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Newspaper
Cedar Rapids Gazette
Location
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, United States of America
Date
Dec 09, 2001
Page
10
Cedar Rapids area industries shifted production for World War II with firms like Century Engineering and Collins Radio adopting new methods. Women filled vacancies, earning higher wages and entering skilled roles on assembly lines and in machine shops, while community drives and volunteer boards supported the home front.
During World War II Collins Radio in Cedar Rapids expanded from 150 workers to 3000 by August 1945. Sales rose from 2.2 million in 1941 to 43.5 million in 1945 as the firm produced Navy gear including a high power long range transmitter. Women filled jobs, 48 hour weeks for Navy contracts, and company life centered on the Collins Column.
In Cedar Rapids Century Engineering Co expanded from oil heating to war production in 1942 under E J Lattner. The plant made 100,000 aerial bomb fuses monthly and 1.9 million carburetor parts for B-29s, with 65 percent of the 900 workers being women. After wartime demand fell in August 1945, 570 women and 130 men were dismissed as the company reconverted to peacetime production.
Iowa Manufacturing Co. and its portable One Piece Outfit supplied 34 ton rock crushing units used on Burma Road and Lingayen Gulf. The Spirit of Cedar Rapids honored Louis M. Parks, the first employee lost in action. The Army Navy E award followed, cementing Cedar Rapids as a global supplier of rock crushing and road construction gear.
In Cedar Rapids June 1944 workers recall Aurellio Tassone, a U S Navy Seabee, using a LaPlant-Choate bulldozer to smash a Japanese pillbox on Treasury Island. The plant produced about 30 000 bulldozers for the war, boosted sales from 2 5 million in 1940 to 13 1 million by 1943, and trained women for non essential war work as men went to service.
A wartime recruitment ad from The Gazette seeks housewives to work shifts 9 AM to 4 PM at Wilson & Co in Cedar Rapids Iowa. No experience required and positions support feeding service members. Wilson & Co was the region’s largest employer with about 2,500 workers at the war’s start.
Dale Kueter profiles John Nyquist, a 1941 University of Illinois graduate who joined Collins Radio in Cedar Rapids. He operated lathes, led model shop work for Art Collins, helped develop a 12 frequency high‑frequency radio for Navy ships and B 29 bombers, and retired in 1971 as senior vice president after wartime contracts and postwar orders.
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