Excerpt of article as published on BestofNJ.com
As the aroma of late summer barbecues drifts into homes and backyards across New Jersey this Labor Day weekend, we might pause and take a moment to consider the meaning of the holiday. As we do, black and white images appear of our grandmothers working in factories or of our grandfathers fighting overseas in World War Two.
Able-bodied men became newly minted soldiers and left the farm and factory behind for the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific. This shift caused an immediate crisis of industrial production on the homefront. The Allies were counting on us, and we were struggling to provide the machinery of war. We had a ways to go to become the great “arsenal of democracy”. It was a time when FDR issued a “call to arms” that excluded no one…
Both large and small farms were heavily impacted. Some farmers attempted to fill the shortage by hiring “immigrants, women, students, disabled veterans, and persons deferred from the draft”. None of these hirings, however, were successful in eliminating the labor shortage on larger farms. One of these larger farms was the 6,000 acre Seabrook Farm in South Jersey. At Seabrook, they turned to a group of workers few had considered – Japanese-Americans. These American citizens and laborers were conscripted into the war effort. They helped to maintain vital food production during the war on this farm in New Jersey.
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