In late 1941, “the exigencies” of a global crisis allowed Maine women to escape a world of domestic servitude by stepping out of the kitchens and into the shipyards. Their historic efforts during World War II culminated in the defeat of fascist and imperial thugs, freed an imperiled world, and changed America forever.

On Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese Empire’s attack on the Hawaiian Islands dragged a once-reluctant America into war with Japan. Four days later, Germany declared war on the United States, and World War II began.

Every American male was needed to fight this war on two fronts, and women were called upon to bolster the dwindling male labor force. By the end of the war, approximately 16,000 shipyard workers left Bath Iron Works for military service.

By March 1942, a group of 35 women were taking the exams to work at BIW. Girls just out of high school and women near middle age rushed to sign up. Nearly half of these women were married and half of them had children. “Practically everyone had a son, husband or father, in the armed forces.”

Waldoboro’s Verna Genthner, Phippsburg’s Arlene Campbell, and Bath’s Lee Wallek and Laura Burpee were the “first [women] hired experimentally as welders.” These four women pried opened the steel doors of industry to assimilate women into the American male labor force.

Quickly, more women of Maine “joined the shipyard … in significant numbers” and travelled “40 or 50 miles” each day. By 1945, “16% of BIW’s employees were women.”

All of these women were required to leave their “rings, ornaments, and makeup” at home and exchange their dresses, skirts, and heels, for “leather [chaps], dungaree pants … and thick-soled work boots,” as they switched their frilly caps and hair nets for “steel helmets … and bandanas.”

Bath Iron Works made changes at the shipyard to accommodate this female influx. Bathrooms were upgraded, policies were altered to include women, female managers were hired, and BIW “financed a nursery for their children.”

Across the nation, women were now building “planes, tanks, trucks, jeeps, guns, bombs and ammunition.” They also joined the United States Armed Forces as “nurses, train engineers, heavy equipment operators, mechanics and transport pilots.”

The women at Bath Iron Works received special training as “shipfitters, tinsmiths, welders, burners, tackers and electricians,” and they worked six days a week, right alongside men, for the “equal pay of 60 cents per hour.” America’s industrial and military war machine now included the sweet scent of perfume.

While many women also worked throughout the nation as “truck drivers, sweepers, sorters, deck cleaners, painters, and crane operators,” it was the “grimy-faced, leather suited women” welders who captured the hearts of America to earn the moniker of “Rosie the Riveter.”

At BIW, these women were found to be “most satisfactory, conscientious, punctual and turnover was very low.” By March of 1943, “nearly 1,000 women were employed at BIW,” and nearly 3,000 women were employed at the South Portland yards in 19 occupations.

These “Rosies” of Bath Iron Works built “warships at breakneck speeds” and “launched a new destroyer every 18 days.” Between December 1941 and August 1945, Bath Iron Works delivered 65 destroyers to the United States Navy, all while holding “the best safety record in the country.”

By the end of World War II, after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, over “2,000 women [had] built warships at Bath Iron Works,” joining a national workforce of over 16 million American Rosies. Without these “women who passed through the Iron Works gates, the efforts to build destroyers faster and faster would have been doomed to failure.”

The end of the war also brought an end to the need for women in the shipyards, as jobs were needed for the returning servicemen. Along with a drastically reduced need for war goods, many of these liberated women returned home, for continued duty as wives and mothers.

But, the United States was now a changed nation, women had proved their mettle during the war, and once the door had been opened to women in the American workplace, it defied being shut.

Currently, women work in every industry and every market in the nation. However, before Dec. 7 of 1941, many women were relegated to “female jobs,” married life, or “domestic positions.”

Today, during women’s history month, we honor Maine’s “Rosie the Riveters” of Bath Iron Works. These women, with their “We Can Do It” spirit, rolled-up their sleeves, liberated the American workplace, helped defeat the world’s enemies of democracy, and helped earn the title of “the Greatest Generation” ever recorded in our historic Stories From Maine.

Lori-Suzanne Dell is a Brunswick author and historian. She has published four books and runs the “Stories from Maine” Facebook page.