The Story of a Real-Life “Rosie the Riveter”
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2026
⏱️ 38 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, before World War II, factory work remained largely closed off to American women. That changed after the attack on Attack on Pearl Harbor, when millions of men shipped overseas to fight and wartime production created an urgent need for workers in America’s factories and shipyards. Millions of women stepped into industrial jobs across the country, and “Rosie the Riveter” became the public symbol of their labor and sacrifice.
Milka Bamond, a real-life Rosie the Riveter, shares her story of service on the home front during the war. We’d like to thank the Atlanta History Center for allowing us access to this audio, originally recorded as part of its Veterans History Project.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.4 | This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories, and we tell stories about everything here on this show. |
| 0:20.7 | And our favorite |
| 0:21.4 | thing to talk about is American history. And up next, we'll be hearing from an actual World War |
| 0:27.8 | 2, Rosie the Riveter, Milka Bayman. She tells her early life story and details her World War II |
| 0:34.7 | experience as a riveter in airplane factories. She also chronicles her |
| 0:39.3 | post-war experiences and describes being part of the Rosie the Riveter Coalition. Here's Milka. |
| 0:46.9 | Well, my family is really tiny. I was born in Fairmont, West Virginia, a child of an |
| 0:53.2 | illiterate co-miner who lost his life when I was six months |
| 0:56.8 | old, so I never got to know my father. |
| 0:59.6 | After that, my mother was fortunate enough to have someone send her a train fare so she could |
| 1:04.4 | come to Detroit. |
| 1:05.9 | And then her life started all over again. |
| 1:08.1 | She had a very, very harsh background in a part of Europe that |
| 1:12.6 | was not developing very well, living very, almost in a primitive way. So I heard all those |
| 1:19.6 | stories and I knew that even though it was an effort to come to America because I don't |
| 1:25.8 | think that anyone can leave their homeland |
| 1:28.3 | without a wrenching feeling of you're leaving everything behind, everything that who you are, |
| 1:34.3 | everybody who is responsible for your being on the planet. |
| 1:38.3 | But whatever the reason and however they got here, I'm very grateful. |
| 1:43.3 | And I think because I knew of their hardships that it gave me a special feeling, |
... |
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