Chapter 7: The Sleeping Giant Stirs

The radio crackled with static in the corner of Mulligan's Bar, its voice competing with the clink of glasses and the low murmur of men who had learned to speak quietly about their hopes. James Sullivan hunched over his beer—his second of the evening, a luxury he could barely afford after eighteen months of unemployment—and tried to focus on the familiar voice emerging from the wooden cabinet.

It was December 29, 1940, and President Roosevelt was delivering another of his fireside chats. But this one felt different. The men scattered across Mulligan's worn barstools weren't just half-listening while they nursed their drinks and shared rumors about work. Tonight, they were leaning in.

"Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now," Roosevelt's voice carried across the smoky room.

James glanced around the bar, reading the faces of men he'd known for years. Auto workers, mostly, from the plants that had been running sporadically or not at all since the economy had crashed and never quite recovered. Men who'd been told that recovery was coming, that prosperity was around the corner, that their skills would be needed again. Men who'd been waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

At the bar's far end, Mickey O'Brien—laid off from River Rouge two years ago—set down his glass harder than necessary. "Here we go again," he muttered. "Another speech about how we're all gonna be heroes."

But Frank Kowalski, who'd been working odd construction jobs since losing his spot at Briggs Manufacturing, shushed him with a raised hand. "Listen," he said. "This ain't the same old thing."

Roosevelt's voice grew stronger, more insistent: "We must be the great arsenal of democracy. For us this is an emergency as serious as war itself."

Arsenal of democracy. James rolled the phrase around in his mind. Arsenal. Pete Antonelli, at the end of the bar, said it out loud, tasting something new.

"Arsenal of democracy," repeated Pete, who had been trying to keep his small machine shop afloat, taking whatever contracts he could find, watching his equipment gather dust while his savings dwindled. "You think he means it? You think they're really gonna need us to build stuff?"

The question hung in the air as Roosevelt continued: "We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same spirit of patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war."

James took a long sip of his beer and considered what he'd been hearing in the neighborhoods, the rumors that had been circulating for months. Defense contracts starting to trickle into Detroit. Plants beginning to hire again, not for automobiles but for something called "defense production." Work that paid better than anything available since the crash, but work that meant building weapons for a war that America wasn't fighting.

"My brother-in-law heard they're hiring at Willow Run," said Tommy Chen, speaking up from his corner booth. Tommy was young, maybe twenty-two, and had never held a steady job in his adult life. The defense work represented not just employment but the possibility of learning skills, earning wages, building a future that had seemed impossible just months earlier.

"Willow Run?" Mickey scoffed. "That's Ford's new plant, right? What are they making out there?"

"Bombers," Tommy said quietly. "B-24s. For the British."

Roosevelt's voice rose to its conclusion: "I believe that the Axis powers are not going to win this war. I base that belief on the latest and best information. We have no excuse for defeatism. We have every good reason for hope—hope for peace, hope for the defense of our civilization and for the building of a better civilization in the future."

As the speech ended and the radio returned to music, the men in Mulligan's Bar sat in silence, each wrestling with thoughts that had been impossible to contemplate just an hour earlier. James Sullivan looked around the room and saw the same mixture of hope and uncertainty on every face—the look of men who had been offered salvation but weren't sure what price it would demand.

"So," Frank Kowalski said finally, breaking the silence. "Who's gonna apply for them defense jobs?"

James finished his beer and stood up, fishing in his pocket for the coins to pay his tab. "I am," he said simply. "I'm gonna try for Willow Run tomorrow morning."

One by one, other men began to voice similar intentions. Not all of them—Mickey O'Brien shook his head and muttered something about not wanting blood money. But enough of them. Enough to suggest that something was changing in Detroit, something that went beyond individual decisions about employment.

James climbed the steps to his apartment, where his wife Peggy would be waiting to hear about Roosevelt's speech, where his eighteen-year-old son Tommy would want to know if the defense jobs were real, if the opportunities were genuine, if their long wait for economic recovery was finally ending.

