Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco
Page 33
Maggie Gee, one of two Chinese American women who volunteered with the Women's Airforce Service Pilots Program (WASP) transporting military aircraft around the country, was very aware of sexism in the service. She had dropped out of college to work at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in north San Francisco Bay, drawing plans for the repair of destroyers and submarines. "What we were doing in the shipyard was important," she said, "but we wanted to do something more, something more exciting.""' Inspired by Amelia Earhart and the romance of flying, she and two other friends left Mare Island to enroll in flight school. They later joined the WASP when the age requirement was lowered to eighteen. Of 25,000 women who applied, only z,ooo were accepted, and 1,074 graduated and received their wings. "Our flight training was the same as the men pilots. In primary training, we flew the open cockpit Stearman, which you might see today in airshows doing aerobatics," she explained. "In basic training, we flew the 45o-horsepower canopied BT-113. And in advance training we flew the 65o-horsepower AT-6, which had radio and retractable landing gear-the kind of plane used in combat in China."112 By the fall of 1944, half of the ferrying division's fighter pilots were women, and three-fourths of all domestic deliveries were done by Wasps. They also flight-tested damaged airplanes and flew B-I7s. Thirty-eight woman pilots died because of mechanical failures, including the only other Chinese American woman, Hazel Ying Lee of Portland, Oregon. Yet they were known for flying longer hours and having fewer accidents than their fellow male pilots. Despite their track record, however, the civilian group of female pilots was forced to disband a few months before the end of the war because of lobbying on the part of the male pilots.113 "Even though our numbers were small and the war was not over, we were sent home," said Maggie. "It was difficult for men to admit that women could fly as well as or better than men. "114 To add insult to injury, Congress chose not to classify the WASP as military. While other servicewomen were granted full veteran status in 11948, Wasps did not receive the same recognition until 1977. Nor could they find jobs as test pilots with aircraft companies or airlines after the war because of sex discrimination. Still, for Maggie the experience opened up new vistas, transforming her into a more outgoing and politically aware person. "I returned to Berkeley, California, with a lot more self-confidence," she said. "My horizon had broadened by the friendships I made with active women-doers from all parts of the coun- try."115 Maggie, who never married, went on to become a physicist and political activist.
Overall, Chinese American women who enlisted in the military found the experience rewarding. Besides giving them the satisfaction of serving their country, it gave them a wider perspective, gained them new friends, made them more independent and self-confident, allowed them to travel, and opened up new educational and employment opportunities. "I wouldn't have done half the things I did if I hadn't been in the service," said Helen Pon Onyett. "Not only did it give me retirement benefits, but I had a chance to go to school on the G.I. bill and to improve my standing.""' Jessie Lee Yip, who later became a court recorder, also profited from the G.I. bill, which financed her education in stenography after the war. "It also helped me to grow up, get along with people, and it allowed me to travel," she added. I" Similarly, because of her two years of service in the WAC, May Lew Gee of San Francisco had a chance to attend secretarial training school after the war. Her military experiences also spurred her to become an active member of the Cathay Post in San Francisco and the American Legion Post in Pacifica, California, as well as to run for public office. May was on the Pacifica Planning Commission for twelve years and has been on the Water Board there for seventeen years. 118
Maggie Gee (second from left) and fellow members of the Women's Airforce Service Pilots Program. (Courtesy of Maggie Gee)
Marietta Chong Eng of Hawaii, who was motivated to join the WAVES because her brother was in the navy, found her one year of service as an occupational therapist at Mare Island more positive than negative:
In reflection, my one year of service as a WAVES ensign was like no other single year of my life. Wearing the uniform made me feel different. On the streets of San Francisco or at the navy base, I attracted much attention and maybe admiration. On the negative side, I was in uniform in New York City crossing a busy street when a young hoodlum pointed at me in surprise and said, "Look, a Chinaman." I guess it was startling to see a Chinese in uniform. All in all, though, my navy experience was a good one.
