Local sisters relate memories of WWII work

Rita Hagen, 79, believes she could still weld a mean seam if called upon.

Hagen and her sister Dorothy Senner, 81, were North Dakota farm girls when they heard about the opportunity to make good money as "Rosie riveters" in Oregon.

Along with friend Madeline Kohl, the two set out for the big city and the big money.

"To this day, I don't know how in the hell we made it," Senner said with a laugh. "I should warn you, we're not nice little old ladies."

Today, the former Kok sisters are residents of Kalispell. Their riveting recollections have earned a place in the archives of the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park planned for Richmond, Calif.

Their wartime adventure began in 1943.

With almost no money, the three young women jumped on a train to Spokane. From there, they caught another train to Portland, the nearest terminal to Swan Island Shipyards.

A friend of Hagen's met them at the station but soon left them to their own devices in a city teeming with servicemen. The three girls soon found a room in a hotel that looked nice enough.

"We didn't know there were naughty girls next door," Hagen said, laughing.

The three girls were having fun waving to the sailors down below when the manager showed up, thinking they were "naughty girls" too. It was a first lesson in big-city living for the farm girls.

Eventually they located a room for rent in Vanport City a few miles from the shipyards. But this manager didn't want to rent to single women.

Hagen didn't need Fair Housing Laws to overcome this discrimination.

"She sat down on the floor in the middle of the apartment office and refused to leave until it was rented to us," Senner said.

The two, along with their undeclared roommate Kohl, shared the tiny apartment for two and a half years. It was a dime bus ride from the shipyards and close to the Golden Pheasant restaurant, where they consumed many Chinese meals.

Senner, Hagen and Kohl got hired immediately by Kaiser Co. as riveters at Swan Island Shipyards. As Senner recalls, their pay was $1.35 an hour, more than double the average wage of the time, which was about 50 cents an hour.

The sisters have photos of themselves, looking more like pilots than welders, in their leather helmets with flaps that wrapped down under their chins. Their ensembles included leather coats and pants, accessorized by leather gloves and steel-toed boots.

Each fledgling Rosie was issued a stinger, hood and a rod box.

"It's electric welding," Hagen said. "You know when you jump start your car? It (the stinger) looked something like that."

Their first challenge was to pass a three-week course in welding.

During welding school, the women had to master welding flat, vertical and overhead. Overhead was a real chore.

"I didn't pass the overhead the first time," Senner said.

It was critical to remember to lock the helmet flaps and leather coat for protection during that operation. Hagen learned the hard way when she dropped hot solder on her chest, leaving three scars for years.

On another occasion, Hagen got a flash burn on her eye when she was welding in the middle of a group of women and one started welding before she had her hood down.

"It burned," Hagen recalled. "It was like blisters on your eyeballs."

Senner said she welded on "the ways," which meant she welded parts that were subsequently hauled on to the ships. When she finished her work, a huge derrick swung over, picked up the part, then swung it on board.

Hagen worked on "the cracks," welding high on the hulls of the tankers. She said they had one important safety rule - don't fall off the ship.

"That's why they called the ambulance a meat wagon," she said.

For both women, "Pinhole Joe" was the bane of their existence.

"If he found a pinhole in a weld he would come and chip it out and we would have to do it over again," Senner said.

Both sisters remember the intense heat as they worked encased in leather. It required that they take salt tablets whenever they went for a drink of water.

"We were nice and stinky," Hagen said with a laugh.

Even after eight hot hours of welding on the swing shift, the two women often raced back to their apartment at 11 p.m., showered and headed out to dance at the USO center in Vanport City.

"We would dance until 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning," Senner said.

The band actually played in accordance with the war-machine factory shifts. The swing-shift women took over the dance floors when the graveyard shift headed to work.

It was their youth rather than their workload that allowed Senner and Hagen to keep up the pace. They welded without coffee breaks and with few bathroom breaks.

Senner still bristles when she thinks about the launches of the ships.

"What irked me… when we worked so hard… [was that] we had to stand by when they launched the ships," she said.

They weren't even allowed to take pictures. The women workers were warned to keep their distance as various movie stars christened ships - but also couldn't board because they were female.

"Women weren't allowed on board," Senner said. "It was bad luck."

The launches were accomplished by greasing the skids holding the ships with banana oil. At the appointed moment, a man with a torch, called a burner, would cut the welds that held the ship up on the skids.

With victory in Europe in spring 1945, Hagen and Senner's riveting days soon ended. Both women remember the excitement in the streets, the sailors kissing women, just like the famous picture.

"We were home for harvest," Hagen said. "We helped dad shock grain."

She remembered that she was driving the Model T in the field when they learned that the Japanese had surrendered, too.

"Dad said 'Blow the horn - don't just sit there,'" Hagen recalled.

Because the government required a $25 war bond to be deducted from their paychecks, Senner and Hagen each had $900 to launch their next adventures. Today they live in Kalispell with husbands Don Hagen and Alvin Senner.

It was their younger sister Margaret in Oregon who got the applications for the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historic Park. Their contributions became part of the archives for the park now in the planning stage.

Following her war experience, Senner married and raised five children with her first husband. In Kalispell, she worked at a local department store, managed apartments and, in 1978, married Alvin, who worked at the aluminum plant.

Hagen came to Montana from North Dakota, transferring with Ward's Department Store to Great Falls. There, she met Don, a Budweiser truck driver, at the Green Lantern Restaurant.

"That was a put-up deal," she said with a laugh.

The two married 48 years ago when Rita was 32.

After two years of driving a beer truck, Don "just quit one day" Hagen said. The two moved on to purchase the apartments in the Flathead Valley that Dorothy managed.

Together again in Kalispell, the sisters have shared hundreds of memories and laughs over their first grown-up adventure outside of North Dakota as Rosie riveters.

"I tell you I would do it all again," Hagen said.

Neither of the women understood the significance of their work at the time, but others have paid them high tribute since.

"I had an old neighbor who told me that we wouldn't have won the war if it weren't for the women," Senner said.

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com