by Judy Yung
Although yard newspapers claimed that Chinese workers were well liked and well treated, there were reports of racial and sex discrimination at all the shipyards. Despite liberal hiring policies, blacks were denied membership in parent unions and disadvantaged by restrictive, union-enforced limitations on their employment and promotions. The last to be hired and the first to be laid off, they were kept in low-paying unskilled positions and rarely promoted to positions of authority.138 Women, who in 1943 made up zo percent of the shipyard labor force in the Bay Area, met with male resistance and were held back in almost all job categories. Black women, facing both racial and sex discrimination, were generally confined to laboring and housekeeping types of jobs and were underrepresented in the crafts.139 According to Katherine Archibald, who worked at Moore Dry Dock in Oakland, whites and Native Americans topped the racial hierarchy in the shipyards, Okies, Jews, and Chinese were in the middle, and Portuguese and blacks were stuck at the bottom. "The Chinese," she wrote, "were accepted without resistance or dislike, though with little positive friendliness." 110 It was known that Chinese at Moore Dry Dock and Kaiser often worked in segregated crews because of the racist sentiments of fellow employees. "It's easier to adjust working conditions than try to adjust the prejudice," a San Francisco Chronicle reporter stated. A Chinese shipyard worker interviewed by this journalist complained about being called a "Chink" by his supervisor and about the lack of promotional opportunities for Chinese Americans. "I don't think a Chinese boy has a Chinaman's chance," he said. "I have been here many months. Do you think I can become a leaderman?"141 Although shipyard workers were earning the highest wages of any industry and women were generally receiving equal pay for equal work, Chinese workers were held back in almost all job categories and locked out of certain crafts. Few were ever promoted to supervisory positions.
Nevertheless, most Chinese American women recalled their shipyard experience as only positive. Frances Jong, who accompanied her four brothers to the Mare Island yard, was hired as a shipfitter's assistant. She said, "It wasn't difficult work. I just carried these angle bars, followed this Chinese shipfitter around, and did what he told me to do. I learned a new trade and got good pay for it."142 The only Chinese woman in her unit, she did not remember any discrimination. Similarly, Maggie Gee, who was the only Chinese American and one of only three women in the drafting department at Mare Island, experienced no discrimination, nor did her mother, An Yoke Gee, who worked as a burner. "It was a positive experience for her," said Maggie. "She made non-Chinese friends for the first time, and it broadened her outlook in life. She was satisfied with being part of a Chinese community where she lived, but this allowed her to become part of the whole."143 Working in the shipyard also introduced Maggie to new friends, a new line of work, and a new sense of political consciousness. In 1943 she left the shipyard with two female co-workers she had befriended to join the WASP.
For May Lew Gee, who worked as a tacker at the Kaiser shipyard, "it was the patriotic thing to do, to work in some kind of war industry." It was also "great money" and a way to acquire new skills. Whereas before she had earned only z5 cents an hour waitressing, in the shipyard she earned $ i. z 6 an hour on the graveyard shift tacking pieces of metal onto the bottoms of ship bulkheads for the welder to weld together. "Every couple of days, there's a new ship and you start all over again," she said. "They were building them faster than you can ever count." Although she did "the same thing over and over again," she did not consider the job boring, hard, or dangerous. "We heard about accidents, about people falling off the ship and drowning, but I never saw any or paid any attention. We just kept working," she said. Nor did she remember any instances of discrimination. "There was a terrific mixture [of people] and everyone got along well. They were there to do a certain job ... build ships so they can go and fight the war." After two years as a tacker, May left to accompany a pregnant friend back to Detroit, Michigan. Unable to find transportation home, she ended up enlisting in the WAC.144
For someone like Rena Jung Chung, who has always enjoyed "fiddling with machines," working as a burner at the Kaiser shipyard was the chance of a lifetime. When war broke out, she was the only woman mechanic at a shop that made spray guns. Her boss closed the shop and told everyone to go work at the shipyards. Although she was a trained machinist, Rena started out as a machinist's helper in prefab, where the front and back parts of ships were built. "All I had to do was to go get the tools for the machinist and then just stand there doing nothing for the rest of the day," she recalled. "So I got restless and told the foreman I wanted to do the burning job that looked more interesting to me." Ruth learned in four hours what most others took forty hours to master and was able to change her job to burner. Except for the "Okies [who] asked you all kinds of crazy questions [because] they have never seen a Chinese [before]," she got along with everyone "because I spoke good English and I didn't let them pick on me." In addition to receiving good pay, she got to indulge her machinist passions as well as contribute to the war effort.145
