, said senior read it.
(24:39):
And he was so good looking we didn't care what
he had to sit. Oh, really gorgeous, young Mexican man.
And he said, you took a picture without permission. You're
going to have to pay, and so that sounded okay.
And he said how much? How many photos did you take?
I said, well, I think one was okay and the
(24:59):
other one he said, I'll take a dollar. And he said,
while you're at it, why don't you take your caps off,
ladies and let your hair down. Because we had our
hair up, we dressed like men. We looked pretty bad,
and we had hunting knives in our waistbans. Eleanor was
very innovative. She was a brave one. Uh. I was
a follower, but pretty soon it seemed like the right
(25:22):
thing to do. And so we hiked along the coast
with the most amazing kind of experiences. Oh, so many
people wanted to shelter us and take us in. We
took jobs. Uh when in particular was with a a
packing plant, orange sun kiss orange packing plant. Uh. Sometimes
(25:42):
we we let we let we It was okay to
deceive people if we that we were men. We didn't
take our caps off, you know, And we stuck together
as stayed away. But and in uh the Monterey Peninsula
that it was not developed at that point two years
after the war, just small motels, a little business of
(26:04):
some kind here and there. But if you've ever been
to Monterey, it's the coastline that is so stunny, and
those jagged rocks, so we would find little ledges we
could sit on, our lots of sea lions hours we
slept on the.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Beach, And you're listening to milk A Bayman tell her
real life story for Rosie the Riveter's story. And what
happened after is my goodness, after working all that time,
making all that money, you didn't want to return to
the old life, in the old ways. And as her
male relative said, your mother will keep you until your
one hundred and so she picked a place on the map, Phoenix,
(26:42):
and then on the word of someone else, just picked Monterey.
And up she went, as breezy and easy as the wind,
having lived through something really hard and it weighing on
her and weighing on so many Americans. Is it's so
true the emotional wreckage was still there, she said. So
many of the men and women didn't come home, They
(27:03):
were lost in action or dead. It was a black
cloud that hung over us for a long time. And
her rebuttal live life get going when we come back.
More of this remarkable story. Milka Bayman's story, a real
life Rosy the Riveter's story here on our American Stories,
(27:37):
and we continue with the story of Milka Baymon, a
real life Rosy the Riveter story in her own words.
Let's return to Milka.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
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,
a full moon, and if that did look spooky, you
could see the ocean undulating. It looks sillery and then
there was these big round balls bobbing up and down.
(28:08):
But that we sut the night on the beach. There
was nobody there. We just lined up our suitcases for
a wind barrier. And that's the kind of stuff that happened,
you know, all along and in Monterey we were looking
for a place to sleep and and we also took
advantage of the YWCA's as we went along and Santa
Barbera on different places wherever we could clean up and
be human, be women again, you know, so that they
(28:31):
were a huge help. Uh. They never questioned our awful
you know, I mean, we're we're we're grubby from sleeping up.
So anyway they would take us in and the house
mothers were not approving. But you know, do your parents
know you're doing this, no, ma'am. So that's how it went. Yeah, Oh,
(28:55):
my goodness, takes me back. M I was making more
money than my papa. Wow. Wages were very low at
that point in time for me to be making a
dollar and a half, And of course everything was rashing shoes.
You know, if you want to find clothing and really something,
(29:18):
you could get on the bus and go through the
tunnel and go to Windsor Canada. They weren't rationally anything,
so you could buy all kinds of finery and whatever
you wanted in Canada, and it seemed kind of unpatriotic.
But shoes were no longer being made out of leather.
Everything was being saved for the military. So if you
go to a shoe store to buy shoes, it's made
(29:40):
out of a new product. No plastics has existed then,
so be compressed cardboard of some kind that would wear
the uppers might be made out of a fabric that
was flimsy, that was not destined to go into the
military for uniforms or anything else. No silk was available
because that went into the parachutes. Wool was not available
(30:01):
in clothing because all of that went to the troops
in Europe were might behold so but the shoes didn't
last very long. The arch would break down. But that
was all part of it, you know. It was just
we're living on shoe strings. But everybody swapped. You had
to have stamps for certain products. If you wanted coffee,
(30:21):
your butter or something like that, you could swap with
somebody who said, I don't drink coffee, you can have
my stamps for that, and give me your butter stamps.
And they said, oh, we eat margarine. My mother says, I
don't buy that junk. She couldn't understand it because it
looked like lard. And the margarine was in a plastic bag.
That was the first plastic that I saw it. It
(30:44):
was chalk white like criscal with a little tapsule and
then you'd break and then you could need the package
till it took on a yellow color. And my mother said,
my family's not going to eat that butter or nothing.
But she was from Europe. She didn't trust that stuff.
Every penny that I could, really, I had a serpent.
(31:05):
Can you imagine twelve hour days seven days a week.
