Joyce Rutherford | Interview 1 | November 2, 2011

REDMAN: Today is Wednesday, November 2, 2011. My name is Sam Redman, and I'm here today with Joyce Rutherford. We're in Danville, California. This is our first session together today. I'd like to begin with probably the simplest of all questions that I could ask today. Would you be willing to tell me your full name and then the spelling of the full name, if you wouldn't mind?

RUTHERFORD: Okay. Joyce Margaret Rutherford. My maiden name was Farmer.

REDMAN: Those all spelled out like normal spellings?

RUTHERFORD: Yes.

REDMAN: Rutherford--would you mind just spelling that for us?

RUTHERFORD: R-U-T-H-E-R-F-O-R-D.

REDMAN: All right, terrific. Joyce, where were you born?

RUTHERFORD: I was born down near Bakersfield in1923. A little town called Porterville.

REDMAN: Can you tell me what that town was like around the time you were born? Maybe how your parents had described--

RUTHERFORD: My mother and dad owned a small farm and grew pomegranates and olives. Of course, we had chickens and sheep and dogs and cows. Lived about--I think it was about twenty miles outside of town.

REDMAN: Where were your parents from?

RUTHERFORD: My mother and father came from England in 1920. They purchased their farm, site unseen, before they left England.

REDMAN: They had an idea, then, that they wanted to come to California?

RUTHERFORD: Oh, yes.

REDMAN: What drew them to California? Did they talk about why they had decided--

RUTHERFORD: My mother's brother came out first, and he evidently encouraged them 00:02:00to come out. It was soon after World War One, and my father fought in France and was injured. He worked for the British Railroad Company before and after the war.

REDMAN: Was he a laborer for the British Railroad Company?

RUTHERFORD: He worked in the offices in London.

REDMAN: I see. Had either your mother or father, had they gone to college in England?

RUTHERFORD: No. They both stayed in school, I think until about fourteen. Then they go into offices or wherever they're going to work and get the rest of their education there.

REDMAN: As sort of an apprentice?

RUTHERFORD: Apprentice work.

REDMAN: I see. Then, eventually, they came to California, following your uncle, to become farmers.

RUTHERFORD: Farmers. My father's name was Farmer.

REDMAN: It was fitting, I guess, right? Tell me, then, did you have any siblings growing up?

RUTHERFORD: I have a sister that's two-and-a-half years older than I am.

REDMAN: So she came along, and then a couple of years later, you were born.

RUTHERFORD: We were both born down in the Valley, in Terra Bella, Porterville.

REDMAN: Can you tell me what some of your earliest memories of growing up on the farm might have been?

RUTHERFORD: Well, no. We left the farm--I probably was about not even two--and moved to Crockett. It was sort of a Depression time, and nobody needed olives or 00:04:00pomegranates, so my father's business wasn't very good. He came up to work at the C&H sugar refinery in Crockett. I grew up in Crockett, really. Went all through school, high school and all, in Crockett.

REDMAN: Can you then tell me a little bit about what Crockett was like? Some of your early memories of what that town was like? Because now we're entering the Great Depression. I suspect that there were a lot of people in similar situations to your father. A lot of people were moving to try to find work, piecing together jobs here and there where they could find them. Can you talk a little bit about what Crockett was like?

RUTHERFORD: I've always said that it was a wonderful town to grow up in. It was a small town. Everybody knew each other. I had really nice friends, whom I still 00:05:00correspond with. Hardly anybody moved out of town. We started with the kindergarten children, and we went right through school and graduated from high school with the same group. It was a very friendly town. It was just a really nice place to live.

REDMAN: I'd like to talk a little bit about elementary school if we could, or grammar school. A lot of places in the United States, prior to the time that you went to school, were one-room schoolhouses. Gradually, they started to introduce more modern schools.

RUTHERFORD: This is a very good-sized, brick building. It's still there.

REDMAN: Is that right? Okay.

RUTHERFORD: It was at that point.

REDMAN: Did you have any early favorite teachers that were really important to your early education?

RUTHERFORD: I can't remember very many. Mr. Martin was very good, and Ms. Ball. Mrs. {Staley?}.

REDMAN: What subjects, very early on--were you more interested in math and science, or reading and writing?

RUTHERFORD: When I was just a little girl, I'd draw houses all the time. All through school, I did a lot of artwork. I was also good in mathematics. In fact, when I graduated from high school, the principal told my mother that I was the 00:07:00best math student in the history of the high school.

REDMAN: Is that right?

RUTHERFORD: So I guess I must have been pretty good in math.

REDMAN: Wow. That's a pretty amazing accomplishment. I'm curious, though, because the sort of stereotype that we have in, I would say, American culture, is that women do not do math and science. They don't excel in those topics. Did you face any of those sorts of sentiments, or was it always just--came naturally?

RUTHERFORD: No. I took mechanical drawing and architectural drawing, and I was the only girl in those classes, but nobody seemed to think anything of it.

REDMAN: It's pretty interesting. Those were elective courses in your high school?

RUTHERFORD: Yes.

REDMAN: You would have advanced through high school and graduated about 1940, 1939?

RUTHERFORD: 1941.

REDMAN: 1941, okay. Let's turn back for a moment to the Great Depression. Were some of the other kids in school, were their families, were their parents, facing the effects of the Great Depression in any way that was obvious to you?

RUTHERFORD: Oh, they certainly were. We were very fortunate that my father worked the whole time. He didn't earn very much money, but at least it was enough to live on. I can remember we lived way up a hill, and just down below us on the main highway was the building that the people went to to get food. There was always a long line of people lined up outside that building, waiting to go 00:09:00in and get the food they needed.

REDMAN: Did you suspect or did you know whether or not a lot of these families were migrant farmer--were a lot of people migrant laborers working in the sugar refinery?

RUTHERFORD: Yes.

REDMAN: Or were they working in the fields? Did you have a sense of--

RUTHERFORD: Most of the people in Crockett worked at the refinery.