---

The line outside the Ford Willow Run employment office stretched for three city blocks on the morning of January 15, 1941, a river of men in worn coats and scuffed shoes carrying work histories that told the story of a decade lost to economic collapse. James Sullivan had arrived before dawn, but he was still somewhere in the middle of the queue, surrounded by hundreds of other men who had heard the same rumors, felt the same desperate hope, and made the same calculation about trading their labor for the promise of steady wages.

The man directly in front of James—a stocky fellow in his forties with calloused hands and paint-stained fingernails—introduced himself as Eddie Kowalczyk and explained that he'd been out of work since the Packard plant had cut its workforce in half eighteen months earlier.

"You hear what they're paying?" Eddie asked, his breath forming small clouds in the January air. "Dollar twenty an hour for experienced workers. Time and a half for overtime. Hell, I ain't seen money like that since before the crash."

James nodded, doing the mental arithmetic that every man in line was performing. Dollar twenty an hour meant nearly fifty dollars a week for a full-time worker, more if overtime was available. Fifty dollars a week was more than most families had seen since the good years of the twenties, enough to pay rent, buy groceries, and maybe even save a little for the future that had seemed impossible during the worst years of the Depression.

James did the math again. Fifty dollars. It was more than just money, though. It meant building bombers. He thought of the headlines from Europe, the pictures of London burning. This work felt different. Necessary, maybe. But dangerous, too.

"You ever work on aircraft before?" James asked Eddie, knowing the answer but wanting to hear how other men were thinking about the transition from civilian to military production.

"Never," Eddie replied. "But how hard can it be? Metal's metal, rivets are rivets. And they say they got training programs for guys who know how to work with their hands."

Behind them in line, a younger man—probably in his early twenties—leaned forward to join the conversation. "My name's Carl Peterson," he said. "I been working part-time at a machine shop since I got out of high school, but it ain't steady work and it sure ain't good pay. This defense stuff, it's the first real opportunity I've had to learn a trade that might actually lead somewhere."

James studied Carl's face and saw the same mixture of hope and uncertainty that he felt himself. For young men like Carl, defense work represented not just employment but the possibility of acquiring skills, building careers, and establishing themselves in an economy that had offered them very little since they'd come of age during the worst years of the Depression.

As the line slowly moved forward, James listened to conversations that revealed the scope of unemployment that still plagued American workers despite the gradual economic recovery of the late 1930s. Men who'd been out of work for two years, three years, some for almost the entire decade since the crash. Men whose skills had grown rusty from disuse, whose confidence had been eroded by repeated rejections, whose families had learned to live on whatever part-time work and relief assistance they could find.

James scanned the line coiling behind him, trying to count. Hundreds, and this was one plant on one morning. He remembered the number from a headline: eight million still waiting for work. An army of the unemployed. This line was just one small platoon.

"You think this is gonna last?" Eddie asked as they moved closer to the employment office. "The defense work, I mean. What happens if the war ends before we get into it? What happens if they don't need bombers anymore?"

"I guess we'll deal with that when it comes," James replied. "Right now, I got a family to feed and bills to pay. If they're offering steady work at good wages, I'm gonna take it and figure out the rest later."

Carl nodded. "Besides, even if the defense stuff doesn't last forever, at least we'll have learned some skills. Aircraft work, precision manufacturing, stuff that might be useful in civilian production later on."

When James finally reached the employment office, he was interviewed by a harried clerk who asked about his work experience, his technical skills, and his availability for shift work. The questions were routine, but the clerk's manner suggested that Ford was hiring almost anyone who seemed capable of learning the work and showing up regularly.

"You ever worked on assembly lines?" the clerk asked, filling out a form with James's information.

"Ten years at River Rouge," James replied. "Before the layoffs."

