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DuPont had to hire over 50,000 people but the War Manpower Board dictated where you could recruit. During the war, you just couldn’t go over to the West coast and recruit people from the shipyards or from Boeing over there. So a lot of recruitment was done down South.
In the 1940s, the South wasn’t highly industrialized and was prime territory for recruiting labor. That’s why so many Southerners live here. They were offered a paying job and given a railroad ticket.
I have to always kind of laugh because the trains came through Pasco, where the railroad station was located, about 2:00 in the morning. I’m sure if it’d come by during daylight hours they wouldn’t have bothered to get off the train. The recruiting posters lured people to come to “the evergreen state of Washington, sparkling rivers, snow capped peaks, wonderful fishing and hunting.” But what do you find? A desert with tumbleweed and jackrabbits. The new recruits arrived in the dark of the night and were given a place to sleep. In the morning they went through employment, were put on a bus and driven the fifty-odd miles from Pasco. What a shock when they ride past miles of empty desert and arrive at this huge construction camp at the old Hanford town site.
STEVE BUCKINGHAM, HANFORD
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