WAR & PEACE Iconic Images of Detroit’s Past The 1940s and 1950s Through the Lens of The Detroit News
CREDITS
On the cover On August 14, 1945, a joyous Detroit crowd celebrates V-J Day, marking Japan’s surrender to the United States and the end of World War II.
FRONT COVER
Copyright © 2022 by The Detroit News All Rights Reserved • ISBN: 978-1-63846-023-7 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright owner or the publisher. Published by Pediment Publishing, a division of The Pediment Group, Inc. • www.pediment.com Printed in Canada.
All images are from The Detroit News Photo Archive unless otherwise noted. Original negatives of The Detroit News are housed at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University. We appreciate their assistance on this project.
FOREWORD When jubilant crowds took to the streets in August 1945 to celebrate V-J Day and the end of World War II, Detroit was at the peak of its powers. The Motor City was an industrial and manufacturing powerhouse, and uniquely positioned to answer President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1940 call for the United States to produce material support for the Allied powers already at war with Germany and Japan. Over the next six years, Detroit, more than any city in the country, became America’s Arsenal of Democracy. Factories across the country stopped producing civilian goods and started churning out tanks, bombers, and munitions. In Detroit, the auto manufacturers, with government support, threw themselves into the war effort. Civilians stepped up. Schoolchildren collected scrap metal to defeat Hitler. Tires and old cars were salvaged. Volunteers formed civil defense units and planted victory gardens. After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Michigan men joined the armed forces by the tens of thousands and women took their places in the defense factories.
After the war, veterans, eager for peace and stability, returned home and started families. Many war workers took up new lives as suburban housewives. The postwar baby boom produced one of the largest generations in history. The city reached its peak population of over 1.8 million in 1950. It was a time of optimism and expansion as America assumed its new role as a global superpower. But within Detroit’s success story lay the seeds of discontent. The wartime boom had led to an acute housing shortage, especially for black workers. When housing for black families opened in a white neighborhood in 1942, the newcomers were greeted by angry mobs. Racial tensions flared. In 1943 they erupted into full-scale rioting that left thirty-four people, most of them black, dead. It was a precursor of the unrest that would engulf the city in 1967. Highways built in the 1940s expanded in the 1950s to previously-rural areas, bringing factories and jobs with them. Government-backed loans helped build new housing in the suburbs that sprang up, almost all of it available only to white
homeowners. The result was a shrinking, poorer and blacker city, its residents isolated by a lack of good public transport, and surrounded by wealthier white suburbs accessible only by car. By the time the 1960 Federal Census rolled around, the city’s population had fallen to 1.67 million, and it has continued to shrink in the decades since. The Detroit News photographers witnessed it all. Whether the subject was a freeway under construction, a car full of teenagers at the end of the war, or Red Wings great Gordie Howe slamming an opposing player, there’s a vitality and spontaneity to these pictures. There are thirty-one photographers from the 1940s and ’50s listed in the database of Detroit News negatives held at Wayne State University’s Reuther Library. Some, like Milton Brooks, who won the first Pulitzer prize for photojournalism with his 1941 picture of Ford workers beating a strikebreaker, are remembered by name. Most of them, over time, have simply taken on the credit of The Detroit News Archives. The images of their world live on here.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Arsenal of Democracy......................7
Youth and Education......................81
Recreation and Celebration..... 149
Views and Street Scenes................31
Public Service................................. 99
Index................................................158
Transportation...............................47
Community.....................................115
Industry and Commerce.............. 61
Sports...............................................131
Double parking on Washington Boulevard outside the Sheraton Book Cadillac Hotel, August 1946.
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Chapter One
ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY “We must be the great arsenal of democracy,” President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared in his famous radio address broadcast December 29, 1940. “For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice, as we would show were we at war.” A worried America had watched as Hitler invaded one European country after another, starting with Poland in 1939. The president recognized American security would be gravely threatened if Great Britain fell to Nazi Germany, and despite calls from many for the United States to remain neutral, it was time to help the Allies by building the tools and weapons necessary to fight off the Axis powers. Industries around the country, large and small, turned to the war effort, and nowhere was more consequential in that effort than Detroit. The auto manufacturers took a leading role. Ford built a plant at Willow Run to produce the B-24 Liberator bomber, and trained thousands of young servicemen as machinists, electricians, and radiomen at
the company’s Rouge plant. Half of the tanks built in the US during the war were made at Chrysler’s Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant in Warren. General Motors produced the greatest percentage of war materials of any US company. On December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and the US entered the war. General Motors president William Knudsen was put in charge of war production in 1942, and United Auto Workers leader Walter Reuther called a halt to any wildcat strikes that might disrupt the production of munitions. Civil Defense units formed to protect the home front, and conducted air raid drills and exercises. Detroit was out of range of even the most sophisticated Axis bombers, and never faced real danger from the country’s enemies. Military recruitment in Detroit surged. Among those joining up were Tigers stars Hank Greenberg and Charlie Gehringer. As men enlisted in the armed forces, women workers filled the gap in building the bombers, tanks, and munitions needed to keep the Allies armed. By October 1943, there were
Four women “stowaways” stand beneath the Plexiglas bonnets in the tail of the Martin B-26 Marauder bomber fuselage sections built in a Detroit plant of the Hudson Motor Car Company in December 1944. The mechanism that loads and fires the tail guns was installed after final inspection of the space the women workers occupy.