"Good. Aircraft assembly is different from automobile assembly, but the basic principles are the same. Show up Monday morning at six AM for training. Wear work clothes and safety shoes. Bring your lunch."

The clerk handed James a slip of paper with his starting date and shift assignment, along with a pamphlet titled "Welcome to America's Arsenal of Democracy." The pamphlet explained that defense workers were "serving their country through industrial production," that their labor was "essential to the defense of democracy," and that their commitment to quality and productivity would "help ensure victory for the forces of freedom."

Walking out of the employment office, hiring slip in hand, James thought of his son. Tommy was eighteen now, old enough for the draft if it came to that. The bombers James would help build might eventually support military operations that put Tommy in danger.

He passed the line of men still waiting for their chance at employment.

---

The smell hit him first—hot metal, cutting oil, and something indefinable that might have been ambition mixed with desperation.

James Sullivan stood at Gate 4 of the Willow Run bomber plant at 5:47 AM on his first day of work, February 3, 1941, and understood why they called it the Arsenal of Democracy.

The building stretched beyond his field of vision in both directions. Over half a mile long, they'd told him during hiring. The largest factory floor in the world, under one roof. The numbers were incomprehensible until you stood before it.

Around him, thousands of workers poured through the gates. A river of men and women carrying lunch pails, wearing work clothes, moving with the determined efficiency of people who knew exactly where they were going. James didn't. He'd been assigned to Section G, Assembly Position 47. The foreman had made it sound simple.

It wasn't.

Inside, the noise hit him like a physical force. Not the familiar clatter of small manufacturing, but a symphony of industrial power that made conversation impossible without shouting. Rivet guns hammered in staccato rhythms. Massive presses stamped aluminum with sounds like controlled explosions. Overhead cranes moved sections of aircraft fuselage that weighed more than his house.

The scale was disorienting. James had worked construction, had seen large buildings under construction. This was different. The assembly line stretched the entire length of the building—half a mile of bombers in various stages of completion, moving at glacial pace from bare frame to finished aircraft. Every sixty-three minutes, a complete B-24 Liberator would roll off the line.

Every sixty-three minutes. A four-engine bomber. Twenty-seven thousand pounds of aluminum, steel, and American manufacturing capability.

The building stretched for more than a mile, longer than any structure James had ever seen, filled with machinery that was simultaneously familiar and alien. Assembly lines, yes, but assembly lines being retrofitted for a product that was exponentially more complex than any automobile ever built. Where River Rouge had produced cars that weighed a ton and contained a few thousand parts, Willow Run was being designed to produce bombers that weighed fifteen tons and contained more than a hundred thousand components.

"Overwhelming, ain't it?" said Bill Murphy, the training supervisor who was leading James and nineteen other new hires through their orientation. Bill was a Ford veteran who'd been transferred from civilian production to help manage the conversion to military manufacturing. "Six months ago, this was just an empty field. Six months from now, we're supposed to be turning out B-24 Liberators faster than any aircraft factory in the world."

James studied the chaos around him—workers installing machinery, engineers consulting blueprints, supervisors arguing about production schedules—and tried to imagine how this confusion would eventually coalesce into the systematic efficiency that aircraft production required. The challenge seemed almost impossible, but it also seemed uniquely American: the audacious belief that industrial ingenuity and worker determination could solve any problem, meet any deadline, achieve any goal.

"How many bombers?" asked Eddie Kowalczyk, who had been hired the same day as James and was standing beside him during the orientation tour.

"One an hour," Bill replied matter-of-factly. "Once we get up to full production. Twenty-four bombers a day, every day, until the war ends or they tell us to stop."

James was assigned to the fuselage section, where he would be learning to install the complex wiring systems that controlled bomber navigation, communication, and defensive equipment. The work required precision that far exceeded automobile assembly, attention to detail that could mean the difference between successful missions and dead aircrew, and quality standards that were literally matters of life and death.