REDMAN: I see. Okay.

RUTHERFORD: A lot of the people had come over from Europe. We had French, Italian, Spanish. Lots of foreign people.

REDMAN: [Phone rings- brief pause] I'm interested in, your parents being from England, if a lot of other students in your classes would have had parents from Europe as well.

RUTHERFORD: Almost all.

REDMAN: Is that right? Wow. I was going to ask if there was any sort of surprise 00:10:00about your parents being from the United Kingdom, but clearly that wouldn't have been the case.

RUTHERFORD: Almost every one of my friends had parents who had come from different places in Europe.

REDMAN: Okay. Now, then, getting up towards the end of high school, I presume you would have become active in various sorts of high school activities. Going to dances or things of that nature. Can you talk a little bit about what that would have been like?

RUTHERFORD: It was a very friendly high school. We had a lot of dances. Most kids didn't date at that point, but we just were just groups of friendly kids.

REDMAN: There was diversity in terms of where people's parents had originated from. Would you describe the student body at that time as being diverse in terms of religion or in race? Or were they pretty similar to your own background in that regard?

RUTHERFORD: We were mostly the one race from Europe. I can't remember that there were any Chinese or Japanese colored people in the school at all at that point. They came into town later on.

REDMAN: Then in terms of religion, were most people Protestant, or were there Catholics in your school, or people who were Jewish?

RUTHERFORD: Most of the Europeans, of course, were Catholic, and they had a Catholic church. There was a Congregational church. My mother and father were 00:12:00Episcopalian, the Church of England. Actually, they started the Episcopal church that's in Crockett right now, St. Mark's. It's still a very small, nice, little church.

REDMAN: They were early members of the congregation and they helped found the church itself?

RUTHERFORD: Yes. I think they went to the Congregational church for maybe a year or so before they were able to get the Episcopal church organized through the bishop and all in San Francisco.

REDMAN: So they were religious in that they practiced and they went to services.

RUTHERFORD: Yes.

REDMAN: Did they bring you and your sister to religious services growing up? Every Sunday?

RUTHERFORD: Oh, every Sunday. We never missed. My father sang in the choir, so I 00:13:00sang in the choir. My sister did, too, when we were just little--we couldn't even read. We had to learn all of the hymns. I remember, once, the bishop told my father that he told a lot of different people in California about the little girl in Crockett, little four-year-old girl in Crockett that sang all the hymns because she couldn't read the book.

REDMAN: But you'd learned all the songs?

RUTHERFORD: My father had taught me.

REDMAN: That's pretty impressive.

RUTHERFORD: He was responsible for picking out all of the hymns, and he was also treasurer of the church. We didn't have a minister, because the church was so small. We just had a student from the school in Berkeley come and lecture every 00:14:00Sunday. A couple of the men in Crockett had to just run everything.

REDMAN: I see, okay. That's interesting. Did attending those services, and presumably going to Sunday school or things like that, did that have an influence on you and your sister?

RUTHERFORD: Oh, yes. We went to Sunday school. My mother was a Sunday school teacher. Then as we got a little older--I guess we were high school-age--they had a group on Sunday evening for these high school children. We went to that every Sunday, too.

REDMAN: That was a pretty active group that would get together?

RUTHERFORD: Oh, yes. It was not a very big group, but it was very active.

REDMAN: Would you get together for Bible study and things in addition to that? Like activities that you might do together?

RUTHERFORD: They had to raise money, so they had a bazaar. My mother was very busy in that. She more or less ran the bazaar and did most of the selling.

REDMAN: [Pause in tape to fix audio] The next thing I'd like to ask is about FDR, about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was renowned for his ability to go on the radio during these Fireside Chats and communicate to people, and a lot of 00:16:00people were very fond of him, but others had different opinions about him. Can you talk about what your early impressions were of FDR? Did you listen to any--

RUTHERFORD: At that age, I wasn't too interested in politics, but I do remember hearing him speak on the radio. He spoke beautifully. He was very persuasive. As far as I know, everybody liked him.

REDMAN: So he was very popular--

RUTHERFORD: He was very popular.

REDMAN: Can you talk a little bit about if you had any experiences in the town, or if your family had any experiences, with New Deal programs, such as the WPA or the CCC? Do you remember the alphabet agencies popping up?

RUTHERFORD: Yes, I remember the CCC. Seeing young men working in the parks and along the highways.

REDMAN: Did you have any impressions of that as a program, as a project? Putting these people to work to do--

RUTHERFORD: Yes, I think I remember knowing that it was a way of putting these unemployed people to work. So everybody was in favor of it, of course.

REDMAN: Moving forward a little bit through time, Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, would that have happened when you were a senior in high school?

RUTHERFORD: No, I had just started college. I'd started in September, and this happened in December.

REDMAN: Just for a moment, I'd like to go back to September 1941, then, when you first enrolled at UC Berkeley. A little before that, can you tell me about your decision to go to Berkeley, about what played into that decision?

RUTHERFORD: As a child growing up, I just knew that's where I was going to go. I never thought of going anywhere else. I knew I wanted to be an architect when I was six years old. I really didn't know what an architect did. I drew houses all the time. If there were houses under construction in the neighborhood, I'd go and see just how everything was put together. I can remember going through some of my mother's Better Homes and Gardens magazines and looking at the floor plans.

REDMAN: Did your parents encourage this interest in architecture?

RUTHERFORD: Who?

REDMAN: Your parents.

RUTHERFORD: Parents. Oh, yes.

REDMAN: So they were fond of the idea of--

RUTHERFORD: Oh, yes. My mother was artistic. She did quite a bit of painting. They encouraged me.

REDMAN: Oh, that's great. So then, you knew you wanted to study architecture. 00:19:00You knew you wanted to enroll at UC Berkeley. Ultimately, that happened, and you started off at UC Berkeley. You must have been very excited, then, to arrive in September.

RUTHERFORD: Oh, yes.

