“The Past Is Prologue”: Santa Monica Library Celebrates Women’s History Month

A photo exhibit of the women workers of the Douglas Aircraft Plant in Santa Monica during World War II will be on display at the Main Santa Monica Library throughout the month of March.

The Santa Monica Main Library is displaying a collection of photos of the women employees of the Santa Monica and El Segundo Douglas Aircraft Plants, gathered from the public Library Image Archives database, throughout the month of March in celebration of Women’s History Month.

During World War II, over five million civilian American women joined the defense industry to support the Allied effort, Rosie the Riveter-style. Douglas Aircraft, one such defense company founded in Santa Monica in the 1920s, employed thousands of women during WWII, including at a factory location in Santa Monica.

84-year-old Sylvia Zemo described her experience as a former employee at the plant during the war in a 2001 interview with Air Force historian Robert Mulcahy. She said she was eager to support the war effort by joining Douglas, where her husband also worked. She was tasked with driving and bucking rivets on aircraft being manufactured for the Allied forces.

Zemo described the women factory workers as a determined community, who not only put in labor for the war cause but would also buy war bonds and donate blood to help injured workers. To boost morale, Douglas would host events like live celebrity performances during breaks, and employees often attended dance halls for the servicemen stationed locally. Everyone simply wanted to “do their share.”

“When the war picked up, they worked us awfully hard, 12 hours a day, seven days a week," she said. However, she said the women were treated well. "We were needed. They couldn’t do without the women, because there wouldn’t have been anybody to work on the airplanes. There weren’t enough men. The men were all in the service.”

Librarian Kathy Lo at the Santa Monica Main Library curated the photo display, and said she chose Douglas Aircraft as the subject of the Women’s History Month display because “it’s a display of Santa Monica history.” She explained how the women at the plant had the opportunity to do many tasks—notably, many assignments that were traditionally reserved for men, such as construction and engineering work.

“I’ve had people who came through the lobby, would look at this and say, ‘I know my aunt worked,’ or ‘my mother worked,’ or ‘my grandma worked at Douglas,’” she said.

When asked what about the photos was most special to her, Lo said “they tell a story. And to move forward, we need to know what the stories are.” The most significant thing for Lo, she said, is the history preserved in the photos, and their ability to inform our understanding of the present.

“The past is prologue," she said. "I think it’s important to look back.”