Henry Kaiser: Wartime Producer and Industrial Hero

Thanks to men such as Kaiser and their extraordinary industrial capabilities, the United States was able to outproduce its WWII enemies effectively.

On June 4, 1942, the Japanese and American navies met in fierce combat near Midway Atoll. The fighting lasted for five days, and it ended with a resounding American victory. In total, approximately three thousand Japanese sailors and airmen were killed. The U.S. pilots were able to destroy four Japanese aircraft carriers, obliterating the bulk of the fearsome Japanese navy and turning the tide of the war in the Pacific theater.^¹ For the next three years, Japan desperately tried to reassemble its once-vast navy. During that time, the Japanese produced six new aircraft carriers. In the same time frame, the United States produced seventeen.²

In fact, American mills, plants, and factories had been pumping out much-needed military materiel and equipment at an unprecedented rate. Over the course of the war, U.S. corporations produced 650,000 jeeps, 297,000 aircraft, 86,000 tanks, and 27 aircraft carriers.³

America’s wartime industrialization was rapid. The country’s efficient, coordinated production of military equipment during WWII was driven by a conscious effort by policy makers in Washington, prominent industrialists, and men and women from all over the country who flocked to work in factories to contribute to the war effort. Children’s toy companies began to produce compasses, nail companies made rifle cartridge clips, and automobile companies transitioned into airplane production.⁴

One prominent industrialist at the time was Henry J. Kaiser, now known as “the father of modern shipbuilding.”⁵ Kaiser—along with many others—helped turn the United States into a formidable power that would ultimately defeat its enemies and restore peace in many parts of the world.

The Life of Henry J. Kaiser

Heinrich Kaiser was born in Sprout Brook, New York, on May 9, 1882. His father, Frank Kaiser, had been a shoemaker in Germany before immigrating to the United States in 1872. Once in America, Frank was taken in by the Yops family, German immigrants, and he soon fell in love with Mary Yops. The couple married in 1873. Nine years later, Mary gave birth to her fourth child (and her first son), Heinrich Kaiser. Many years later, he would change his first name add a middle name, and become Henry John Kaiser.⁶

Kaiser’s parents instilled the values of hard work and perseverance early on. His father worked as a tradesman, and the family struggled to stay afloat financially. In 1889, the Kaisers moved from Sprout Brook to Whitesboro, a more prosperous New York town. Despite the family’s increased economic opportunities, Kaiser had to leave school at age thirteen to help support his family. His first job was in a dry-goods store; he later left to work in photography studios. Kaiser rose through the ranks, quickly becoming a traveling camera salesman. Eventually, he was able to purchase his own photography store. His business expanded; within four years, he owned five stores.⁷

Kaiser gave up his photography business when his future father-in-law demanded that Kaiser increase his income before getting married. He moved westward from city to city and job to job, building his commercial skills and developing expertise in trade and business. Kaiser worked mainly in construction-related industries; after moving to Spokane, Washington, he worked as a salesman at a hardware store before becoming a civil engineering project manager.⁸ His specialties were sales, construction, and large-scale engineering projects. Kaiser was known for working harder than any of his coworkers and for staying in the office for extremely long hours; reportedly, he regularly worked twelve to fifteen hours a day. Later in his career, he worked as many as twenty.⁹

In 1914, the company Kaiser was working for went bankrupt in the middle of a road construction project. Kaiser took over the project himself, and the Henry J. Kaiser Company was born.¹⁰

As a result of Kaiser’s clever business strategies and excellent risk management, his new company grew quickly. Most of its contracts were with government clients, and Kaiser knew that he would have to establish a good reputation to win more commissions. Government contracts involved a fixed-price agreement, so whether Kaiser earned a profit or lost money was largely dependent on his company’s ability to complete projects quickly, affordably, and effectively.¹¹

Kaiser also had a knack for finding able, productive men to join his companies. Because his business ventures were covering an increasingly wide expanse of the continent, he needed many people he could trust to do their jobs properly. He built a “team of construction foremen and engineers who would be part of his closest circle of leadership for decades”; and over time, he and his team developed an outstanding reputation.¹²