Jade Snow Wong wrote in her autobiography that the job of clerktypist at Marinship during the war helped her develop confidence in dealing with male co-workers. Contrary to the opinion of her college placement officer, who had told her that being Chinese would only be a handicap in the work world, she found that she was accorded nothing but respect at the shipyard. While there she won first prize in a national essay-writing contest on the topic of absenteeism. As a reward she was given the honor of launching the S.S. William A. Jones, which gained her recognition both at the shipyard and in the Chinese community. At the launching ceremonies, she said it was her Chinese and American education that helped her find a practical solution to absenteeism in the war industry; this same Chinese and American unity, she stated, would help bring the war to an early end.146
Because of the war economy and labor shortage, jobs also opened up for women in the private sector. White women moved en masse into factory and white-collar jobs, while black women increasingly left private household service to enter commercial and factory occupations. During the war, clerical wages increased by 15 to 3 o percent, and factory wages grew by 47 percent, although women still earned less than men for the same type of work.141 Chinese women also made inroads into the private sector, including the Chinatown business world. With the men away at war or taking on defense work, women were needed to fill Chinatown jobs. Restaurants broke with tradition and advertised for waitresses, and Chinatown finally saw one of its curio shops under the management of a second-generation Chinese American woman.148 Overall, Chinatown restaurants experienced a 300 percent increase in business between 194 r and 1943, while bars and nightclubs did a brisk trade serving soldiers and a fully employed wartime population.149 As Gladys Ng Gin, who was working as a cocktail waitress at the Forbidden City, exclaimed, "During the Second World War, it was good money-fifty to sixty dollars a night in tips alone-wow!"150
Most important, the war gave second-generation women an opportunity to work outside Chinatown in better-paying jobs. For the first time, Chinese American women had their pick of positions that were commensurate with their skills. Jane Kwong Lee recalled how the entire employment picture for Chinese American women brightened as a result of the war:
As manpower became scarce, some mothers [seeking domestic help] were desperate. Our [Chinese YWCA] office telephone was flooded with frantic calls, but our desk clerk simply took the messages and politely answered that we would do our best. After a while everybody realized that requesting for help in homes was futile; no one would take a housework job when there were high-paying positions begging to be taken. Even school girls could fill in where vacancies were left open by adults who went to work in shipyards or defense industries.151
According to the local Chinese press, sewing machine operators were in demand at wages ranging from $ 18 to $4o a week depending on experience; laundry workers could find work at 74 cents to 99 cents an hour; girls were needed to help with the harvesting of crops on
nearby farms at the rate of $4 to $8 a day; and post office jobs were available paying as much as $7.1 o an hour. Clerical workers were especially sought after at war factories, government agencies, and private firms.'52 According to the Chinese Press, the "several hundred alert young Chinese American girls who have gone into the defense industries as office workers for the duration ... [are] the little but important cogs in America's war machinery.... They help run the vital `behind-the-lines' business of the United States at war."153
American-born and-educated Margaret Woo, who had been doing ironing in a Chinatown garment factory, got a job as a clerk at the Relocation Center office. With that experience under her belt, she was able to move on to clerical work in the stock market after the war.' 14 Lonnie Quan, who moved from San Jose to San Francisco in 1941, also got into office work because of the war. Until then she had experienced repeated rejection whenever she applied for work at white firms:
I went to look for a job in the insurance company and they came right out and told me, "We do not hire Chinese." Well, after a few times of that, you just give up. You say, "The heck with it." You just don't want to go to any more interviews. It took them a long time to realize that the Chinese girls are good workers. I was very discouraged. I was very angry. And I said, "Well, I guess I won't be working in offices. I guess I'd just as soon run an elevator," which I did.