140,000 women in the defense industry. Women had worked in Detroit’s defense industry during World War I, but it was during the Second World War that Rosie the Riveter appeared on posters around the country with her signature red bandana, flexing her biceps beneath the proclamation “We Can Do It!” and capturing the popular imagination. Rosie worked at many places, but Willow Run was one of her top employers. The war office sped up the hiring of women by ordering Ford to hire 12,000 workers at the company’s bomber plant. Women were paid the same wages as men, from ninety-five cents to $1.60 an hour. And despite facing ongoing segregation and discrimination, black people joined the war effort as soldiers and defense workers. According to the Detroit Historical Society, some 200,000 Detroiters joined the military, but over 700,000 worked to produce the items necessary for Allied victory. The city had fulfilled Walter Reuther’s 1940 prediction that “America’s battles can be won on the assembly lines of Detroit.”
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Chrysler’s Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant (DATP) in April 1941. Detroit’s automobile plants were retooled for the war effort, and in just the first eighteen months after Pearl Harbor, 350,000 people came to the region to work in the defense industry. Automakers and their suppliers produced $30 billion worth of military equipment from 1942 to 1945.
ABOVE RIGHT
ABOVE LEFT Tanks are assembled at Chrysler’s Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant in then-rural Warren, April 17, 1941. They would soon become a part of General George Patton’s own “blitzkrieg,” after the bombing of Pearl Harbor threw the US into the war, spurring a huge increase in military production. Half of the tanks built in the US during the war were produced at the Warren plant. OPPOSITE Navy recruits work on motors at the United States Navy Service School at the Ford Rouge plant in March 1941. Thousands of young servicemen trained as machinists, electricians, and radiomen there during the war years.
Detroit Tigers pitcher Hal Newhouser (left) and soon-to-retire great Charlie Gehringer, who had joined the military, meet in the locker room at Briggs Stadium on August 27, 1941. Newhouser had intended to join the service to fight for his country during World War II, and was to take his oath on the Briggs Stadium mound before a game. However, a heart murmur was detected during his physical, so he remained with the Tigers.
LEFT
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RIGHT It was a media event on May 7, 1941, as Detroit Tigers’ Hank Greenberg reported to the US Army Induction Center in Detroit along with three hundred other men. “Greenberg a rookie again,” read the headline in The Detroit News.
Roy Green, Albert Heinsohn, Walter Gering, and John Miller demonstrate how they man an anti-tank artillery gun in front of a Texaco station on November 8, 1941. OPPOSITE
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A Nazi flag, radios, guns and other items were seized from German aliens and displayed to the media in a Detroit office, early 1940s.
ABOVE
ABOVE LEFT The Truman committee, which investigated all phases of the national war effort, visits the Ford bomber plant in Willow Run for an inspection on April 13, 1942. From left are Sen. Ralph Brewster of Maine; Sen. Harold Burton of Ohio; Sen. Harry Truman of Missouri, chairman; Sen. Joseph Ball of Minnesota; Sen. Mon Wallgren of Washington; Hugh Fulton, general committee counsel (in background with glasses); Paul Brown, son of Sen. Prentiss Brown of Michigan; Sen. Brown; Sen. James M. Mead of New York; Sen. Harley M. Kilgore of West Virginia.
Military vehicle production is in full swing at the Dodge Main Hamtramck assembly plant on March 3, 1942. No cars, commercial trucks, or auto parts were made in the US from February 1942 to October 1945. OPPOSITE
Olga Willett machines a bevel gear blank on a Monarch lathe at Ford’s Rouge plant in 1942. Willett, forty-one, came to Detroit from Colorado to see her son Carl leave for Fort Custer, and after bidding him goodbye she applied for work at the Rouge plant. She was one of more than a thousand women working in the aircraft building. OURTESY FORD MOTOR COMPANY C LEFT
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Workers pile scrap rubber at the Clay plant of the Standard Oil Company on July 14, 1942.
ABOVE
Sylvia Pevin operates a crane on November 3, 1942, during a time when many men were off to war and women picked up jobs where workers were in short supply. Note the canine companion by her legs.
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Marine recruits are sworn in at the Michigan Theater in Detroit in September 1942. After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Marine Corps enlistments increased tenfold virtually overnight. OPPOSITE
B-24 bombers at the Ford Willow Run plant in June 1942. RIGHT
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Annie Wells has her face shield ready to be pulled into position as she demonstrates the first stage of welding at an industrial clinic program for women in general machine shop war work, December 17, 1942.