REDMAN: Can you talk about that initial feeling of what it was like to be a new student at UC Berkeley? Maybe thinking some of the campus--how large the campus must have felt.

RUTHERFORD: It was very large.

REDMAN: Big buildings.

RUTHERFORD: Luckily, I had a friend that lived in Berkeley, and they asked me to live with them until I got established and all. It was exciting going off on my own and just getting started in something that was very new to me. I did start 00:20:00majoring in mathematics. My high school professor there, the principal, said, "Oh, women just don't become architects." So he talked me into starting in mathematics. But as soon as I got to college and found that I could major in architecture, I changed right away.

REDMAN: That's very interesting. Were those first classes, did you find them to be particularly challenging, or were you--did you feel well-prepared for them?

RUTHERFORD: I think I was well-prepared. I did quite well in everything that I did. We did take a lot of engineering, and I can remember being in one class 00:21:00where there were over 400 boys and me.

REDMAN: Is that right? Wow. That's pretty amazing. Tell me what that felt like.

RUTHERFORD: I didn't seem to think too much of it, I don't think. They were all very polite and nice to me.

REDMAN: Is that right? So there were no comments or things like that?

RUTHERFORD: No.

REDMAN: People were pretty supportive?

RUTHERFORD: They accepted me.

REDMAN: That's interesting. That's great. I'd like to then talk, if we can, about Pearl Harbor. I understand that Pearl Harbor happened during the midst of finals that year at UC Berkeley.

RUTHERFORD: It did. I think it was a Sunday morning, and we heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. The next day, I guess, in college, we were all 00:22:00instructed to go to the basement if there was any bombing in that area. It was during the time of finals, so everybody was a little particularly nervous about it, but we just kept going, doing everything that we normally would do. Of course, after that point, there were a lot of young men that left college to go into the service. A lot of the male students left.

REDMAN: Can we talk a little bit about when you were first told, say, during finals, that you're going to have to now study in the basement because of a potential threat of bombing in the Bay Area, was that a frightening thing to hear?

RUTHERFORD: I'm sure it was. I don't remember that we were terribly concerned about it. We just went down to the basement. I lived in a house on the third floor. The only preparations we made were to have blackout curtains on all of the windows. Everything was very, very dark on the streets. No streetlights. I don't know what they did with the car lights. Turned them down in some way, I think.

REDMAN: I'm curious if there was a little bit of fear there along with that, or was that an eerie feeling that the streets were suddenly dark?

RUTHERFORD: Sure, there was a lot of fear, because we just never knew whether 00:24:00they were going to attack at any time.

REDMAN: Something that happened around the same time is that President Roosevelt issues an executive order to have the Japanese interned in relocation camps. Do you recall hearing about that order, and people in the Bay Area in particular being sent off to relocation camps?

RUTHERFORD: Yes, I do. I had one friend in school that was Japanese.

REDMAN: Do you recall her name?

RUTHERFORD: I can't remember that she was sent, but her [entire] family was [sent away].

REDMAN: Is that right? Okay. Another question--and you may not know anymore about this, but I understand a lot of Japanese students at UC Berkeley were either living at the International House or spent a lot of time at the International House. Do you happen to recall the International House at all 00:25:00during your time on campus?

RUTHERFORD: I didn't really have anything to do with the International House, so I don't quite know what was going on in there. We had a lot of students from Europe and other places.

REDMAN: It was clear, for some of your friends who may have been Japanese, that their families had to go away, even if they could somehow temporarily continue their education?

RUTHERFORD: Yes. I think this friend of mine stayed, and it was just her family that went away.

REDMAN: Okay, I see. The next question I'd like to ask is [about] when you obtained a job at the Kaiser Shipyards. Because eventually, in the course of your studies, shortly after the start of the war, Kaiser really gets ramped up and they're hiring lots of workers. They're doing a day shift, a swing shift, 00:26:00and a night shift. I understand you started working at the Kaiser Shipyards. Is that right?

RUTHERFORD: Not right away. I lived with this family I knew for one semester, and then I went into a boardinghouse at Cal. I started working at Alta Bates Hospital. I worked there for a year, in the evenings and on Sundays.

REDMAN: So for most of 1942, approximately?

RUTHERFORD: Yes, I was working at the hospital.

REDMAN: What were your recollections about what that work was like?

RUTHERFORD: Being I worked around in the evenings, I went around and gave patients a drink before they went to bed, or to sleep. Then on Sundays, I was 00:27:00the flower girl. I went from room to room, fixing flowers and throwing out dead ones. I enjoyed that. That was fun.

REDMAN: You got an opportunity to meet people, and from the sounds of it, brighten their day.

RUTHERFORD: I went to every room in the hospital.

REDMAN: Was that a good experience?

RUTHERFORD: Oh, very good.

REDMAN: What did you like about it?

RUTHERFORD: Pardon?

REDMAN: What did you like about that?

RUTHERFORD: Oh, just talking to the people, I think. I've always enjoyed gardening and flowers, so I enjoyed doing what I was doing.

REDMAN: If I could turn, just for a moment, back to campus, I understand that a lot of fraternities and sororities, soon after the war started--and I'm sure a lot of other student groups were this way as well--got involved in activities like the USO. Sorority girls might go to a USO dance, or things of that nature. Or selling war bonds. Can you talk about some of the activities on campus for 00:28:00the war effort, if you recall any?

RUTHERFORD: I didn't live in a sorority. I remember going to dances at the fraternity houses.

REDMAN: What were those like?

RUTHERFORD: Very nice. We weren't allowed to drink or anything. We just had nice dances and dinners and get-togethers.

REDMAN: You found other students on campus to be quite friendly, it sounds like.

RUTHERFORD: Oh, yes. Very.

REDMAN: You had mentioned that a lot of young men had left.

RUTHERFORD: Had to leave, yes.

REDMAN: Now, on the other hand, I understand that campus experienced somewhat of an influx of military students. So students maybe taking language classes, or math, or engineering classes for the war effort.