His trainer was a woman named Dorothy Williams—"Dot" to everyone in the plant—who had been hired two months earlier and had already mastered the intricate procedures for installing electrical systems in aircraft fuselages. Dot was about thirty, with steady hands and a no-nonsense manner that commanded respect from male workers who might otherwise have resented taking instruction from a female supervisor.

"You worked on car wiring before?" Dot asked as she demonstrated the proper technique for routing electrical cables through the bomber's frame.

"Some," James replied, watching carefully as Dot's fingers worked through the complex sequence of connections. "But nothing this complicated."

""It's not just complicated," Dot explained. "It's critical. Every connection you make could be the difference between a bomber making it home or going down in enemy territory. Every wire you route could determine whether ten men live or die."

At River Rouge, a mistake meant a car that didn't run properly. At Willow Run, mistakes meant dead aircrew.

"You think about it much?" James asked Dot during their lunch break. "About what these planes are gonna do, where they're gonna go?"

Dot considered the question while she unwrapped the sandwich she'd brought from home. "Every day," she said finally. "My brother's in the Navy, probably gonna end up in the Pacific if we get into this war. These bombers might be what keeps him alive, might be what brings him home when it's all over."

Around them in the plant cafeteria, similar conversations were taking place among workers.

Carl Peterson, the young man James had met in the employment line, was learning precision machining for bomber engine components. "It's the best training I've ever had," Carl told James. "Skills that'll be valuable for the rest of my career, whether we stay in defense work or go back to civilian production after the war."

Frank Romano, who had finally decided to pursue defense subcontracts for his small machine shop, was discovering that military production offered both greater profits and greater responsibilities than civilian work had ever provided. His shop was now producing components for aircraft landing gear, work that paid better than any contracts he'd received since starting his business but work that also subjected him to government inspection, quality audits, and delivery schedules that treated delays as potential threats to national security.

"The money's good," Frank told his wife during one of their evening discussions about the family business. "Better than anything we've seen since before the crash. But the pressure's intense. These aren't car parts where a defect means somebody has trouble starting their engine. These are aircraft parts where a failure means people die."

By the end of February 1941, James Sullivan had learned to install electrical systems in bomber fuselages with the precision and speed that military production demanded. He was earning more money than he'd made since before the crash, developing skills that exceeded anything he'd acquired during his years in automobile manufacturing.

---

The argument started, as it often did, at the kitchen table. On one side sat Tommy Sullivan, eighteen years old and eager to embrace the opportunities that defense mobilization was offering his generation. On the other side sat his mother Peggy, who had lived through one world war and was determined not to let enthusiasm for prosperity blind the family to the human costs of military production.

James sat between them, literally and figuratively, trying to balance his gratitude for steady employment against his concerns about the ultimate destination of the work they were all choosing to pursue.

"Willow Run's hiring for the night shift," Tommy announced, spreading the employment section of the Detroit Free Press across the dinner table. "They're looking for young guys who can learn precision work. Starting wage is a dollar forty an hour, plus shift differential. I could be making more money than Dad ever made at River Rouge."

Peggy looked up from her mending with the expression that had become familiar since defense work had started changing their neighborhood. "And what would you be making this money doing, exactly?"

"Building bombers," Tommy replied without hesitation. "B-24 Liberators. The same planes Dad's working on. They're gonna help win the war in Europe."

"The war that we're not fighting," Peggy pointed out. "The war that we keep saying we're not going to fight."

"It's not just about the money," James said, trying to articulate thoughts that had been troubling him for weeks. "It's about what we think America should be doing in this war. If we think Britain deserves our support, if we think Hitler needs to be stopped, then we should be willing to build the planes and the weapons that might make that possible."

"And if we're wrong?" Peggy asked. "If we get pulled into a war because we've spent two years building weapons for other people's fights?"

Tommy's response was immediate. "Mom, we're already in this war whether we admit it or not. The Germans are sinking our ships, threatening our allies, trying to control the whole world. We can either help stop them now, or we can wait until they're strong enough to threaten us directly."