So proud was she of the uniform that she wore it at her wedding: "I felt that I could not find a more distinctive wedding outfit than this one," she said. 119 Marietta settled in Oakland, where she raised three children and worked for many years as an occupational therapist with the mentally ill.
Ruth Chan Jang, who left a well-paying job with the State of California to join the Women's Air Corps in 1944, said it was a turning point in her life. Growing up in Locke, California, she had experienced racial discrimination and been made to feel ashamed of her Chinese background. The service changed all that. As the only Chinese in her unit, she was treated very well, Ruth emphasized. "I was accepted as one of them. They never made me feel like you have to hang back and be subservient." While in the service she was captain of the basketball team, given her first surprise birthday party, and promoted to corporal at the suggestion of the nurses under whom she worked as a secretary. After the war, Ruth also took advantage of the G.I. bill and went back to college, eventually becoming a teacher. There can be no better testament of her positive experience in the service and the patriotism it nurtured in her than her sincere wish that she and her husband, who also served in the air force during World War II, will "someday, somehow" be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.'2°
IN THE LABOR FORCE
The draft and the rapid growth of the war industry resulted in a labor shortage that in turn opened up significant job opportunities for racial minorities and women. With the men away at war and President Roosevelt's executive order against discriminatory hiring practices in place, their labor became crucial in guaranteeing the output of war materials and food. Black, Mexican, Chinese, and Native American workers migrated in large numbers to urban centers and city ports to fill jobs in the defense industries. At the same time, many women found work in the manufacturing and clerical sectors, while others were able to enter business and professional fields previously closed to them. Wartime propaganda played on the themes of patriotism and glamor to recruit married women into the labor force. Women were encouraged to emulate Rosie the Riveter-a muscular but pert, rosy-cheeked young woman, rivet gun slung across her lap and a powder puff and mirror peeking out of her coverall pocket-to take a war job and so stand behind the man with the gun. During the war years the female labor force increased by more than 5o percent overall, and by 140 percent in manufacturing and 46o percent in the major war industries. Married women exceeded single women in the work force for the first time in U.S. history, and woman workers were at last able to gain access to higher pay, union representation, and such traditionally male jobs as mechanic, engineer, lumberjack, bus driver, and police dispatcher.'2'
The employment of black women increased by more than one-third during the war years, but racism and sexism combined to hinder their wartime gains relative to those of white women and black men. On the positive side, black women were able to move from farm and domestic labor into better-paying jobs in hotels, restaurants, and defense factories. On the negative side, however, black workers of both sexes were often subjected to discrimination in hiring, training, job assignment, wages, and promotion.122 Fanny Christina Hill, who spent forty years as an aircraft worker after getting her start during World War II, put it like this: "We always say that Lincoln took the bale off of the Negroes. I think there is a statue up there in Washington, D.C., where he's lifting something off the Negro. Well, my sister always said that Hitler was the one that got us out of the white folks' kitchen." As Fanny found out, though, it was an uphill battle:
Corporal Ruth Chan. (Courtesy of Ruth Chan Jang)
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br /> They fought hand, tooth, and nail to get in there. And the first five or six Negroes who went in there, they were well educated, but they started them off as janitors. After they once got their foot in the door and was there for three months-you work for three months before they say you're hired-then they had to start fighting all over again to get off of that broom and get something decent. And some of them did.123
Overall, despite the new employment opportunities and higher wages for women during the war years, gender inequality persisted in terms of pay differences and job mobility, not to mention household and child care responsibilities. After the war, a Women's Bureau poll showed that 74 percent of women workers wanted to remain in the labor force and 86 percent wanted to retain their current jobs; however, public opinion prevailed: women, it was generally believed, belonged in the home. As the men returned from the war front, women were laid off at a rate 75 percent higher than that for men, and the occupational structure returned to its prewar status.'24
World War II proved to be a job boom for Chinese Americans, who for the first time found well-paying jobs in factories-building ships, aircraft, and war vehicles and producing ammunition-as well as in private industries. Nationwide, Chinese American men made substantial gains in the professional/technical and craft fields, while the women, whose labor force participation almost tripled between 194o and 1950, made inroads in the clerical/sales, professional/technical, and proprietor/managerial classifications. The image and roles of Chinese American women on the home front changed dramatically as government propaganda declared them patriotic daughters who were doing their part for the war effort:
Daughters of women, who, in the Chinese homeland, lived out their whole lives in the cloistered seclusion of the enclosed courtyard of the traditional Chinese home, are today not only seeking careers in their adopted country but are banded together as volunteers to help win the war.... In aircraft plants, training camps, and hospital wards, at filter boards and bond booths, in shipyards, canteens, and Red Cross classes, these girls ... these Chinese daughters of Uncle Sam ... are doing their utmost to blend their new-world education and their old-world talents to hasten the end of the war. 121
As far as Lucy Lee of Houston, Texas, was concerned, World War II was the most important event in her lifetime in terms of job opportunities. A member of one of the first Chinese families in Houston, she recalled, "We really were a minority. We were not white; we were not black. Jobs were not open to us at all." Classmates and children in the neighborhood constantly called them names. "I couldn't tell you how many [fist]fights I got into trying to protect my brothers and sisters." Then came the war. "It changed life around. People started to look at you a little differently and you could get jobs. With no men around, we had all kinds of opportunities." 126
Census statistics provide strong evidence that the Chinese in San Fran cisco not only made major economic gains during the war but also were able to hold on to those gains afterward. Between 194o and 195o, the numbers of Chinese men in domestic service declined, while they increased in the crafts as well as in the professional, technical, and managerial categories. Chinese women fared even better, moving from their prewar predominantly operative status to jobs in the clerical and sales fields. Compared to the prewar years, although the labor market was still stratified by race and gender, Chinese Americans were able to make some inroads thanks to the war. In 1940, white men dominated the primary sector (professional, managerial, clerical, and craft occupations), followed by white women; Chinese men and women, however, were concentrated in the secondary sector (operative, service, and manual labor jobs). In 1950, although white men and women still dominated the primary sector, they were joined by a significant number of both Chinese men and women. Whereas in 1940, 36.3 percent of Chinese male workers and 30.8 percent of Chinese female workers were in the primary labor market, by 1950, those figures had climbed to 49.8 and 59 percent, respectively. In contrast, 75 percent of black male workers and 8z percent of black female workers remained in the secondary labor market after the war (see appendix tables i i and 12.).
War production revitalized the San Francisco Bay Area, which developed into the largest shipbuilding center in the world during World War II. Because of the labor shortage as well as federal guidelines against discrimination, all six major shipyards in the Bay Area were willing to hire racial minorities and women to build the cargo ships and tankers needed for America to win the war.127 With the government sponsoring free classes in marine sheetmetal, pipefitting, electricity, shipfitting, and drafting, the shipyards carried a labor recruitment campaign to San Francisco and Oakland Chinatowns.128 According to the Chinese Press, in 1942. some i,6oo Chinese Americans, out of a total population of i 8,ooo, were in defense work, primarily the shipbuilding trades; and in 1943, Chinese workers constituted 15 percent of the shipyard work force in the San Francisco Bay Area.129 In contrast, some 15,000 blacks worked in the Bay Area shipyards in 1943; at its peak period of production, the Kaiser shipyard alone employed 25,000 blacks.'3°
The largest shipyard in the Bay Area, the Henry J. Kaiser shipyard in Richmond, boasted that it employed zo,ooo women out of a total work force of 90,000, as well as a number of efficient all-Chinese male work crews that were always ahead of schedule. "I will stack them up against any other crew in the yard," remarked one superintendent to a newspa per reporter. The point was often made that Chinese shipyard workers were motivated by more than just American patriotism. "The Chinese are intent upon building ships as quickly as they can," another reporter wrote; she then quoted a Chinese worker: "We're doing our part for the United States [and] our efforts aid China. This is the chance we've been seeking." Even Chinese women were leaving their homes to work in the shipyards, "to show their spirit since women in China are to do their share."131 The Kaiser shipyard's in-house publication, Fore 'n Aft, often singled out Chinese employees as model workers doubly driven by the desire to help both China and the United States win the war. In a sexist way, the publication commented on how even "pretty" and "delicate" women like Jane Jeong and Leong Bo San were proving to be "amazing" workers:
Pretty Jane Jeong had an ambition to fly for China, but when the United States entered the war, she decided she could better beat the Japs by building ships instead. So Jane's a burner trainee at Yard Two. Two hundred flying hours are not the fighting lady's only accomplishment, for she's been a dancer and manager of night club and vaudeville performers. Jane's husband is a merchant seaman and has not been home once in the four months of their marriage."'