RUTHERFORD: Yes, there were some students in my classes that were in the military, taking engineering particularly, and mathematics.

REDMAN: Did you have any impressions, were the [military students] able to blend in with the rest of the class pretty well?

RUTHERFORD: Oh, yes. They probably were students at different colleges before they joined the service. Everybody just got along very well together.

REDMAN: Can you talk about what rationing may have been like on a college campus?

RUTHERFORD: Of course, we had our ration books. I was living in an apartment with several girls, so we had to buy the food that we could with our ration 00:30:00books. We never seemed to go hungry or anything, but I remember it took some planning in order to get through the week with what we had.

REDMAN: I see. Were there any things in particular that you found difficult to get a hold of?

RUTHERFORD: Gasoline was the main thing.

REDMAN: I see. How were you getting around--

RUTHERFORD: We walked everywhere.

REDMAN: You walked everywhere, okay.

RUTHERFORD: I lived four miles from the architecture building, and I had eight o'clock classes, and I walked the four miles before eight o'clock. That's after I had gotten home from the shipyards at about 1:30 in the morning.

REDMAN: Wow. That was a busy time in your life.

RUTHERFORD: It sure was.

REDMAN: I'd like to get into the shipyard in just a moment. Before I do that, 00:31:00however, I'd like to ask if, in some of these early architecture classes--I'm not an architect. I appreciate fine architecture, as many people do, but I'm wondering if, as you're learning these secrets behind design and building and planning and engineering a building, are you then observing campus in a different way? Are you observing Berkeley buildings and houses differently?

RUTHERFORD: Oh, yes.

REDMAN: Can you talk a little bit about what that's like? Berkeley has some nice architecture. There's a number of Bernard Maybeck houses, [for instance].

RUTHERFORD: Maybeck had done this one church that I went to several times. They had what they called Berkeley shingle. Most of the houses were a brown shingle. 00:32:00It wasn't really different from any other communities, I don't think.

REDMAN: But there was sort of this idea of a Berkeley style, of Northern California architecture.

RUTHERFORD: Yes, and of course Julia Morgan was living in Berkeley at that point.

REDMAN: Can you tell me more about Julia Morgan? She is another important Bay Area architect, and she's known for some major buildings, [in California]. She designed many really important buildings.

RUTHERFORD: Yes. What is it? The Berkeley City Women's Club, I think. I did meet her a number of times.

REDMAN: Is that right? How--

RUTHERFORD: We had a little fraternity called Alpha Alpha Gamma, just for students in art and architecture. She was at least fifty years old at that 00:33:00point, so she had been out of school a long time.

REDMAN: But by this point--

RUTHERFORD: She used to come to our meetings and talk to us.

REDMAN: What were your impressions of her as a person? What was her personality like?

RUTHERFORD: She just was very friendly and was very pleased that she could encourage the girls to go into architecture or the arts.

REDMAN: Can you talk about maybe what that would have been like to see this esteemed architect, who's also a woman, and then you, yourself, being a young woman who's still in the minority?

RUTHERFORD: Of course, in those days, she wasn't as well known as she is now. We didn't realize we were speaking to a very important person.

REDMAN: You may have been impressed and enthused by speaking to a woman architect, and someone who was already quite accomplished, but you had no idea, of course, what her rep--

RUTHERFORD: What she would do in the future. I don't know if she was working at the Hearst [Castle] at that time, or if she started that later. She wasn't well-known at that point.

REDMAN: Now, I understand a lot of students at UC Berkeley, in this era, their classes, because of the nature of war, their programs were shrunk or intensified to shorter calendar times. Was that the case with you, or did you stay on a normal, four-year track?

RUTHERFORD: No, I was on a three-semester year. We didn't have any time off except maybe Christmas, Thanksgiving. We just worked the whole time. We had 00:35:00three full semesters every year. I went through the full three years and graduated. I was barely twenty-one. I was twenty-one in about two weeks when I graduated from college.

REDMAN: It was quite an intensified program.

RUTHERFORD: People were younger. Then, of course, about two weeks after I graduated, I got married.

REDMAN: Let's turn back now for a moment to the shipyards. Can you tell me how you first learned that the shipyards were there, hiring young men and women?

RUTHERFORD: I can't remember how I learned about it. I just remember going down and applying for the job. I worked in the engineering department in one of the big buildings, and my job was to go out on the ships. They were mostly troop transports. If they had to make changes or do any other little things that needed drawings, I would go out on the ships and measure everything, and then go back to the engineering department and draw it up so that it could be made. I really learned a lot that helped me in architecture later on.

REDMAN: This sounds like really practical experience.

RUTHERFORD: It was very practical.

REDMAN: I'm sorry to ask you to break this down for me again, but can you go over that process one more time for me? You'd go physically down to where the ships were being constructed, and would someone who was actually working on assembling the ship point out a problem or an issue with the renderings as they'd been completed?

RUTHERFORD: That could happen. I'd go down and talk to somebody and see what they needed, and just work out the solution, and go back and draw it up so that the men could--

REDMAN: Fashion a solution. The photographs that I've seen of engineering rooms in shipyards are these rows of pretty large tables where you could lay out large--

RUTHERFORD: Yes, we had big drafting boards.

REDMAN: Can you tell me about what that would have been like as a work environment? Were there now a lot of women working in that department, or was it predominantly male?

RUTHERFORD: There were a few men and several older women. I can't remember that there were any as young as I was.

REDMAN: It's pretty interesting, then, to be a college student studying architecture, studying engineering and mathematics, and then working at the shipyards and applying those things as a young woman.

RUTHERFORD: Yes.

REDMAN: The impression that you've just given me is that there weren't many other students who were in a similar sort of job at the shipyard. Is that correct? There weren't many other students. You were maybe one of the younger engineers--

RUTHERFORD: This is what I'm wondering. I probably am one of the youngest Rosie the Riveters.

