Workers pass through the gate at the Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Co. in Mobile.

Source: The University of South Alabama Archives (Addsco 3-416)

By 1943, six million women had entered the work force, and nearly half of them were working in defense plants.

Eugene B. Sledge was born in Mobile November 4, 1923, the grandson of Confederate officers. Bookish and frail as a child, he had been taught to hunt and fish by his physician father and spent much of his free time roaming the woods on the outskirts of town with his . . .

President Franklin D. Roosevelt speaks to the country following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

A woman listens to the radio in her boardinghouse room. January 1943. For those back home, the radio proved the best source for news on the war.

Source: Library of Congress (LC-USW3- 038331-E)

Katharine Phillips was born on June 28, 1923 in Mobile, the older sister of Marine Sidney Phillips, and John Phillips, who was born in 1931. Their father, Sidney C. Phillips, who had been wounded in the first World War, was a teacher who became principle of Murphy High School in . . .

Women's shoes were so precious that some college girls walked barefoot in the rain.

Using the radio and newsreels, President Roosevelt united the country.

Katharine Phillips remembers how news of Pearl Harbor came to Mobile.

She suspected the enemy of using propaganda, but not the U.S. government.

Phillips worked at the government nursery school for children of the women who labored at the Mobile shipyards.

Two enormous vessels docked at a Mobile pier. Men move cargo in the foreground.

Source: The University of South Alabama Archives (Addsco 49-A)

Two servicemen cross a street in downtown Mobile.

Source: The University of South Alabama Archives (MN-159B)

A pre-war view of a busy street in downtown Mobile.

Source: The University of South Alabama Archives (N3075)

Rear view of the interior of an empty Mobile city bus. "WHITE" sign hangs from the ceiling.

Source: The University of South Alabama Archives (CO-10020)

Bustling Mobile ship channel.

Source: The University of South Alabama Archives (C-9089)

Black shipyard worker at the Alabama Dry Dock and Shipbuilding Co. in Mobile guides a giant propellor. Clyde Odom worked as a foreman at the segregated docks.

Source: The University of South Alabama Archives (G-25)

Front page of the Mobile Register, January 15, 1942: "U-Boat Torpedoes Tanker Off Long Island. 22 survivors of sea attack accounted for."? Headline of Sid Phillips' father as well, "Phillips named principal of mobile's murphy high; assure term to mid-april."?

Source: Mobile Press-Register

Phillips family photo at Monterey Place, May 1942. Sid poses in Marine blues next to Katharine.

Source: Sidney Phillips

Signing up for sugar and food rationing in Taos, New Mexico. February 1943.

Source: Library of Congress (LC-USW3-019115-C)