Honoring 'Rosie the Riveter'

May 3 -- The cold spring rain in Seattle was not enough to dampen the enthusiasm of Margaret Berry, 79, who approached a vintage B29 bomber she was helping restore with a riveting gun — and a mind full of memories.

"It was just like I had never been away from riveting," she said, delighting in the sound and feel of the gun and what it made her feel inside as she helped to restore the World War II bomber for the Seattle Museum of Flight. With a smile she said, "I always felt that I was a veteran just the same as the fellows who are serving."

But Berry was a veteran. During World War II, Americans knew her as "Rosie the Riveter," one of the millions of American women who answered the call of duty.

This weekend, the Women in Trades Association, a nonprofit labor group in Washington state, is honoring Berry and all of the other "Rosie the Riveters."

After the war began in 1941, millions of men left their factory jobs to enlist. The war industry needed millions of workers to take their place, and they turned to women.

"Women were indispensable," said historian Penny Colman, who wrote a book titled Rosie the Riveter. "Without their efforts in the factories America could never have won the war."

In 1942 and 1943, U.S. government propaganda encouraged women to leave the home and go to the factories to help the war effort. In one film shown over and over in theaters across America, a woman worker told moviegoers: "My husband's a prisoner of the Japs in the Philippines. If he'd had a few more of these shells out in Bataan, maybe he'd still be fighting."

Berry was working as a clerk in her parent's general store in 1942 when she was lured to work at the Boeing aircraft factory in Seattle to make bombers. "I just wanted to help," she said. "I wanted to be a part of it and help to end the war."

The Rosie name came from the song "Rosie the Riveter," which was commissioned by the government and industry in 1942 to entice women to go to work for the war industries. The name was given to all women war workers, whether they were riveters or welders or shipbuilders.