When he received orders for ships from the British government, already at war with Nazi Germany, Kaiser established his first Richmond shipyard in December 1940.

The four Richmond Kaiser Shipyards built 747 ships in World War II, a rate never equaled.

The Liberty ship Robert E. Peary was assembled in less than five days as a part of a competition among shipyards.

[3] By the end of the war the Richmond Shipyards had built $1.8 billion worth of ships.

[4] Kaiser and his workers applied mass assembly line techniques to building the ships.

This production line technique, bringing pre-made parts together, moving them into place with huge cranes and having them welded together by "Rosies" (actually "Wendy the Welders" here in the shipyards), allowed unskilled laborers to do repetitive jobs requiring relatively little training to accomplish.

This sped up construction, allowed more workers to be mobilized, and opened jobs to women and minorities.

Actively recruited by Kaiser, they came from all over the United States to swell the population of Richmond from 20,000 to over 100,000 in three years.

However, they still faced unequal pay, were shunted off into "auxiliary" unions and still had to deal with prejudice and inequities.

[5] In the war, labor strikes and sit-down work stoppages eventually led to better conditions.

[6] The SS Red Oak Victory is docked nearby Kaiser Richmond No.

For World War 2 Kaiser opened four shipyards along the northeast shoreline of San Francisco Bay, each using prefabricated parts to build ships.

Prefabricated subcontractors included: Graham Ship Repair Company, Herrick Iron Works, Independent Iron Works, Berkeley's Trailer Company of America, Steel Tank & Pipe Company, California Steel Products Corporation, Pacific Coast Engineering in Alameda and Clyde W. Wood in Stockton.

Kaiser purchased the contact and the yard to build type Ocean ship from the Todd Shipyards in 1940.

2 Yard: Notable ships: Timothy Pickering, Stephen Hopkins, Samuel Huntington, Robert T. Lincoln, Hobart Baker, Melville E. Stone, E. A. Bryan, Antoine Saugrain, and Hobbs Victory.

This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Park Service.