When I was making at overtime in double time, it
was a fortune. So I was buying one hundred dollars
bonds a month, and that you could get a hundred
dollar bond for seventy five dollars and that would be
deductive from my paycheck. A fifty dollars bond was thirty
(31:27):
seven to fifty. I would get those every other week.
For eighteen seventy five, I could get a twenty five
dollars bod. I got those every week. Sometimes I get more.
By the time the war was over, I had about
fifty eight hundred dollars in mature value and I wasn't
going to spend any of it. And when I got married,
my husband didn't know about it because I felt Rosy
(31:50):
made that money and it didn't hurt because there was
a lot that I could use it for. Actually, eight
hundred more than fifty dollars of it paid for a
heating system for the house in Lakewood. My husband said,
we can't afford to put a furnace in his house,
(32:10):
and the contractor kept saying, you won't be able to
heat the house with that little space heater. Bob. He said,
this is a big house. And my husband said, nope,
I've made up my mind. My mortgage is all set.
I'm not going to start with that again. And so
the contractor built, Peter Kanto, say still remember a nice
Greek man. He said, catch you persuade Bob to get
(32:31):
a heating system. We need to do duct work. We
should do that before we close up the ceilings. And
I said, no, he's out of it. I said, I'll
tell you what you price the 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 systems. You're gonna you can burn
number one oil, fine oil, or you can burn number
(32:53):
two oil, which is just as good. But the only
problem with number two oil. If you don't change the
filtering your furnace off enough, your ceiling will be black
around the ducks. I said, I'll take number two oil.
So it cost eight hundred and thirty two dollars and
I forget how many cents. And I never told my husband.
I don't think he even knew it. He moved in
(33:13):
the house. It wasn't it didn't cool the house, just heat,
and it did a great job of heating. But that
was my big expenditure of Rosy money, the first money
I spent. Imagine that, and for other needy things, furniture
as we needed. My husband could have lived with Orange crates. Well,
he took advantage of the GI bill and became an attorney,
(33:35):
and so it was frugal. So every once in a
while I'd say, how about I buy a Sophie said,
okay with me? How about I'd buy this? Okay with me?
It worked, It worked, it got us through it. I
think as we get older, it becomes more meaningful because
(33:59):
we're looking at the youth of America and we'd like
to preserve it, and we like to think that what
we did was important. But we're also fearful that unless
we keep some remnant of patriotism going, it might not
blast and so the whole patriotic idea. And I wrote
(34:24):
a book in which I have high hopes for it.
But there's a lot in it about with this one
character who is really a Rosy in disguise, but she's
kind of rough around the edges, and she's one of
the main characters that I named her Millie, which I
was called on occasion too. So Millie's big reason what
(34:49):
she did during the war fictionally was to take care
of some of the Southern girls 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 the
American legion. Rosie wants to go back to Detroit to
(35:11):
fire them up to do some of the things that
they used to because they started out in the eighteen
hundreds educating youth. They had scholarships of all kinds. They
also had campaing. They also were keeping the fires of
patriots and going. Little did they know that they were
going to be looking at World War two. I mean,
you know, and so right now the legions are dead
(35:35):
or dying. And so last year I thought, maybe I
could do something about that. Contact some rosies, Maybe we
could have some kind of programs to inspire the grandchildren
of what's left of the veterans, to keep us reminded
that it isn't free. Freedom is not free. You paid
(35:58):
for it. Everybody that knew, anybody lost the child, or
a lot of nurses died on the front lines. And yeah,
it still hangs over my head really because I'm afraid
with what's going on in the world. I'm not afraid
that America can't mobilize. We would, we didn't know anything
(36:21):
about mobilizing. Then we're practically without any armament. That our
spiritu hold us together. But the enemy is much bigger
at this point in time, and we could be hit
pretty hard. But I think Americans can survive. I shouldn't
say I think, I know. I know Americans can survive.
(36:43):
We have the spirit because we're so diversified is what
makes us strong. We're not just an isolated country with
one language, one religion, one government. We've got it all.
We're like a little package of Eminem's.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Listening to Milka Baymon and a real life Rosy the
Riveter and a special thanks to the Veteran's History Project
at the Atlanta History Center. They do great work and
you can go to Atlantahistory dot com and click Veterans
History Project under the research tab. And great job as
always to Greg Hengler. Am I goodness some of the
(37:22):
things that Milka said, I was making more money than
my pops. I had fifty eight hundred dollars saved. I
didn't spend any of it. That was rosy money, and
the rosy money she deployed whenever she felt like it again,
that independence that she got, that so many women in
this country got, becoming Rosie the Riveters. By the way,
(37:43):
she was also fearful, unless we keep some remnant of patriotism,
it might get lost, she said. Everyone who knew anyone
lost someone, she said, and that it hangs over all
of our head still to this day. Milka Bateman's story
a real life Rosie the Riveters story. Here on our
(38:07):
American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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