"Shanghai Lil" is the name they know her by, over at Assembly 1 i on graveyard shift.... Her name is Leong Bo San. Born in Shanghai, she was the daughter of a silk merchant. She is five feet, one inch tall, and she weighs lot pounds.... She has six children. One son is an Air Corps meteorologist, another is an attorney. Tiny and delicate as she looks, she works with an energy that amazes people twice her size. Says her boss, James G. Zack: "I wish I had a whole crew of people like her."133
Marinship in Sausalito also boasted of large numbers of women and racial minorities in its work force of zo,ooo in 1943 , 300 of whom were Chinese. In a special issue of its publication Marin-er on "The New China," Marinship expressed its pride in its Chinese American workers: "They are practical, teachable, and wonderfully gifted with common sense; they are excellent artisans, reliable workmen, and of a good faith that every one acknowledges and admires in their commercial deal- ings."134 In the same issue, Jade Snow Wong, who was working as a clerktypist at Marinship, wrote that Chinese workers came from all walks of life and worked in all areas-as janitors, cooks, burners, draftsmen, time keepers, boilermakers, and secretaries. "They are giving their all to the job because they know from their Chinese countrymen what Japanese warfare is all about," she said. "Chinese at Marinship are each in his or her own way working out their answer to Japanese aggression: by producing ships which will mean their home land's liberation." 135
Shipyard worker Lonnie Young. (Judy Yung
collection)
Kenneth Bechtel, president of Marinship, said much the same thing in a letter he wrote to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, praising the Chinese workers' patriotic drive and crucial contributions to war production:
The men and women of Marinship, together with all United Nations patriots, pay tribute to the people of China. For more than five years they have successfully withstood the maraudings of the evil foe, until now our common road to Victory lies clearly in sight. No small part of the credit for past accomplishment and future hope belongs to the brave and sturdy Chinese-Americans who work and fight in the United States. More than 3 00 such patriots, both men and women, are working every day at Marinship, building cargo ships and tankers. We have learned that these Chinese-Americans are among the finest workmen. They are skillful, reliableand inspired with a double allegiance. They know that every blow they strike in building these ships is a blow of freedom for the land of their fathers as well as for the land of their homes.136
Indeed, when Marinship became the first shipyard to launch a liberty ship in honor of a Chinese statesman-the S.S. Sun Yat-sen-Chinese American employees voluntarily pledged one day's pay to the relief of Chinese war orphans.137
As Jade Snow Wong pointed out, a mixture of first- and secondgeneration Chinese Americans from all walks of life found work at the shipyards. Depending on their educational background, Chinese male workers were assigned jobs in all departments except administration, from assembly line to construction line to maintenance and services. As for the women, older immigrants worked in janitorial services, younger women were trained as draftswomen, burners, and flangers, while high school graduates and college students were hired as office workers. Despite the obvious absence of Chinese in the top positions, these jobs provided Chinese Americans with union wages and benefits, training and work experience outside of Chinatown, and the opportunity to contribute to the Allied war effort.