"What about Dot Williams?" Peggy asked, referring to their neighbor who had left her job at the five-and-dime to work at Willow Run. "She's making more money than her husband ever made, but she's also working nights, leaving her kids with her mother-in-law, and learning skills that might not be useful if the defense work ends."

Dot was thriving—earning wages that provided her family with security they'd never known, developing technical skills that exceeded anything retail work had offered.

But she was also sacrificing time with her children, working nights, accepting conditions more dangerous than the five-and-dime.

"Dot's making her own choices," James said. "Just like we're making ours. That's what makes this different from Germany. Their workers were told what to do. Ours are deciding."

---

Three blocks away, Frank Romano Jr.'s family was having their own version of the same conversation. The Romano kitchen table was smaller than the Sullivans', crowded with six children ranging from four to sixteen, and the debate was louder, more animated, more Italian.

"Papa, the machine shop could triple its revenue with defense subcontracts," Frank Jr. argued, waving the contract proposal he'd brought home. "Triple. We'd go from barely surviving to actually prospering."

Frank Romano Sr., who'd kept his small machine shop running through the Depression by accepting any work at any price, studied the contract with the skepticism of a man who'd learned that good deals often had hidden costs.

"What kind of parts they want us to make?"

"Components for bomber fuel systems. Precision work, tight tolerances, critical specifications. Exactly what we're good at."

"For bombers that go to Europe, si?"

"Si. For the British. For the RAF. To fight Hitler."

Frank Sr. was quiet for a long moment. His eldest son Antonio had died in France in 1918, killed three weeks before the armistice. The telegram had arrived on Antonio's twentieth birthday. Twenty-three years later, Frank Sr. still kept Antonio's photograph on the mantle, still lit a candle for him every Sunday.

"Your brother died in their war," Frank Sr. said quietly. "Now they want us to help them with another one."

"Papa," Maria, the oldest daughter still at home, spoke up. "I could work at the plant too. They're hiring women for assembly work. A dollar an hour. I could help support the family, maybe even save for nursing school."

"Women don't work in factories," Frank Sr. said automatically, but his voice lacked conviction. He'd said the same thing when Maria wanted to graduate high school, when she wanted to work at the department store, when she wanted to take the bookkeeping course. She'd done all those things anyway, and the family had benefited from her wages and her ambition.

"Women are working everywhere now," Maria countered. "It's not 1920 anymore, Papa. This is what America needs."

Rosa Romano, who'd been silent through the debate while serving dinner, finally spoke: "Antonio died for nothing. He died because we sent our boys to Europe and they got killed in trenches. Now you want to send bombers instead of boys. Maybe bombers are better than boys."

The table went quiet. Rosa rarely spoke about Antonio, and when she did, everyone listened.

"The defense work—it's our choice?" Rosa asked her husband. "Nobody forces us?"

"È una scelta," Frank Sr. confirmed. It's a choice.

"Then we choose to help stop Hitler before we have to send more sons. Frank Junior works the defense contracts. Maria works at the plant if she wants. We prosper, we help Britain, and maybe this time the war ends before American boys die in Europe."

Frank Jr. looked at his mother with new respect. She'd lost one son to war, but she understood that building weapons to help others fight might prevent losing more sons to a war America joined too late.

"This is America," Rosa continued. "We choose. In the old country, the government tells you what to do. Here, we decide. So we decide to build what's needed, earn what we can, and hope we're choosing right."

The Romano family took the defense contract.

---

On a humid morning in late March 1941, James Sullivan stood outside the gates of Willow Run watching the line of workers enter the plant. It stretched for blocks, but it was no longer the desperate queue of unemployed men from January. Now it included women like Dot Williams, young men like Tommy Sullivan, older workers like Eddie Kowalczyk.

"You see that?" Dot Williams said to James as they walked toward their stations. "They're adding another assembly line. Third one this month. At this rate, we'll be producing more bombers than the Germans can shoot down."