REDMAN: Okay, because you were--

RUTHERFORD: Because the other women that would be working would be maybe thirty or forty, fifty years old. There weren't many students working there as far as I know.

REDMAN: What do you remember about the people that you worked with in the engineering room? What were their personalities like? Were they pretty good architects and engineers?

RUTHERFORD: I remember my immediate boss was {John Corwin?}, and he was an illustrator. He drew comic strips. He was good at drawing and actually adapted his knowledge of drawing to whatever had to be done, I guess. But there were only a very few people in that office working at night. Maybe only about six.

REDMAN: That's an interesting thing, because there would have been a dayshift, a swing shift, and a night shift. Is that correct? By the time you're--

RUTHERFORD: I don't remember if they did have a night shift in the engineering department.

REDMAN: Can you tell me what time you would have arrived to work and what time you--

RUTHERFORD: 4:30, and I left at 12:30.

REDMAN: So 4:30 in the evening, and you left--

RUTHERFORD: At 12:30.

REDMAN: The wee hours of the morning.

RUTHERFORD: I was very lucky that, in Berkeley, just in my block, there was a lady that worked at the shipyards, so that I got good transportation. I just went back and forth with her. Or that would have been a big problem, because I didn't have a car. I couldn't have gotten gas. There weren't many streetcars or buses to take you down there. It was very easy for me to commute. It's probably 00:41:00fifteen miles.

REDMAN: I'm curious, too, the woman that you were commuting with, do you know what she did in the shipyard by any chance? Was she a welder?

RUTHERFORD: She was a secretary or something. I don't think she was in the construction part.

REDMAN: I see, okay.

RUTHERFORD: She was an older lady. She was, oh, I don't know, fifty or sixty.

REDMAN: A lot of people that worked at the shipyards, people who were welders or riveters, experienced--there was a huge influx of people to the Bay Area at the time for jobs. Richmond itself grows from, I believe, about 20,000 to 120,000, and there are a lot of people coming from all over the country.

RUTHERFORD: Oh, everywhere.

REDMAN: Including the South, where there were a lot of African Americans moving to the West Coast.

RUTHERFORD: That's when the African American people first came in to California, really. There were very many of them that lived in Richmond, and they stayed.

REDMAN: Did you have any impressions of all of these new people moving and working at the shipyard? Did that strike you at all as a new development, or was that something you didn't really notice at the time?

RUTHERFORD: I really didn't notice it that much. They all seemed to be nice people and were working hard and trying to find places to live. That was one problem. We all worked very hard.

REDMAN: One of the major accomplishments of the Kaiser Shipyards is how quickly they were able to produce a ship.

RUTHERFORD: It was amazing.

REDMAN: They absolutely prided themselves in how quickly all of this was coming together. Were there any special problems that would arise from trying to complete a task that large that quickly? Were there any engineering or architectural issues, or was it kind of building each ship, would they encounter similar sorts of problems?

RUTHERFORD: Of course, they had the blueprints of the ship that they were building, but sometimes they needed some extra thing or something wasn't working out quite right. That's what I'd have to do, to go and try and draw up what they needed.

REDMAN: Did you sort of see each one of these issues or adjustments to each ship 00:44:00as a sort of problem that you would then have to solve? Is that how you approached it? How did you--

RUTHERFORD: They were all problems that had to be solved. If they needed something different from the other ships or something, that's something that we would do.

REDMAN: One thing that some historians have talked about is that, early on, when women entered the workforce during World War Two, there was a little bit of resentment from the men. But the impression that I've gotten is that that resentment went away fairly quickly, and people learned to get along working and building ships.

RUTHERFORD: I never felt any of that.

REDMAN: You never felt like your male counterparts--

RUTHERFORD: The one story that always went around was--the ship had what they 00:45:00called a double bottom. It was an air space between the part that was in the water and where the ship was usable, and there was always welding going on everywhere. People would always say they've got to be careful and get out of the double bottoms before they seal it up. It was more of a joke. People would sometimes tell somebody they were going to be down in the double bottoms, to be sure they got out before it was sealed.

REDMAN: One of the questions I've asked people are how men and women interacted in the shipyards. One woman responded to me by saying, "Do you mean hanky-panky?"

RUTHERFORD: She said what?

REDMAN: She asked, "Do you mean hanky-panky?" Apparently, there were some relationships that were born in the shipyards, and some men and women would get together and be together. Did you witness any of that, or did you--

RUTHERFORD: I think I had boyfriends at school at that time. In fact, I met my husband about a year before I stopped working. I had a boyfriend. There wasn't any hanky-panky.

REDMAN: You're describing a very positive experience. I'm wondering, did you see anyone else that--were there any tensions between other groups of people? It sounds like a pretty good place to work, actually.

RUTHERFORD: I always felt everybody was very friendly. Everybody worked very 00:47:00hard. We were very conscious of the fact that there was a war on and we better do something to help [coughs]

REDMAN: Let me pause this. [Pause tape] I'd like to continue talking about the shipyards in a moment, but I'd like to jump back, if I may, and ask one question about a major architectural development in the Bay Area. Two important bridges were completed right as you would have started school. They would have been two brand-new bridges, and that's the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. As a student at UC Berkeley, studying architecture at that time, there was a lot of talk about the architectural significance of these two bridges. On the one hand, you had the Bay Bridge, which was the longest bridge 00:48:00that had been completed up to that point, and then you had this absolutely aesthetically gorgeous bridge, the Golden Gate. Can you talk a little bit about those bridges? Did that make any impression on you when you first arrived in the Bay Area?

RUTHERFORD: Of course, I'd only lived in Crockett, which was a short distance away, so I was familiar with the area.

REDMAN: Were you familiar with the fact that they were constructing these major--

RUTHERFORD: For several years, we watched the progress of them being built. Before that, as a child, we always had to go over by ferry to San Francisco. The bridges were completed, I think, in '38. By the time I went to college, they were in use, and we were able to get a streetcar in Berkeley, near the campus, 00:49:00and go right over the bridges to San Francisco, which made it very easy for us to go back and forth. Then another thing, my professor in my senior year in engineering had been one of the engineers that designed the bridge.

