About Kaiser Permanente | Heritage

September 14, 2007

Kaiser Permanente hosts 'Henry J. Kaiser: Think Big' Exhibit at Home Front Festival

How Kaiser Permanente helped shaped the World War II Home Front will be featured this month at a heritage festival and through two television documentaries to be aired in California.

Part of Kaiser Permanente’s World War II legacy has been preserved in the Rosie the Riveter/ World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, Calif. Those sites will host a "Home Front Festival By the Bay" on Sept. 28-29 that will feature numerous examples of Kaiser Permanente cofounder Henry J. Kaiser's indelible imprint on the World War II home front.

The festival will feature a version of the "Henry J. Kaiser: Think Big" exhibit that belongs to the Oakland Museum of California. The National Park historic sites include Kaiser Shipyard No.3, Kaiser Permanente's Richmond Field Hospital, and a federally financed Kaiser Child Care Center. The festival also will feature a "Launch of the National Park" at 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29, in Shipyard No. 3.

Kaiser's shipyards in Richmond built 747 ships for the war effort during World War II. Richmond's population jumped from 23,000 in 1941 to 100,000 in 1943, largely because of the influx of 90,000 people drawn to work in Kaiser's shipyards, according to the national historic site. With full medical care, housing, day care and 24-hour meal service, it was a model of efficiency and the forerunner of Kaiser Permanente.

The Rosie the Riveter Trust is dedicated to preserving the Home Front story as a non-profit community partner with the National Park. Its goals are to develop the national historic site’s visitor center in the historic Ford assembly plant, preserve and interpret historic buildings/structures in the area, improve visitor access to Shipyard No. 3, preserve and interpret the World War II child care centers, and collect and display stories and artifacts of Home Front participants. An invitation-only event that weekend will help raise funds for the trust. Kaiser Permanente is sponsoring both the Home Front Festival and the fund-raising event that weekend.

During the same weekend, public television station KQED Channel 9 in San Francisco will air two documentaries featuring Kaiser's home front efforts. "California At War" is an hour-long documentary produced by KCET in Los Angeles that focuses on how World War II changed California, and how California changed World War II. It will air on KQED Channel 9 in San Francisco at 3 p.m. on Sept. 22. Check local listings for other air dates.

KQED also plans this month to re-air a 30-minute program about the Kaiser Richmond Shipyards. The show's host, Huell Hauser, notes that the shipyard featured "full medical care, housing, day care and 24 hour meals" [a] model of efficiency and the forerunner of Kaiser Permanente." That show will air at 2 p.m. Friday, Sept. 28, and 3 p.m. Friday, Oct. 26, both on KQED.

For more information about the Home Front Festival, visit the festival’s website.

Read more about Kaiser Permanente’s history in the Heritage section of the KP News Center.