RICHMOND — Even as the historic contributions of women and others during World War II are under threat of being erased by the Trump administration’s anti-DEI policies, many still plan to gather for Rosie the Riveter Day and find ways to honor American heroes.
Jeanne Gibson was just 18 when she answered the call to support the war effort in 1944. While the men were across the seas fighting Nazis, she was suiting up in her protective leather uniform, steel-toe boots and welding cap to help build destroyers in a Seattle shipyard.
Gibson hadn’t necessarily dreamt of a life working physically demanding swing shifts in the freezing cold. Before the war, she’d planned to become a veterinarian.
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Making history and breaking barriers also wasn’t front of mind, she said. To Gibson, she — like the millions of other women at the time — was just doing her duty. The work earned Gibson a Congressional Medal of Honor, which she received in Washington, D.C., last April.
More than 80 years later, the 99-year-old is still taking her work as a Rosie seriously. Every Friday she can be found at the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park Visitor Center in Richmond speaking to groups.
“It’s kind of the most important thing in my life right now,” said Gibson, who will be traveling to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans in honor of Rosie the Riveter Day on Friday.
Preserving history and highlighting the vast contributions of women and people of color during World War II are core objectives of the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park.
Established in 2000, the park is on the grounds of the old Ford Assembly Plant, which transitioned to manufacturing military vehicles during the war. For the last 25 years, the visitor center has offered the public an opportunity to dive deeply into the ways the plant, and World War II more broadly, shifted the makeup of both Richmond and the nation as a whole.
Hearing directly from Rosies themselves is a particularly special opportunity, said Rosie organizer Tammy Brumley, who will be traveling with Gibson to New Orleans.
“It’s so important to hear from living history,” Brumley said. “It’s special to hear it instead of reading it in a book.”
But some references to that history are being removed from military records under President Donald Trump’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. A database, published by the Associated Press, identifies about 26,000 images flagged for removal on military websites, including links to modern-day Rosie the Riveters.
Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez recognized the contributions of Rosies as vital to winning World War II and said the Trump administration’s “aversion to diversity” is “misplaced.” Rather than end diversity, equity and inclusion programming, Martinez said the public would be better served by focusing on the sexism, racism and other hurdles “built into our culture.”
“No one can keep us from recognizing and celebrating the contributions women make, or people of color, or queer people — all of us,” Martinez said. “You’d have to be asleep to not be concerned.”
For Pinole Mayor Cameron Sasai, the issue is personal. His family on his father’s side was placed in Japanese internment camps during World War II under the direction of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Still, both his grandfather, Tadashi Sasai, and his grandmother’s uncle, Tadashi Takeuchi, went on to serve in the military. Sasai was a translator with the Military Intelligence Service and Takeuchi with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
Takeuchi was one of about 18,000 Nisei, or first generation Japanese-American men, who served with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team between 1943 and 1946. The 442nd is the most decorated unit of its size and length of service, according to the National World War II Museum, awarded 4,000 Purple Hearts, 4,000 Bronze Stars, 560 Silver Star medals, 21 Medals of Honor and seven Presidential Unit Citations.
Takeuchi himself was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, Combat Infantryman Badge, and the Bronze Star after dying in combat on October 30, 1944, in Vosges Mountains, France.
A webpage dedicated to the 442nd Regiment was one of many historical records removed by Trump’s administration. The webpage was republished shortly after concerns were raised about its removal.
“What we’re seeing with this racist administration, it’s whitewashing history, it’s a sterilization of our history that is, in this case, really a slap in the face of the Japanese-American community,” Cameron Sasai said. “These are not DEI hires. These are folks who, even after being treated so poorly by the American government, after their families were placed in internment camps, they chose to serve the country that had just backstabbed them. That’s excellence in itself.”
While his influence as the mayor of a city of about 19,500 people may be limited, Sasai said he’s taken the responsibility of preserving and recognizing history into his own hands.
He led a council that passed proclamations recognizing Women’s History Month, National Day of Racial Healing and Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution, which honors Korematsu as a civil rights leader who fought against Japanese internment.
Sasai most recently participated in a Day of Remembrance program at the national park in Richmond that focused on anti-Japanese American propaganda and the female experience in interment camps.
“It’s up to us at the local level to right these wrongs,” Sasai said. “While the federal level is trying to restrict history, I’m trying to do as much as possible to lift up those stories.”
Gibson has similarly dedicated the last few years of her life to spreading the story of women during World War II.
After three decades of teaching in the Berkeley area, she’s sat in front of countless groups of visitors with a similar message: Girls and young women can do anything they set their minds to, and “when your government needs you to preserve themselves,” Gibson said, “you do it.”