After years of building infrastructure all over the Pacific Northwest, Kaiser eventually decided to settle his company’s headquarters in Oakland, California. In 1931, the Henry J. Kaiser Company, as a part of a six-company consortium, won the bid to build what is now known as the Hoover Dam. The project was a Herculean undertaking, but the dam was finished two years ahead of schedule. By then, Kaiser had established himself as one of America’s leading industrialists.¹³

Kaiser’s business acumen extended to multiple realms. For example, he established a corporate health-care system (which still exists under the name Kaiser Permanente). Kaiser had noticed that his employees were missing work due to inadequate health care, and he realized that it would be in his interest to offer better medical care to his workers. With the aid of physician Dr. Sidney Garfield, Kaiser created a private hospital network for his employees, who paid a fixed monthly rate for any health care they required.¹⁴ Through this system, Kaiser was able to align his business incentives with the needs of his workers to create a safer workplace.

In the early 1940s, Kaiser turned his attention to helping America prepare for its impending entry into the war. According to the Naval History and Heritage Command, Kaiser was “considered by many to be the most influential civilian to help America win the war.”¹⁵ His extensive business ventures before and during the conflict—ranging from electricity that his dams generated to the concrete that his mills manufactured—helped produce the physical materials needed to achieve victory. His most significant contribution to the war effort, however, was the massive number of “Liberty ships” his company built at breakneck speed.

The Liberty ship was a “standard design cargo ship” that could transport thousands of jeeps or hundreds of tanks. In 1941, the U.S. Maritime Commission allocated significant resources to building ships to expand naval capabilities. The first Liberty ships were produced just a few months before the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, which would spur the official U.S. entry into the war. These first ships took almost two hundred days to build. Kaiser was later able to shorten the production time to just fourteen days.¹⁶

One method that Kaiser’s shipyard factories employed to maximize efficiency was building sections of a ship separately and then piecing them together at the end of the process. These ship sections, instead of being riveted together, were welded, which took far less time and expertise.¹⁷ Now, because each ship section was built separately, each worker only had to learn how to build his section rather than the entire building process.¹⁸ This system took advantage of the principle of division of labor, which increases economic output by enabling each worker to focus on perfecting a specialized task. In total, Kaiser’s shipyards produced more than 1,490 ships, amounting to “27 percent of all ships ordered by the U.S. Maritime Commission” during the war.¹⁹

Kaiser’s industrial efficiency was characterized by speed and an eagerness to mobilize. It was no easy task to convert America’s peacetime economy into an efficient wartime machine, but Kaiser was able to integrate his supply chain systems to optimize production of various military equipment and supplies. For example, when his shipyards began to use steel faster than they could get it, Kaiser set up a new steel mill.²⁰ He was also incredibly creative. Noticing that it took a lot of time to train new workers to “tightrope” walk along narrow steel beams, Kaiser hired ballet dancers to do the job instead.²¹

Kaiser’s efforts during WWII did not go unrecognized. The nation adored him, and the American public even christened him the “miracle man.”²² Newspapers and magazines all over the country published articles about him, and President Roosevelt even considered naming Kaiser as his running mate in the 1944 presidential election.²³

Kaiser’s Legacy

Kaiser’s early entrepreneurship and his subsequent contributions to the war effort are a testament to his commitment to productivity. He deserves to be remembered as a hero who came to America’s—and the free world’s—rescue in a time of great need. His enterprising spirit, knowledge of business, and ability to overcome tremendous challenges helped save countless lives.

