On the other hand, workers at the depot were making a lot more money than workers in town or hired hands on the farm. Finding homes for all these new individuals and families was next to impossible. Some teachers remember teaching 20-25 kids before the war and 50-60 during it. From 1940 to 1943, the population in Hastings soared over 40 percent, reaching over 22,000.Ĭlassrooms in schools were quickly overcrowded. Construction began within a month of the announcement, and the local newspaper reported the arrival of 55 new families in town during the first two weeks of July. The impact on the community was immediate. By the end of the year, deposits in Hastings banks had shot up almost three-fold, from $4.5 million to $12.8 million. The new plant was announced on June 10, 1942, and the Navy estimated it would cost $45 million to build and run it. The Hastings Naval Ammunition Depot eventually covered 75 square miles of what used to be farmland. So, the impact of the Naval Depot on Hastings was much more intense. Hastings began as a smaller community than Grand Island, only 25 miles to the north. At its peak in 1945, the Hastings Naval Ammunition Depot (NAD) employed over 10,600 civilian and military personnel twice as many as the Grand Island plant. Hastings was the site of the largest Naval ammunition plant in the country. The town of Grand Island made a relatively easy transition back to a peacetime economy. The Army stripped the buildings, even selling the window glass and electrical wiring. When the war ended in August 1945, the entire work force at the plant was released in two weeks. With thousands of new workers, Grand Island experienced strains on their schools, housing, recreation facilities, police and other social services. Newspapers speculated that lightning from a passing thunderstorm might have set off the explosion. It happened on a Saturday in May 1945, and the official cause was never determined. Mildred Hopkins worked at the plant and knew one of the nine people who were killed when an explosion leveled the main building of line four that poured TNT into shell casings. There was only one major accident at the Grand Island plant.
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And obviously, when you're building bombs, there's the risk of explosions. The ingredients were toxic if workers were exposed to high levels. TNT, the main explosive agent, was mixed in huge, hot vats and poured into the casings. Merchants had more money but were forced to pay more for their help and extend the hours they were open.
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More money in people's pockets meant there was more to spend in town and at the markets, but it also meant that there were fewer people to work on the farms and behind the counters. The high wages and new jobs were both a boom and a strain on the local economy. A normal workweek was 48 hours long, and many worked overtime. There were three shifts each weekday and shifts on the weekends. Many commuted from farms and rural towns up to 60 miles away. At its peak, the plant employed 4,229 people. Merchants in Grand Island had been paying their workers around 30-cents an hour. The plant paid 70- to 80-cents an hour, about the same as factory workers around the nation but well above what laborers on the farm and in small towns made. Construction just west of Grand Island began in March 1942 and was completed in six months.īuilding bombs and artillery shells known as "ordnance" was a good job. The Cornhusker plant was one of the last one built by the Army during World War II. The other branches of the service had theirs, as well. During the war the Army alone built over 60 ammunition plants. Grand Island's Cornhusker Ordnance Plant. These are three of the major plants in Nebraska: "I'll tell you brother," he wrote, "Well, it sure don't make no sense / When a Negro can't work / In the national defense." Blues musician and activist Josh White wrote songs protesting segregation in the defense industry. However, at least in the beginning, not everyone was put to work.
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how jumped in there and built airplanes and tanks and everything." "The equipment we had on standby to fight a war was little, if anything," he says. The Martin Bomber plant built 1,500 B-26 Marauder medium bombers and more that 500 huge B-29 Superfortresses including the "Enola Gay," the plane that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima.ĭon Geery, for one, was amazed at how the nation's industry answered the call.
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Also, a huge aircraft assembly facility was built just south of Omaha at Fort Crook. In Nebraska, there were ordnance plants building bombs near Mead, Sidney, Hastings and Grand Island. Throughout rural America during World War II, factories sprang up.