By: Justin, Mikey, Fede, Adrianna, Priyanka and Phoebe

 Women faced new responsibilities/ opportunities as husbands, brothers, and fathers went off to war.  On the home front, they had to wait months/years of worrying for their loved ones to come home.  Young women typically worked for a few years, then left their jobs when they married and had children.  By 1943, six million women had entered the work force, and nearly half of them were working in defense plants.

 During the war, 57% of those employed outside the military were women.  In the final months of the war, women in the workplace had risen 50% since  Of the 1 million African Americans who entered the work force during the war, 600,000 were women.  “Rosie the Riveter” was the fictionalized persona who represented the millions of women who went into war work.

 They collected scrap metal for armaments(22 mil lbs.).  They found and squashed cans, milkweed for safety vests, unearthed tires for rubber drives and stamps for bond drives.  They went into alleys and back roads for metal( one lb. was a penny).

 Hollywood movies was there window to war.  Movies were filled with heroism.  It showed how people scarified themselves for war.  It showed how the people fighting, died for a cause.  EX: Desperate Journey(Ronald Reagan), Flying Tigers(John Wayne)  The movies were about fighting Nazi’s and fighting Japan.

 Six million women entered the work force and half in defense plants.  Women joined the military in large numbers. (Over 350,000 women donned uniforms in the women’s).  Kids collected metal, tires, stamps and milkweed.

 “Everybody had a radio during the war […] No TVs. And three times a day, you got the national news and three times a day, you did not be far from that radio.” – Emma Belle Petcher  “There was a time where things looked pretty rough for us and we were losing quite a few of our men. And we didn’t know really for a while there how it was going to come out. And by then you had met people that had left and gone overseas into combat. […] People that you really knew and you wondered if you read something, you tried to pinpoint, you wondered if their company was there.” – Barbara Covington

 “You started to realize that this isn’t just going over there and winning the peace and then coming back. They’re not coming back. Some of them aren’t, […] you’d pick up the paper and somebody was killed in action. Well, your whole atmosphere, everything changes. Your whole being is feeling for that person and thinking, ‘Geez, they’re not going to get home; they’re not going to get married; they’re not going to see their children.’ ” - Anne DeVico

 “I was at St. Vincent’s Infirmary, […] I was in the operating room with Sister Mary Bertha, and we heard about Pearl Harbor, and were horrified. Just absolutely... tears in our eyes. And I said, ‘I’m going to join the Army.’ And she said, ‘We need you here. But the government needs you worse. You go down tomorrow and join.’ “ - Emily Lewis  “Most of the people who got out of high school if they were female and didn’t go to the war, they went to Mobile, […] who moved to the city from the tiny town of Millry, Alabama. “That was the place to go and get a job. And there were all kinds of jobs.” - Emma Belle Petcher