Bancroftiana, Number 124 Spring 2004: Richmond Migration: The World War II Experience

REGIONAL ORAL HISTORY OFFICE

Richmond Migration: The World War II Experience

The Bancroft Library’s collection of World War II oral histories will soon be greatly enhanced by the addition of almost fifty interviews with defense workers, teachers, police officers, musicians —a complete social spectrum of Bay Area natives and wartime migrants— telling the story of Richmond, California, and its transformation. The interviews are part of a collaborative initiative by the City of Richmond, the National Park Service, and the Regional Oral History Office to develop an urban national park commemorating the World War II Homefront experience. As an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley’s history department I had the good fortune of participating in ROHO’s project to record Richmond’s history. Under the advice of ROHO Director and Berkeley history professor, Richard Cándida Smith, I completed my undergraduate thesis on Richmond’s Mexican community and Latino defense industry migration. The project was based primarily on nine oral histories conducted over the fall semester 2002. They will eventually join Bancroft’s collection of interviews documenting the World War II era, and inform the National Park Service and future historians in how to best define Latino contributions to the Homefront effort.

Atchison Village, a Shipyard Housing Project developed by the Housing Authority, City of Richmond, and the United States Housing Authority, Defense Housing Project, Federal Works Agency. From the Henry J. Kaiser Pictorial Collection.

Put simply, my thesis, entitled Richmond’s Mexican Colonia and World War II Migration, is a comparison and contrast of the various memories shared by two Richmond natives and seven wartime “newcomers,” all but one born in the United States. Because of the diversity of experiences recounted by the narrators—whose states of origin included Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico—I abandoned the notion of writing a single history of Richmond’s Mexican population during World War II. This was, in part, due to the Kaiser Shipyards appearing to be a less significant social space—where locals and newcomers came together—than churches, dance halls, and nightspots. A newcomer from New Mexico recalled in an interview:

There was a district that was Mexican but we weren’t aware of it because we ended up moving in an area where there were no Mexican people. And not until we went to church at St. Marks, then we see that the whole church was full of Mexican people. And then I says, “Oh, OK!”

My interviews suggest that Latino workers at the Kaiser shipyards were not divided into segregated work crews as blacks often were. Thus, they communed outside of the workplace at local Mexican movie showings and at Sunday afternoon dances tardeadas—in Oakland. Still, I point out in my thesis that Richmond’s Mexican residents did not form a homogenous culture. Several interviewees resisted using broad generalizations when describing character of the community. A Colorado native discussed identification with traditions maintained by Richmond’s longtime Mexican residents:

Housing Projects, Forty-Seventh Street and Cutting Boulevard, Richmond Yard Number Four. United States Commission Housing Project, November 1943.

In Richmond they used to celebrate [Mexico’s Independence Day], yeah. But the fact is we didn’t even know what it was all about, I didn’t. Back home there were no [celebrations] like that when we were kids. Through history we read it.

The complete transcripts of interviews used in my thesis should join Bancroft’s collection next year. To read full text of the thesis, please visit: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO

—David Washburn, UC Undergraduate