A large part of the labor effort involves welding. This photograph shows shipfitters and welders laying a keel of a Liberty ship at Oregon Ship.

Cutting scrap steel for practice welding.

Apprentice welders. Note the supervisor on the right demonstrating the correct way to wear saftey equipment.

Apprentices practicing burning.By early 1945, women formed between 10 and 20 percent of the labor force at most yards. Despite having to put up with such sanitized images given by "Rosie the Riveter" and Augusta Clemson's "Shipyard Diary of a Woman Welder" (Penguin, 1944), women worked under the usual conditions of discrimination. Only one woman ever made the position of foreman, at Marinship. Even the Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor recommended restricting the jobs women should be allowed to do.  The challenges facing African-Americans appears to have been even more severe. The USMC did not even keep records of how many were employed nationally. At the Sun yards in Chester, PA, a special effort to employ African-Americans was made and in Fall 1943, the yards employed 18,000 African-Americans out of a total labor force of 34,000. Part of this special effort involved segregating 7,500 African-American workers in yard no. 4, and placing them under the control of 500 whites. No African-American ever reached a supervisory position at the Sun yards. In March 1943, Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Company, under pressure from the Fair Employment Commission, attempted to assign some skilled black welders to ways that had previously been all-white. A race riot in which many black workers were injured shut down part of the yard for a week.  See F. Lane, Ships for Victory, 1951, pp. 252-8.

Novice shipfitters also received training. This photograph shows a shipfitting class at Richmond. Obviously staged, the shipfitters would normally have been sitting at desks staring out the window.