REDMAN: Which of the two bridges?

RUTHERFORD: This was the Oakland-San Francisco Bridge. For my senior project, we had to do all the calculations of designing the bridge. He was so proud of himself to think that he had helped with the construction of the bridge and all, so that he wanted us all to know just how he did it. It took us the whole semester.

REDMAN: So this was a pretty complex project?

RUTHERFORD: It might have been two semesters.

REDMAN: Do you recall his name, by chance?

RUTHERFORD: If I heard it--

REDMAN: It's right on the tip of your tongue. That's fine.

RUTHERFORD: If I heard it, I'd know, but I can't think right now.

REDMAN: I know we're then jumping back to your senior project. If you don't recall some of the details of this, that's fine. The eastern span of the Bay Bridge is a cantilever bridge. Then it meets Yerba Buena Island, and then it becomes a suspension bridge. From what I understand, those are basically two solutions to unique mathematical or engineering or architectural problems. How do you span--

RUTHERFORD: Span it.

REDMAN: Do you recall anything else about the significance of the Bay Bridge as 00:51:00an architecture student going over those numbers? Were you amazed by that achievement?

RUTHERFORD: I'm sure I was amazed by the achievement, and I was amazed at the amount of work that went into it. It was all cut and dry. They just knew what they were doing. It was funny. Years later, when they had the earthquake, one of the sections of the bridge--

REDMAN: The eastern span collapsed.

RUTHERFORD: Collapsed onto the lower one. My husband said to me, "See, you didn't do that section correctly."

REDMAN: He blamed you for that accident.

RUTHERFORD: Of course, at that point, the bridge had been built and everything. Said I didn't catch the fact that they didn't do that right.

REDMAN: Even by that time, the bridge had been modified, of course. The lower deck, as you described earlier, there was a streetcar. I believe the Key System? Is that correct?

RUTHERFORD: The Key System.

REDMAN: That eventually was removed for automobiles.

RUTHERFORD: Yes. I think the top deck was back and forth, and then downstairs below was the streetcar, and it might have been trucks on the lower level, too.

REDMAN: People have told me--this is obviously quite before my time--people have told me that if you took the Key System train, that you could visibly see the San Francisco Bay from the streetcars.

RUTHERFORD: Oh yes, definitely.

REDMAN: Can you tell me a little bit about what that view must have been like?

RUTHERFORD: We were up pretty high, so we were looking down on all this. I can 00:53:00remember seeing Yerba Buena Island. That had been the World's Fair just a few years before that. I could see the Port of Oakland and Alameda, and of course all of the skyline of San Francisco as you're going toward San Francisco. It was a good view.

REDMAN: It must have been a pretty interesting experience to have studied the bridge, to have gone over it before this intensive study, and then, knowing the details of the architecture and the inner workings of the bridge, to go over it again.

RUTHERFORD: I'm sure I appreciated it more than most people did, because I knew the work that went into it.

REDMAN: In terms of work, you mean not just the labor, but then also the 00:54:00architectural work.

RUTHERFORD: The architectural and engineering that went into it.

REDMAN: Which was pretty impressive for its era.

RUTHERFORD: Very impressive. I had never seen a big bridge like that being built before. I was very impressed by them.

REDMAN: With that, I'd like to change tapes if that's all right.

RUTHERFORD: I should tell you a little bit more about my later life.

REDMAN: That would be terrific. [I'm back with] Joyce Rutherford. This is our second tape together. I'm Sam Redman, and it is November 2011. This is our first session together. We've talked a little bit about what life was like on a day-to-day basis at the shipyards. Now I'd like to talk about the end of the war 00:55:00if that's all right. First, Germany announces that it surrendered, and the end of the war in Europe. But that, of course, didn't mean the end of the entire war. There was still the active Pacific theater. Did that give you a sense in any way that maybe the war was coming to an end?

RUTHERFORD: I'm sure it did, yes.

REDMAN: How many years did you end up working at the shipyard?

RUTHERFORD: Two full years. When I graduated from college in '44, I stopped working there and got married. Then I went with my husband to various parts of the country where he was stationed.

REDMAN: So he was in the military?

RUTHERFORD: Yes, he was in the--oh--

REDMAN: The Army, the Navy, the Marines?

RUTHERFORD: He was in the Navy Seabees [Seabees -- CB's -- "Construction Battalion"]

REDMAN: Oh, the Seabees. The construction battalion.

RUTHERFORD: He was in construction, too. He graduated from college as a landscape architecture, so he knew a lot about construction, too. We had a lot in common. We started our own business after the war and worked together for sixty-one years.

REDMAN: Wow. I'd love to get back to that in just a moment. Before that, though, I'd like to ask about, was working at the shipyard, doing engineering and architectural drafting, was that enough money to pay for your tuition?

RUTHERFORD: Definitely. I put myself through college completely. I didn't have any help from home.

REDMAN: That's a pretty amazing fact.

RUTHERFORD: Actually, I don't think I ever knew anybody else that did that. Everybody was getting help from home. But I had enough money to do it, so I did.

REDMAN: That's a pretty amazing thing. Can you tell me again how you first met your husband? You met him on campus, is that correct?

RUTHERFORD: I met him in the architecture department. He went to Columbia, and he had a professor there that came out to California to be a professor there during the war. This professor had lined up a date for us, and it took.

REDMAN: That's pretty impressive. That's pretty amazing. You graduated in '44. Had he already graduated by this time?

RUTHERFORD: He's six years older than I was. He had graduated before he went into the service.

REDMAN: He came out to Berkeley because of this professor?

RUTHERFORD: Yes. He'd come back from overseas. He'd been in the Aleutians. He came back to visit his professor. He wasn't going to school in Berkeley. Once the professor knew he was coming, he lined it up, and it lasted.

