World War II Defense Industries

Historians argue about the extent of the changes wrought on the American West by World War II. Some historians, like Gerald Nash, contend that the war brought profound economic and social transformation to the West. In fact, Nash proposed that few events in the history of the region changed it as much as the growth in population and industry between 1940 and 1945. Others, however, maintain that the West's, particularly California's, transformation grew out of long-term economic and population trends which began shortly after 1900. Still another argues that the impact of the war carried with it greater and longer-lasting social and cultural adjustments than it did economic transformations. Another group suggests that the urban experience differs significantly from that of the rural areas of the West, and that even the urban change tended to be transitory or uneven. Whether one subscribes to the notion that World War II profoundly changed the West or that it simply accel erated a transformation which was well underway, historians acknowledge that the war, for better or worse, permanently or temporarily, did influence the history and progress of the American West.

Long before World War II, the federal government played an important role in fostering the development of the West, and the war enlarged its role to unprecedented levels. The military needed to expand its number of camps, depots, and bases to meet the training, housing, and supply demands of the war effort. Between 1941 and 1945 the government spent some $70 billion in the states along the Pacific Coast, the Southwest, and the Mountain West. Forty billion [Page 701]dollars alone were earmarked for wartime supply contracts and the construction of military and industrial facilities related to the war effort. The Pacific Coast states gained the most from the wartime boom, and none more so than California. Of the $40 billion, California alone received $19 billion in federal monies for building manufacturing plants and military bases and the fulfillment of defense orders. The government lavished a total of $35 billion on the Golden State, a tenth of the nation's total, in the 1940–1946 period and $8.5 billion in 1945 alone. By contrast, Colorado garnered $360 million in federal contracts during the war, a substantial amount for the state, but paltry compared to those allotted to the states on the Pacific Coast.

Several factors came together to attract federal dollars. War in the Pacific caused the nation to face westward. From a logistical standpoint, it made sense to fight and supply the war against Japan from the Pacific Coast. In addition, the military worried that the industrial northeast might be vulnerable to foreign attack. Distributing defense industry to the interior and to the Far West could prove an important safeguard. The West also offered milder and drier climates, isolation, and open space for the construction of military bases and industrial plants. While much of the West remained a region which supplied raw materials before World War II, and continued to do so during the war, California's burgeoning capacity for industrial output captured the attention of Washington, DC. Hard-driving western entrepreneurs garnered lucrative government deals, but California's more developed economy also played a role in attracting and fulfilling war supply contracts.

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