New machinery being installed. Additional workers being trained. Production targets increasing.

"My son wants to enlist," Eddie Kowalczyk told James during their coffee break. "Says if we're building planes to fight the Germans, American boys should be flying them too."

Carl Peterson had progressed from employment line to skilled machinist in two months. "I never thought I'd be good at this kind of work," he told James. "But there's something about knowing that what you're building really matters, that it might save lives or help win the war, that makes you want to do the best work you've ever done."

Frank Romano's machine shop was running three shifts. "My guys are working like their lives depend on it," Frank told James. "Because they understand that somebody's life probably does depend on it."

But Detroit was also becoming a boom town. Housing scarce, prices rising, neighborhoods transforming overnight.

Peggy had started organizing childcare for defense workers' families. "Women working three shifts, men working overtime, and children who barely see their parents," she told James one evening. "The money's good, but what are we doing to ourselves?"

---

The radio interrupted the Sunday afternoon football game at 2:26 PM Eastern Time on December 7, 1941.

"We interrupt this broadcast for a special bulletin from NBC News. The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by air, President Roosevelt has just announced."

James Sullivan was in the kitchen when Peggy called out. He walked to the living room where she stood frozen by the radio, dish towel still in her hands.

"Where's Pearl Harbor?" she asked.

"Hawaii. Naval base." James sat down heavily. The announcer was providing fragments—heavy casualties, ships burning, ongoing attack. Details were scarce, confusion was evident.

Tommy came down the stairs, drawn by the urgent voices from the radio. "What happened?"

"We're at war," James said. The words felt surreal. Hours ago they'd been debating whether to buy war bonds, discussing the distant European conflict like it was an interesting news story. Now it was immediate, unavoidable, here.

The three of them sat listening as reports trickled in. Battleships sunk. Hundreds dead. The Pacific fleet crippled. Each update made the scale clearer and the implications more terrifying.

"I'll enlist tomorrow," Tommy said quietly.

"You'll do no such thing," Peggy said, her voice sharp with fear. "They'll draft who they need. You don't have to volunteer."

"Everyone's going to volunteer, Mom. Every guy I know will be at the recruiter by Tuesday."

James looked at his son—nineteen years old, strong from factory work, exactly what the military would want. He thought about the last war, the casualty lists, the boys who'd left and never came back.

"Wait," James said. "Wait a week. See what Roosevelt says. See what the draft looks like. You don't have to be first in line."

"Dad, they attacked us. On our soil. You think I'm going to sit in a factory while—"

"I think you're going to be smart," James interrupted. "Factory work might be just as important as fighting. Someone has to build the planes, the ships, the equipment. Willow Run is going to be building bombers. That matters."

"It's not the same."

"It might keep you alive."

The radio continued its urgent bulletins. Congress would meet tomorrow. Roosevelt would address the nation. War was certain.

Peggy was crying quietly, still holding the dish towel. "I don't want to lose you."

"You won't lose me, Mom."

"That's what every mother thinks," she said. "That's what every mother whose son doesn't come home thought too."

By evening, the neighborhood was transformed. Men clustered on porches, discussing enlistment. Women gathered in kitchens, sharing fear disguised as practicality. The certainty that had characterized Sunday morning—jobs, routines, future plans—had evaporated.

James watched Tommy through the window, talking with the Romano boy and the Chen kid. All of them nineteen or twenty. All of them animated, determined, already seeing themselves in uniform.

"It's real now," Peggy said beside him. "Everything changes."

"Everything changes," James agreed.

The boom that had been theoretical—producing equipment for Britain and France, benefiting from Europe's war—was now personal. The factory whistles would blow tomorrow morning, and they'd mean something entirely different than they'd meant yesterday.

America was at war. And every family would pay the cost.

By April 1941, Tommy Sullivan had been hired at Willow Run. The giant was waking. By December 1941, the giant was fully awake—and angry.