At the beginning of the war, however, she was offered a job at the Draft Board, where she worked from 1942 until 1947. "I enjoyed working there. I had a wonderful boss who helped with all the things that needed to be done. In fact, it was the best job I had ever had." From there she moved on to the Internal Revenue Service, where she was well paid and received good benefits. "Chinese people were getting better jobs during the war," she said. "Some of the girls I knew were working in offices, in mostly government jobs. And that's how most of the Chinese girls got their office training.""" In contrast, black women with similar skills had a difficult time landing jobs in the white-collar sector. Despite President Roosevelt's efforts to eliminate employment discrimination through executive order and the establishment of the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), racial discrimination, particularly in the private sector, was still rampant. The FEPC West Coast Regional Office investigated an average of almost seventy cases per month. Approximately 8o percent were filed by blacks, 8 percent by Mexicans, and 7 percent by Jews.116 Chinese cases were rare.
ON THE HOME FRONT
Patriotism, a spirit of cooperation, and eagerness to sacrifice for the war effort permeated Chinatown as it did the rest of the country. Even the grim conditions of war-the draft and the loss of loved ones, food and labor shortages, and the constant threat of attack-did not dampen people's spirits. Lonnie Quan recalled those days:
We had air raid warnings and things like that. We had blackouts in the city. Nobody could go out when the blackout was on. And you can't even light a cigarette because one little match when lit, you can see from far away. I remember the blackout curtains that we had to put up. I remember all the drills, and then, after a while, everybody got used to it and they went on living the same way, going out, having fun.ls7
While their men were away fighting, women bore the brunt of responsibilities on the home front. Spearheading their efforts in San Francisco were Chinese women leaders such as Dr. Margaret Chung, who was affiliated with the Red Cross; Jane Kwong Lee, of the Chinese YWCA; and Emily Lee Fong and May Chan, of the Chinese chapter of the American Women's Volunteer Services. Certainly Chinese women from all walks of life were behind the war effort; however, these women and the organizations they represented were the most active in linking the Chinese effort with that of mainstream America. Although Chinese American women basically did female-identified tasks such as Red Cross work, entertaining soldiers on leave, selling war bonds, and making household goods last longer, their volunteer efforts thrust them into the public limelight and in step with the rest of America. Men, who still held the political power in the Chinese community, continued to direct activities; but as the war dragged on they came to recognize the abilities of their women to cope, cooperate, contribute, and lead. Moreover, whereas black women volunteers experienced racial discrimination in war work (for example, black women were generally excluded from volunteer activities run by whites; and one USO club in Boston prohibited black hostesses from dancing with white servicemen), 158 Chinese women faced no such restrictions.
Second-generation women like Dr. Margaret Chung proved to be capable leaders as well as important links between the Chinese community and mainstream society. Already active in raising American support for the anti-Japanese war effort in China, after the Pearl Harbor attack she redoubled her efforts in propaganda and Red Cross work. She continued making radio speeches and went on lecture tours all over the country to promote a better understanding of China and Chinese Americans. Instrumental in establishing the Red Cross station at Grace Cathedral, she put in many volunteer hours there as well as teaching classes in first aid and home nursing to Chinese women in San Francisco. She was also one of the strongest advocates of price control as a solution to wartime inflation. During World War II, in addition to shortages of coffee, beef, sugar, flour, and milk, Chinatown residents suffered shortages of imported Chinese staples: rice, ginger, mushrooms, water chestnuts, soy beans, and the like. As food prices rose, newspaper editorials criticized businesses that took advantage of the situation and asked the cooperation of every Chinese American to help curb the inflation. Dr. Chung, in cooperation with the Office of Price Administration, encouraged merchants and housewives to comply with the price regula tions. "Price control keeps down the cost of war and helps plan production," she said over the radio. "Likewise, it keeps down the cost of living so that the home front can be secured."159
Two projects earned her particularly high marks as a Chinese American woman in the political arena. One was her successful lobbying of Congress to establish the WAVES; the second was the formation of the Fair-haired Bastards Club, an organization recognized by the U.S. government as the "Phi Beta Kappa of aviation." "In 1942, when there was such a desperate need for men to fight on the front lines, I wanted to do something actively to help in the war effort," she wrote later in her unpublished autobiography. "I had a pair of trained hands, a medical degree, and I felt that there were a great many other women in the United States who wanted to do their part in the War Effort ... but there were no laws which permitted women to be taken into the Armed Forces." 160 Through her political contacts in Washington, D.C., she helped to push through the WAVES bill in record time, allowing women into the navy.
