Richmond Shipyards

During World War II, the Richmond Shipyards were an immense eight hundred eighty-acre facility built for the Henry J. Kaiser Company in 1941 and 1942 that became the largest shipyards in the world. New construction methods developed there, including prefabrication and intense labor specialization, made possible the production of vessels at a record pace, and the techniques Henry J. Kaiser used at Richmond became a model for shipyards across the nation. In 1941 and 1942, the Richmond shipyards built 747 ships, including 519 Liberty ships, nearly a quarter of total U.S. Liberty ship production. Between 1942 and 1943, the shipyards hired 90,000 workers, many of them women, African Americans from the rural South, and members of other underrepresented groups, and the arrival of these new workers seeking good wages for unskilled labor reshaped the social and cultural landscape of the Bay Area.

Richmond, California · United States