Of course, many other men and women of ability greatly helped the American cause during WWII, such as William “Big Bill” Knudsen, the head of President Roosevelt’s National Defense Advisory Commission; and Charles E. Wilson, the president of General Motors and executive vice chairman of the War Production Board.²⁴

Thanks to men such as Kaiser and their extraordinary industrial capabilities, the United States was able to outproduce its enemies so effectively. Kaiser’s legacy is a lasting testament to the power of ingenuity, determination, and industry. WWII was won not only on battlefields and oceans across the globe but also in the factories, shipyards, and assembly lines across America and other Allied countries. By harnessing the full potential of industry, men such as Kaiser demonstrated that rationality, productiveness, and inventiveness shape the course of history.

1. “The Battle of Midway,” National WWII Museum, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/battle-midway.

2. Ken Burns, “War Production,” Public Broadcasting Service, https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-war/war-production.

3. “The Home Front by the Numbers,” National WWII Museum, https://www.nationalww2museum.org/home-front-numbers.

4. David Vergun, “During WWII, Industries Transitioned from Peacetime to Wartime Production,” U.S. Department of Defense, March 27, 2020, https://www.defense.gov/News/Feature-Stories/story/Article/2128446/during-wwii-industries-transitioned-from-peacetime-to-wartime-production/.

5. Paul J. Marcello, “Henry J. Kaiser (T-AO-187),” Naval History and Heritage Command, December 2, 2015, https://www.history.navy.mil/research/histories/ship-histories/danfs/h/henry-j--kaiser--t-ao-187-.html.

6. Tim Schanetzky, “Henry J. Kaiser,” Immigrant Entrepreneurship, June 8, 2011, https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entries/henry-j-kaiser.

7. Schanetzky, “Henry J. Kaiser.”

8. Schanetzky, “Henry J. Kaiser.”

9. Gary Hoover, “Henry J. Kaiser: California Dreamer and Workers’ Friend (An American Original),” Profectus Magazine, May 29, 2024, https://profectusmag.com/american-original-henry-j-kaiser.

10. Schanetzky, “Henry J. Kaiser.”

11. In a free society, government expenditures unrelated to the protection of individual rights are improper and immoral. This raises important questions regarding the morality of taking on government-sponsored infrastructure projects funded by taxpayer dollars. On one hand, building infrastructure is not a proper function of government in a free society, and Kaiser’s involvement in these projects might be seen as immoral. On the other hand, it is not his fault that the American government overstepped its role. In addition, if Kaiser had not won the bids for the government projects, someone else would have been chosen (and would possibly have done a worse job, resulting in needless waste of taxpayer money). In this sense, Kaiser simply worked within the unjust system that was already in place.

12. Schanetzky, “Henry J. Kaiser.”

13. Schanetzky, “Henry J. Kaiser.”

14. Hoover, “Henry J. Kaiser.”

15. Marcello, “Henry J. Kaiser (T-AO-187).”

16. Marcello, “Henry J. Kaiser (T-AO-187).”

17. Dwight Jon Zimmerman, “Henry J. Kaiser and the Liberty Ships,” DefenseMediaNetwork, June 24, 2021, https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/henry-j-kaiser-and-the-liberty-ships/#:~:text=Kaiser%20adapted%20mass%20production%20techniques,welded%20together%20instead%20of%20riveted.

18. John H. Lienhard, “Liberty Ships,” The Engines of Our Ingenuity, Episode 1525, https://engines.egr.uh.edu/episode/1525.

19. Zimmerman, “Henry J. Kaiser and the Liberty Ships.”

20. Lienhard, “Liberty Ships.”

21. Lienhard, “Liberty Ships.”

22. Marcello, “Henry J. Kaiser (T-AO-187).”

23. Schanetzky, “Henry J. Kaiser.”

24. Leslie J. Allen, “Company Chief Puts Country over Self during WWII,” Military.com, https://www.military.com/veteran-jobs/career-advice/military-transition/a-company-chief-puts-country-over-self.html; Alden Whitman, “Charles E. Wilson of G.E. Dies; Mobilized Industry in 2 Wars,” New York Times, January 4, 1972, https://www.nytimes.com/1972/01/04/archives/charles-e-wilson-of-ge-dies-mobilized-industry-in-2-wars-charles-e.html.