Garnering even more renown was her wartime "adoption" of 1,5oo servicemen. It all began with seven aviators in the Naval Reserve who came to her office for an examination in 1931. Discovering that they were hungry and broke, she took them to dinner and looked after them while they were in town. The numbers of such servicemen increased, and when they insisted on calling her "Mom" she protested that since she was unmarried they would be illegitimate-and so they dubbed themselves the "fair-haired bastards of Mom Chung." By 1941, the group had grown to 780. She took a personal interest in the young men, giving each one a jade Buddha as a talisman, writing them personal letters, sending them gifts on holidays, and welcoming them into her home whenever they were in town. It was not uncommon for her to have 175 of them as guests for Sunday dinner. During the war she added to this group the Golden Dolphins, which included crewmen of U.S. submarines, and the Kiwis, a women's auxiliary that included such notable women as Amelia Earhart and Alice Roosevelt Longsworth. Because of these connections, she was asked by the Chinese government to recruit the first two hundred American aviators for the Flying Tigers, and for her services in the war effort she became the first woman in the United States to receive China's prestigious "People's Medal," in 1945.161
While Margaret Chung was invaluable for bringing together the Chinese American community and the larger society, Jane Kwong Lee proved to be an important link b
etween immigrant and American-born Chinese women as well as between women's groups and the male-dom inated CWRA. As concerned about food shortages as was Dr. Chung, Jane took a course on nutrition through University of California Extension and began offering classes at the Chinese YWCA on how to cope with the problem. "No more food imports from China need not mean poor meals for Chinatown," she told Chinese housewives. "With most of us giving extra energy to the war efforts, it is important to maintain a healthful standard in diet, and the change to an American diet, or substitution of some American foods for Chinese, is inevitable." `2 Following her advice, many housewives switched to Texas-grown rice, used substitutes in their cooking, and tried to adjust their families' palates to a Western diet. One Chinese American housewife summed up the situation thus: "Well, I'm a good American-1 might as well go completely Yankee and get used to pork and beans."163
As director of the Chinese YWCA, Jane worked hard to galvanize the involvement of Chinese women in the all-American war effort. In cooperation with other YWCA centers in the city, she organized a wartime educational and recreational program that included activities ranging from knitting for the Red Cross to air raid precaution classes, from sports to the fine arts. "In its own way, by building up the individual's life and her group life, the YWCA is doing its part in national defense," she explained in the Chinese Press. "A girl who is physically and socially fit, a housewife who gives her family the right nutritional food, both help the national morale. In this respect the YWCA is very alert to the present emergency." 16' Through her leadership the YWCA became the focal point for women's contributions to the war effort. They went there to attend civil defense classes, do Red Cross work, participate in citywide parades and patriotic celebrations, and go out in work teams to forage for old magazines, yarn to be used in afghans, used leather to be converted into aviatorvestees, and used fats, tin cans, and paper boxes for the manufacture of munitions and medicines. The YWCA also sent women out to help harvest crops at nearby farms, encouraged citizens to write Congress to get the Exclusion acts repealed, and called on volunteers to visit Chinese American servicemen in the hospitals and serve as hostesses at the weekly open house for American servicemen on furlough.