Beyond the Latino World War II Hero: The Social and Political Legacy of a Generation

4. The Latinas of World War II: From Familial Shelter to Expanding Horizons

Women played a significant role in helping the United States win World War II. Approximately 350,000 females served in the military. Another 18.61 million worked at the home front, some 6.5 million of them newly employed because of the wartime labor shortage. They worked in defense industries and helped fill vacancies caused by departing servicemen.1 By war’s end, the proportion of women in the workforce had risen to 36 percent, up from 25 percent in 1941.2 Others on the home front served in the Red Cross, worked in Civil Defense, or performed for the United Service Organizations (USO). Women also participated in letter-writing campaigns to boost the spirits of American GIs. They wrapped bandages, collected scrap metal and grease, boughtwarbonds,andplantedvictorygardens.Withtheadventofrationing, theylearnedtodowithoutandtocreativelymaintaintheirfamilies’nutrition. While their spouses, siblings, boyfriends, and other loved ones served in the war, they grappled with worry and loneliness as they maintained morale on the home front and became more self-sufficient and confident in their daily affairs. Many scholars also contend that the war was a “major watershed in the lives of American women.”3 It changed their social expectations and their perceptions of self, especially of their worth. It also increased the number of married women—and the percentage of all women—who entered the workforce on a permanent basis.4 Moreover, it provided women their first opportunity to serve as regular members of the armed forces. 4 The Latinas of World War II From Familial Shelter to Expanding Horizons j o a n n e r a o s á n c h e z JO A NNE RAO SÁNCHEZ· 64 · Although we know much about the home front experience of women during the Second World War, important questions remain unanswered. This is especially evident in the case of Latina women, one of the least studied groups in U.S. history.5 According to Christine Marín, “the contributions made by Mexican American women . . . have yet to be reported or recognized in their proper historical perspective.”6 Sherna Berger Gluck included two Mexican Americans in her seminal 1987 work, Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War, and Social Change— an inclusion notable for its rarity among historians at that time. Gluck told how the war work produced opportunities for Mexican American women to socialize with Anglos. She notes, “Despite the nature of the social contacts between the races, a significant breakthrough had been made. The social worlds of these working class women had been expanded, and many of the women acknowledged the significance of this.”7 Richard Santillán made an important contribution to the subject with his article “Rosita the Riveter: Midwest Mexican American Women during World War II, 1941–1945.” He concluded that while the wartime experience “modified the social and political attitudes and behavior of many Mexican American defense workers regarding their roles in the home and community,” it also provided the women a “training ground . . . [in] leadership and organizational development.”8 Santillán called for additional research, as his study did not extend to female workers outside the war industries. Vicki L. Ruiz’s works also filled some of the void. In Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the Food Processing Industry, 1930–1950, she demonstrates how, especially during the war years, a few Latinas were able to assume leadership positions in organizing and bargaining for cannery workers in Southern California.9 Ruiz’s subsequent study, From Out of the Shadows: Mexican American Women in Twentieth-Century America, is an exemplary social history of Mexicana women, spanning the entire century . Ruiz found that some Mexican American women started to improve their socioeconomic status in the 1940s as a number of them “began to break into lower white-collar occupations” as clerks or in sales positions. She describes “cultural coalescence,” as second-generation Mexican American women blended cultural norms in the 1950s and the restrictive practice of chaperonage fell largely into disuse.10 In their brief discussion of the World War II period, Teresa Acosta and Ruthe Winegarten added that Tejanas began entering government service and earning better salaries.11 These examples notwithstanding, the inattention of scholars continues. For instance, a 2003 publication that purports to examine the general topic of Texas women in World War II fails to include Tejanas among the twenty- THE LATI NA S O F WORLD WAR II· 65 · seven women who are profiled...