REDMAN: And it lasted. That's pretty amazing. That's pretty amazing. I'd like to talk about a few events towards the end of the war, but in particular, in 1944, there was a disaster at a place called Port Chicago.

RUTHERFORD: I remember it very well, because I felt it in Berkeley.

REDMAN: Can you tell me about that day? Whatever you remember.

RUTHERFORD: My roommates and I were in this apartment. Everything shook. The windows and the pictures on the walls all shook. We thought we were being bombed. Everybody was pretty concerned. My mother and dad were in Crockett, which is that much closer. My father was sure they were being bombed right close by. It was very scary at the time.

REDMAN: Then did you hear about the circumstances of that incident later on?

RUTHERFORD: Yes.

REDMAN: That it was predominantly African American sailors who had been loading the munitions, and the unsafe conditions?

RUTHERFORD: That was publicized a lot, because they were African American soldiers that were on the dangerous ship with all the bombs and so forth.

REDMAN: From what I understand, many people did not really know much about what had happened until later on. Is that correct?

RUTHERFORD: Yes.

REDMAN: The question that I'm wondering about is what it would feel like to have this feeling of maybe we're under attack. You can't turn on the television. You turn on the radio, and there's no news about it yet because it's confidential. 01:01:00It's all happening in a secret military facility. Not secret that it exists, but its activities are classified. Was that confusing to you that there was this explosion, disaster of some sort, but you couldn't learn--

RUTHERFORD: I can't remember how we found out what it was. I know it was a good while before we did. I know we all thought we were being attacked for quite a while.

REDMAN: I understand that at the shipyards, there was a sense of patriotism and unity and a feeling that they were contributing to the war effort. A lot of people were also very happy to have a job that was paying well compared to what they had experienced during the Great Depression. I'm wondering, though, if you ever witnessed any or saw any dissent against the war. Was there dissent against 01:02:00the war of people being against the war?

RUTHERFORD: No. No, I don't remember any of that. Everybody was working hard, and we thought we were doing something that was very necessary. I know my father was working hard even though it was in the sugar mill. He was contributing to part of what he was doing. My mother worked in a little children's daycare so that those mothers could work in the C&H sugar refinery.

REDMAN: That's interesting. I'd like to ask, then, about the end of the war. In 01:03:00particular, the dropping of the atomic bombs. The announcement of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then the surrender of Japan. Do you remember hearing about [that]?

RUTHERFORD: Oh, the very day. My husband had just gotten back from the Aleutians, and we were in Crockett. We heard about the bomb and the surrender of Japan and so forth.

REDMAN: What did you think about it at that time? All of those events. Was it a relief or--

RUTHERFORD: Actually, I felt so sorry for all the civilians that were killed, because we were told there were hundreds of thousands of women and children. I think I grieved over that, even though they were our enemies. It was just the 01:04:00time my husband was home on leave, but he had to go back again to Hawaii. He had been training for the invasion of Japan, but there wasn't actually an invasion, because the war ended.

REDMAN: I'm going to pause this for one moment. I'm sorry, Joyce. [Pause tape to fix audio] You had said at the end of the war, that your husband had felt that the decision to drop the atomic weapons had helped him avoid an invasion of Japan.

RUTHERFORD: He was going to Hawaii, and then he was going to go to the invasion of Japan. He had been trained in communications, so he knew he would go in on 01:05:00the first wave, and he knew it would be very dangerous. He probably wouldn't live through it. After the bomb dropped, then it ended everything, so he didn't get farther than Hawaii.

REDMAN: Did he ultimately, then, turn around and was discharged from the Navy and then--

RUTHERFORD: He was discharged from the Navy. I think the bomb dropped in August. I had my first child in September. He came home just after the baby was born.

REDMAN: A lot of women in your situation, who had been working during World War 01:06:00Two, they either felt compelled for their own personal reasons, or they felt pushed into leaving the labor force, into leaving their job. Obviously, at the Kaiser Shipyards, they started closing down the shipyards. They started eliminating some shifts of workers, and a lot of people got laid off at the end of the war. Was that the case with some of your friends, I imagine, that were still working at the shipyards towards the end?

RUTHERFORD: I can't remember. It didn't affect me, of course, because I had stopped working there a number of months before that, when I got married, because I traveled all over the United States at different camps.

REDMAN: With your husband.

RUTHERFORD: With my husband.

REDMAN: Would it have been an option for you, potentially, to get married and then stay at work back in the Bay Area while your husband went and trained? But you chose to travel with him.

RUTHERFORD: Travel with him. He insisted.

REDMAN: But that wasn't because he didn't want you working, it seems like, because the two of you ultimately would go into business together.

RUTHERFORD: [Right].

REDMAN: He encouraged you to work, it sounds like, but at that time, he wanted you--

RUTHERFORD: He wanted me to be with him wherever he--

REDMAN: As newlyweds.

RUTHERFORD: Because he had been in the service so long, they gave him the opportunity of going back to school for a little while. That's when he was training for the invasion of Japan. He was sent to Harvard. That was our first home, was in Harvard.

REDMAN: Cambridge, Massachusetts, okay. Let's jump ahead, then, to when he's discharged from the Navy and his service is over. He decides to start a 01:08:00business, is that correct? You two go into business.

RUTHERFORD: Yes. I was in Crockett with my new baby. When he came home, we went back east to Greenwich, Connecticut, where he had come from. His first job was working for the Boy Scouts of America in New York City--their office is there--designing their campsites all over the country. He worked there for a number of years until we started our own business. I had worked during the day. I'd work with him again at night, and we'd try and get our business going enough so that he could afford to stop working. That took us a number of years.

REDMAN: He was working, and then also the two of you together were trying to--

RUTHERFORD: To start our own business in town.

REDMAN: His degree was in landscape architecture, which then seems to translate perfectly into this job with the Boy Scouts. He's designing camp landscapes. You, on the other hand, seem to have been interested in houses from the very early--

RUTHERFORD: I was doing houses.

