War Work At Boeing

Date: 1944 to 1945
Location: Seattle, Washington USA

In 1943-44 school year, Neva LaChance was teaching 5th-8th graders at the school in Turton. Her friend, Gladys "Dolly" Steffes had the Turton 1st through 4th graders. World War II was at its height and the nation was in desperate need of B-29 bombers.Neva and her friend Dolly were considering working for the war effort.

Neva's brother Dennis was in the Army Air Force stationed near Seattle. Dolly had two teacher friends from North Dakota who were sure they could all stay at their aunt's house in Seattle and work in the Boeing Aircraft plant. So after school was out, off they went. First to North Dakota to join the other teachers, then on a troop train through the country. In Seattle, the aunt said two could stay and sleep on the floor but Neva and Dolly had to find other arrangements. The only room they found had windows that opened to the street which was packed with soldiers. The next morning Neva's brother Dennis LaChance came from the base and moved them to the women's housing by the Boeing plant in Renton, a few miles southeast of Seattle. Plant work at Renton was mostly "Rosie the Riveter" type and Neva's teacher friends wanted office work. So each day they rode a packed bus downtown to 1st Street in Seattle and went to their underground jobs at Boeing.

Neva cut blueprints. The earliest B-29s were built before testing was finished, so the army allowed ongoing modifications that were sent to Wichita, Kansas for production. The need for updated blueprints was constant and Neva sliced up and packaged reams of blueprints all summer. "At first I thought I would go crazy because the place I worked was deep underground for security, but it turned out to be fun and I was good at it," Neva said. During the summer, Den would come to see them on Sundays.

One day they were invited to Bainbridge Island for dinner with an old family friend, Chris Lunders. Chris had married and was living in a house that had been owned by Japanese-Americans who were in the camps. The only way to reach the island was a ferry on the Puget Sound, which was worrysome for a South Dakota girl who couldn't swim. "Den said 'Don't look down! Just look out there at the horizon,' and I was just fine," Neva recalled.The other teachers liked Seattle and decided to stay. Neva and Dolly had to go back to Turton in the fall; there was no one else to teach during the war years and Neva was sure she wanted to teach. Later, Dolly returned to Seattle to live. Chris Lunder's husband died and she moved back to Huron, South Dakota where she remarried.

The B-29 Superfortress changed the war. By the time production terminated in 1946, 3,970 B-29s were built, 2,766 at Boeing facilities. In Wichita, Kansas, farmhands, housewives and shopkeepers built Superfortresses on 10-hour-shifts, day and night. During March and April 1944, the intensive effort to get the first B-29s ready for overseas service became known as the "Battle of Kansas." The huge bombers were used in the Pacific theater because they were suited to long-range flights and had pressurized cabins. As many as 1,000 Superfortresses at a time bombed Tokyo, destroying large parts of the city. Finally, on Aug. 6, 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the world's first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later a second B-29, Bockscar, dropped another atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Shortly thereafter, Japan surrendered.

--Robin Rainford, based on interviews with Neva LaChance 2002