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Servicemen and their dance partners live it up at the opening of the United Service Organization at Cass Avenue and Lafayette Boulevard on November 7, 1942. OPPOSITE
Navy Aviation Machinist’s Mate Third Class Charles Toole strolls with his wife on November 7, 1942. Toole was fortunate to make it home. His ship, the aircraft carrier USS Wasp, was sunk en route to Guadalcanal by a Japanese submarine on September 15. Of the ship’s 2,247 men, 193 were killed and 366 wounded.
BELOW
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A shipment of gas masks is scrutinized at the civil defense center in Detroit during World War II.
ABOVE
ABOVE LEFT Trainees at the Ford Willow Run bomber plant on November 15, 1942. The plant was constructed in 1941 by Ford for the mass production of the B-24 Liberator bomber. The US government contributed $200 million to the project. OPPOSITE Alvin Macauley tries out a water-cooled, 50-caliber machine gun at a national defense meeting in Detroit. Some 100,000 Detroiters volunteered to serve as air wardens and auxiliary firefighters during World War II.
A hangar at the Ford Willow Run plant was turned into a barracks for Army personnel brought in to fly out the newly-built B-24 bombers in the early 1940s. Off-duty soldiers can be seen sprawled on some of the 1,300 cots.
LEFT
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RIGHT Ford established the US Naval Training School at its Rouge complex in Dearborn to house and instruct military personnel in technical training. By the time the school closed in May of 1946 it had trained more than 22,000 young sailors to repair engines, along with sheet-metal and electrical work, and other skilled trades. OPPOSITE In a tiny machine shop in Bay City, sixtyyear-old J. L. “Jake” Sparling (right) and his lone employee Percy Fogelsonger, seventy-nine, were working seven days a week, producing 18,000 steel flanges for use in the war effort. They won a commendation from the War Production Board for the example they were setting.
United States Army nurses take the oath before Lt. Col. Herbert Pusch and Lt. Edna Plambeck in the early 1940s.
BELOW RIGHT
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Helen Kovalkowsky and Josephine Bereza work on electrical components at the Chrysler plant on Warren Avenue, which built B-26 airplane fuselages and nose sections during World War II.
LEFT
Men inspecting tires in the early 1940s. Tires were among the first items to be rationed during World War II. OPPOSITE
Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, a noted Army flier, shakes the hand of war worker Gladys Brison in Detroit on January 22, 1943. By October 1943, there were 140,000 women in the defense industry. The war office sped up the hiring of women by ordering Ford to hire 12,000 workers at Willow Run, which produced the B-24 bombers. Women received the same wage rates as men, from ninety-five cents to $1.60 an hour. BELOW LEFT
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Machinist Janet Kinsman of Detroit hard at work on March 11, 1943. Women like Kinsman became an important part of the Willow Run workforce during World War II. Kinsman liked popular music, “but nothing tin-panny,” and found whistling and music made the hours at work seem shorter.
ABOVE
RIGHT Mary Herrando and Grace Small rivet into the side of a B-24 bomber at Willow Run, January 30, 1943.
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Dodge displayed one of its wartime manufacturing triumphs at the 1944 Army Air Show at City Airport. The Sperry Gyro-Compass, composed of more than 10,000 parts, enabled the use of mine protection equipment on ships without affecting the reliability of navigation.
ABOVE
M. L. Bricker puts the finishing touch on the 8,000th B-24 Liberator bomber to come off the assembly line at the Ford Motor Company, March 20, 1945.
LEFT
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First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt shakes hands with Martha Carlson on a visit to Michigan, January 26, 1944.
ABOVE
Italian soldiers, captured as prisoners of war and later made special noncombatant members of the US Army, were stationed at Fort Wayne. They were given uniforms similar to American soldiers’, except for a bright green oval patch on their left arm with the word “Italy.” The Italians were placed under their own commissioned and non-commissioned officers, who were under the supervision of American officers. ABOVE LEFT
The Ford Motor Company produces treads for tank destroyers at the Highland Park Plant in June 1943. OPPOSITE
Interior fittings, plumbing, and wiring are added to B-24 Liberator bombers at a twin assembly line at the Ford Motor Company’s Willow Run plant on February 24, 1943. Detroit’s role in the war, when the auto factories turned out tanks and warplanes, earned it a place in history as the Arsenal of Democracy.
LEFT
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William Knudsen (left) views an anti-aircraft gun with other officials at an airshow on June 15, 1944. Knudsen, a Danish immigrant, rose through the automotive industry ranks to become president of General Motors. In 1940, President Roosevelt appointed him director of industrial production for the National Defense Research Committee, and in 1942 he became lieutenant general in charge of production for the War Department.
ABOVE
The last remaining workers at Ford’s Willow Run plant autograph the final B-24 bomber rolled off the line on June 25, 1945. The plane was originally to be named The Henry Ford, but Ford asked that the plane be named after the workers who had built it, so instead of one name, it contained a multitude.
ABOVE RIGHT
OPPOSITE On August 14, 1945, a joyous Detroit crowd celebrates V-J Day, marking Japan’s surrender to the United States and the end of World War II. RIGHT Workers in a munitions factory assemble parts for radio-controlled bombs, December 29, 1944.
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