Nail speaks on the women who stepped in when the men shipped out.

The slogan was “Do The Job He Left Behind.”

The archetypal image was “Rosie the Riveter,” a brawny young woman flexing biceps developed working for the war effort.

Both were cornerstones of a massive marketing campaign at the outset of World War II encouraging women to fill industrial jobs needed for the war effort – an astounding change from the prior decade, says author Kristin Campbell Nail.

“During the Depression, the ad campaign said ‘one family member working,’ so that other families could have a worker,” said Nail, who lectures Jan. 25 on Rosie the Riveter’s escapades and accomplishments for the Bainbridge Island Historical Society.

“Then, at the beginning of the war, they said there weren’t enough people to run the factories there was a big campaign to get women into the workforce.”

Thousands answered the call, stepping out of traditional women’s roles to build bombers and other war materiel.

Nail explores this exodus in a work of historical fiction, “The Girls From Hangar B,” featuring a quartet of Rosies culled from different socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds to build bombers for Boeing.

“Demographically, the gals were just all over the board,” she said. “But they were not heroines. They were your basic American citizens. They just did whatever they had to do.”

The book was inspired by the stories Nail’s mother-in-law, Henrietta Nail, told of her years building bombers; the stories her father, John Campbell, told of wartime production at Subase Bangor; and her own longtime interest in the era.

“It was the ‘Audie Murphy’ romantic period,” she said, referring to the war’s most-decorated soldier. “All the heroes were heroes; all the bad guys were bad guys. There was a comforting certainty.”

Hard labor

Despite the romantic patina, the war effort could be brutal on women too-quickly trained and tossed into dangerous jobs.

Nail points out that there were more industrial accidents and deaths in the first months of the war than there were casualties.

And harassment on the job was a common occurrence.

Henrietta Nail only deflected a persistently ardent supervisor when she invited him home to meet her husband and five children.

Nonetheless, breaking out of the traditional roles gave the women a taste of freedom.

“You took people who had been very structured,” Nail said, “who had, in effect, been told ‘here are your options, here’s what you get to be: a wife, mother, nurse, secretary.’ And now their world sort of opened up.”

Government-subsidized daycare made the work possible, Nail said.

Perhaps less well-known, but also valued, were the contributions of the disabled, who were also welcomed into the workforce, and some 3 million children ages 13 to 18, who entered the factories in numbers for the first time since the institution of child labor laws earlier in the century.

But, four years later, with the war over, the message to all these new workers was to make way for the returning men.

“The last piece of the ad campaign was ‘now to be patriotic, you have to go home,’” Nail said.

But the war had given the social fabric a good shake, contributing to the civil rights movement, to legislation protecting the rights of the disabled and to women’s liberation.

“A lot of these women planted seeds with their daughters and granddaughters,” Nail said. “And the stories they told about their World War II adventures were fun. They had a good time.”

Rosie the Riveter – and all the workers who contributed on the Home Front, as well as in the armed forces – will be remembered in the National World War II Memorial, slated for dedication this spring on the mall between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

“It’s good to commemorate all who served during World War II,” Nail said. “It’s good, because these women never had a ‘thank you.’”

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Port Orchard author Kristin Campbell Nail recounts the contributions of real-life Rosie the Riveters to the World War II Home Front in a talk to the Bainbridge Island Historical Society, 2 p.m. Jan. 25 at Island Center Hall.

Nail is joined by local war effort veteran Elouise Nix, who grew up on Bainbridge Island and served in the WAVES, and islander Joan Wilt, who worked on minesweepers at Eagle Harbor’s naval yard. Admission is free to members, $5 for non-member adults, and $2 for children. Information: 842-2773.