The War Effort at Home

During World War II, the Hastings Naval Ammunition Depot (NAD), located 150 miles west of Omaha, played a central role in the nation’s war effort. At the confluence of three railroads and two transcontinental highways and with a vast amount of open space—though land did have to be claimed under eminent domain and two hundred buildings were moved—the area served as a nearly ideal location for a massive ammunition depot. It was one of the largest of its kind in the country and the only one the government intended to make permanent. Covering seventy-five square miles, construction of the depot continued throughout World War II, and at its high point, the Hastings Naval Ammunition Depot supplied 40 percent of the U.S. Navy’s ammunition and was reputedly on a German list of top-ten facilities to be destroyed in an attack on America. It stood among the three army ammunition depots in Nebraska, including the Martin Bomber Plant, which constructed the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Prior to the war, Adams County, in which Hastings is situated, was depopulating, with 40 percent unemployment in the depths of the Great Depression. Residents met the announcement of a $45 million ammunition depot with enthusiasm. However, while the depot would easily solve the twin problems of unemployment and population loss in the area, it would create new problems, at least in the eyes of long-time residents, including higher rents, unfamiliar newcomers, a shortage of services, a larger and more diverse population in a small and homogenous community, and a higher crime rate.

Life on the base usually consisted of work, work, and more work. At its peak capacity, the depot employed more than 10,000 workers: 2,000 military personnel; 6,700 civilian production workers; and 2,000 civilian construction workers. The changing racial makeup of employees began with the hiring of one hundred Sioux and Chippewas in construction. After that, four hundred black sailors were brought to the depot at the end of 1942. African Americans were then hired in construction and production, and Mexican Americans were as well.

Eventually, sixteen hundred sailors, including many black sailors, ages eighteen to twenty-five, were brought in from the Chicago/Great Lakes region. Because of racial segregation in the armed forces, black sailors were not allowed on ships and so could only be sent to assignments on land, including places like the Hastings Ammunition Depot, where they worked in the Negro Ordnance Battalion. This would change following World War II, with President Truman’s Executive Order 9981 in 1948 establishing racial equality, at least on paper, in the armed services.

In their free time, Hastings offered black soldiers and civilian workers few entertainment options. As a result, black troops looked toward North Omaha when they wanted to relax and have fun and had to load into “cattle trucks” on Friday to travel for recreation. Emma Hart, a Native of North Omaha remembers the soldiers well. “I used to live down by the train station during World War II,” she said. “I could sit on my front porch and watch the soldiers coming off the train. One time my girlfriend, who had a lot more courage, went up and started talking to them.”

Eventually, separate recreation facilities were created for African Americans in the Hastings area. These included the Cabin in the Sky Café, the Apex Tavern, and Jamie’s Tamalie Café and Recreation Parlor. However, facilities located in town for racial minorities created great anxiety among the town’s white leaders, and eventually, an agreement was made between the mayor and the navy officers that no more than 150 black sailors would be allowed in town at a time, they would have to remain on First Street, and they would be heavily patrolled.

Segregation also existed in housing. Those African Americans living on the naval base resided in separate barracks from their white counterparts. Efforts to segregate in the town of Hastings were not as successful. Though whites tried to frame the issue as one of black people deserving a community of their own in arguing for segregation, they failed in their efforts, and housing for African Americans was built in northwest and southeast Hastings next to white residential areas anyway. At the same time, there was class discrimination among whites, as those whites who lived in the town derided those whites living in trailer camps at the depot.

Although they resided in different cities, a new community formed between blacks in both Hastings and North Omaha. While nearly two thousand blacks would live and work at Hastings during wartime years, many had moved to Hastings only to work in the plant during the war. After World War II ended, many blacks returned to North Omaha, bringing with them the black men stationed at the NAD. This contributed to a new wave of black migration and community growth in the city. Hastings, for its part, returned to a city that was roughly the same size if one assumed a proportional increase over time rather than the wartime boom in population that occurred. It again became racially homogenous and dependent on agriculture.