The Bo's'n's Whistle

The Bo’s’n’s Whistle was an in-house publication distributed to employees of the Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation (OSC), owned by Henry Kaiser. The name comes from the bosun’s whistle, an instrument used by naval boatswains to alert crewmembers to ship commands. Kaiser built and operated three shipyards between 1941 and 1945—two in the Portland area and one in Vancouver, Washington— which employed tens of thousands of men and women.

The Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation yards were considered “emergency shipyards,” which meant that they were built quickly and given massive construction orders to fill as quickly as possible. Faced with a labor shortage, Kaiser worked with the federal War Manpower Commission (WMC) and the Office of War Information (OWI) to recruit women into these urgent wartime jobs. This issue of Bo’s’n’s Whistle provides a glimpse into an important aspect of World War II labor in Oregon—that women made up approximately 30 percent of the workforce in the shipyards. The first two women hired started work as welders in April 1942; by 1944, about 40,000 women worked side-by-side with men throughout the yards.