REDMAN: Can you talk about that a little bit?

RUTHERFORD: We lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, which is one of the wealthiest towns in the United States, so there were probably more architectural jobs available than other places. Most of the work I did was quite large homes. In 01:10:00fact, the last one I did was 15,000 square feet. They were all maybe six to eight thousand square feet. They were all good-sized homes. For most of the time, I did everything myself, and then later on I hired a few people to help.

REDMAN: Let me ask, then, when your husband was away doing work with the Boy Scouts, and then you're at home with the child, and also starting your business--I'm sorry, I made a presumption there. I presumed that you were doing architectural rendering at home. Is that correct?

RUTHERFORD: Yes, but I also did almost all his drawings, too.

REDMAN: Oh, is that right? Okay.

RUTHERFORD: When he'd come home at night, he didn't have time to do everything. 01:11:00He had to talk to his clients at night, or Saturdays. We were very busy.

REDMAN: From the sounds of it, yes, absolutely.

RUTHERFORD: In two years, I had a little girl. First child was a boy. I just kept working at home all the time they were growing up.

REDMAN: What were their names?

RUTHERFORD: Bill and Joan. Then later on, I had two more boys, Jack and Jeff. I had a room adjacent to the kitchen and their playroom and everything, so I could just sit there and work as they were playing. It worked out so easy. So many people were amazed that I could work with four kids. If they needed anything, I 01:12:00was right there. Stop for a few minutes until they got started. Actually, our house seemed to be the hubbub of the neighborhood. I think more kids were at our house than any other place.

REDMAN: So a lot of the kids in the neighborhood would come over?

RUTHERFORD: Come and play. I'd just keep working, with one eye, one ear, listening to what they were--going on.

REDMAN: In case there was any sort of accident or someone needed your help or anything like that. The next question I'd like to ask--because we talked about this very practical experience of learning architecture at UC Berkeley and studying the bridges, and then also some of the inspiration from Julia Morgan and other architects, and I'm sure many of your architecture professors. Then, 01:13:00on the other hand, there's this practical experience at the shipyard that I'm sure not many other students are really getting this--

RUTHERFORD: That had that experience.

REDMAN: Right. So this really on-the-ground experience. I'm sure, to some extent, you were learning from the other architects in different settings. Can you tell me, then, when you're first starting your business with your husband, those influences of those experiences, can you sort of explain--I don't mean to say if one outweighed the other, but your experience as a Rosie working in the shipyards, it sounds to me like that really directly helped you in your architectural--

RUTHERFORD: It definitely did. The fact that I worked at home because of my children, I had to make these decisions myself, whereas if I was working in a large architectural office, I could ask somebody else how to do things. I always 01:14:00felt I had an advantage by being a woman. My lady clients liked speaking to me better than men clients because I knew so much more about homes. It just all worked out just fine. My husband and I very often worked on the same project. I'd design the house, then he'd do the landscaping on it.

REDMAN: Oh, wow. All right. That's very interesting.

RUTHERFORD: That worked out very easily.

REDMAN: You were an architect for how many years?

RUTHERFORD: Sixty-one.

REDMAN: You retired at what age?

RUTHERFORD: Seventy-nine. I started when I was eighteen, when I first went to 01:15:00college. That was a good, long time.

REDMAN: A good, long time.

RUTHERFORD: We kept working. My husband was eighty-eight, and he was still helping people--consulting. We had done several big projects around the New York City area, like Sterling Forest Gardens and the Storm King Art Center. Those were both from scratch. The Storm King Art Center was the gravel pit for the New York turnpike, so it was just devastation. We turned it into this sculpture garden. I did all of the architecture and he did all the landscaping. We were 01:16:00there--oh, I can't remember how many years. Something like forty. They invited me to their--

REDMAN: Oh, wow.

RUTHERFORD: Dinner.

REDMAN: I'd like to hand you this for a moment. If you wouldn't mind, can you tell me about a couple of things? First I'd like to ask you, do you call yourself a Rosie the Riveter?

RUTHERFORD: Not very often. I don't think very many people know about Rosie the Riveter.

REDMAN: What does it mean to be a Rosie the Riveter?

RUTHERFORD: It just means that you were working in the shipyards. It doesn't mean that you were a riveter.

REDMAN: For many women, there's a sense of pride in that--

RUTHERFORD: Oh, definitely.

REDMAN: In that work. Do you share in that? Even though you weren't riveting, you took part in that process.

RUTHERFORD: Actually, I don't know any Rosie the Riveters.

REDMAN: A lot of Wendy the Welders, maybe?

RUTHERFORD: I think I've spoken to a couple of them years ago, at some meeting or something, but I don't really know any.

REDMAN: Would you mind telling me what that pamphlet is in your hand there?

RUTHERFORD: This was given to me the other day when I was at the Richmond Shipyards. It must have been a picture taken during the war. I know that's me. I can't remember having my picture taken.

REDMAN: Could you turn that out towards me and point to where--oh, that's great.

RUTHERFORD: Right there.

REDMAN: All right. With that, I'd like to ask if there are any other things that you remember about World War Two that are particularly powerful that you'd like to share. We've covered a lot of material today.

RUTHERFORD: We did.

REDMAN: A lot about your story. Thinking back on your life as a whole, back to the war years--

RUTHERFORD: One thing that concerned us was the fact that both my sets of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins were in England, and we were concerned about their safety all that time. They were being bombed. They lived just outside of London. My aunt and her two young children moved to the other 01:19:00side of England to get away from it, but the others stayed right there.

REDMAN: Did you correspond with them during the war?

RUTHERFORD: Oh, yes. Yes. The mail came through some way or other.

REDMAN: With that, I'd like to say thank you so much for taking the time to sit down with me today.

RUTHERFORD: That's okay. I enjoyed it, too.

REDMAN: Terrific.

[End of Interview]