Prior to World War II, Kaiser was involved in the construction industry; his company was one of those that built the Hoover Dam.

[3] He used his savings to move to Washington state in 1906, where he started a construction company fulfilling government contracts.

[5] Kaiser met his future wife, Bess Fosburgh, the daughter of a Virginia lumberman, when she came into his photographic shop in Lake Placid, New York, to buy film.

Kaiser moved to Spokane and became a top salesman at a hardware company, returning ten months later with enough money to placate his future father-in-law.

His firm expanded significantly in 1927 when it received an $18-million contract to build roads in Camagüey Province, Cuba.

While doing business among the "Six Companies, Inc.", and remotely related to his interest in motor boat racing, he set up shipyards in Seattle and Tacoma, where he began using mass-production techniques, such as using welding instead of rivets.

[5]Henry Kaiser was an early advocate of bringing American aid to those suffering from German aggression in Europe.

Welding was advantageous because it took less strength to do and it was easier to teach to thousands of employees, who were mostly unskilled laborers and many women.

Though that practice had been tried on the East Coast and in Britain, Kaiser was able to take full advantage of the process by constructing new shipyards using this concept.

[11] Other Kaiser shipyards were located in Ryan Point (Vancouver) on the Columbia River in Washington state and on Swan Island in Portland, Oregon.

That caused the loss of some Liberty ships in cold seas as the welds failed and the hulls would crack, sometimes completely into two.

Minor changes in design and more rigid welding control implemented in 1947 eliminated Liberty ship losses until 1955.

[14] By his membership in a group called the Six Companies, Kaiser also had a major role in the Joshua Hendy Iron Works of Sunnyvale, California, which built the EC-2 triple expansion steam engines for the Liberty ships.

[16] In part because of wartime materials rationing, the Field Hospital was a single-story wood-frame structure designed in a simple modernist mode.

To serve employees at his diverse businesses, Kaiser opened Permanente facilities in Walnut Creek, California; Honolulu, Hawaii; and many other locations.

The first K-F models were designed by Howard "Dutch" Darrin and these went from non-existent to number eight in new car sales within two years.

[24] Although still producing Jeep vehicles, Kaiser-Willys ceased production of passenger cars in the U.S. after the 1955 model year.

He built the Kaiser Superbus (1946, scrapped 1951) 60 feet in length with room for 63 seated passengers, and two restrooms, was constructed using magnesium, and aluminum.

A lawsuit by a shareholder in the company alleged that "The name is so ridiculous that it can be justified on no other ground than to satisfy a deep ingrained megalomanic desire for personal publicity".

[25] In 1953, Kaiser purchased Willys-Overland, manufacturer of the Jeep line of utility vehicles, changing its name to Willys Motors.

The original facilities included reduction plants at Mead and Tacoma, and a rolling mill at Trentwood.

[36][37][38][39] Kaiser also financed the development of Panorama City, a planned community in the San Fernando Valley portion of Los Angeles.

[45][46] Kaiser constructed one of the first commercially practical geodesic domes in the United States at this resort and used it as a theater.

Though actually filmed at WB studios in Burbank, California, the show featured private detectives based at Kaiser's Hilton Hawaiian Village.

Kaiser married the nurse who had cared for her, Alyce Chester (reportedly with his wife's blessing) on April 10, 1951.

[51][52] He adopted her son, who as Michael Kaiser, attended nearby Lafayette public Vallecito School.