![]() The training imperative for fighting a world war was the single most important factor in establishing new air bases in the U.S. Some also went to work as aircraft mechanics and in other aeronautical service capacities that had been theretofore essentially a province of men. They really did a difficult job in a crisis situation." These women worked in warehouse jobs that would have been filled by men before the war but, in the crisis when "man" power was at a premium, they moved into ever more nontraditional areas of employment. I had one other man and all the rest of them were women, and out in the warehouses there were about eight or nine men and forty women. ![]() I sat there in my supply job as just about the lone male in my particular unit. He commented, "Thank God for all the women we had working there. ![]() Van Leeuwen, a stock clerk at the field in 1942 who later became Hill's head of Materiel Management, recalled that by late December 1941 the airfield suddenly had "train loads of material that started pouring in and the warehouses weren't even close to being finished." The Army Air Forces built storage facilities as quickly as possible, and the workers at Hill Field began to organize their logistical efforts Van Leeuwen suggested that chaos was the standard order of the base until well into 1942, but gradually structure was imposed and the resupply mission began to be effectively fulfilled. ![]() For some fifteen months after the beginning of World War II, personnel at Hill were mostly involved in supplying units in the Pacific and organizing for repair responsibilities. After years of planning involving military and other federal government officials, civic leaders, and the local business community, Hill Field became operational on November 7, 1940.13 The installation expanded slowly at first, but after Pearl Harbor it became a major supply facility servicing the West Coast. ![]()
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