FILE PATHEXPLORE DETROIT/DETROIT HISTORY
THE 1940s

Arsenal of Democracy

Wartime production changes the factories, the workforce and the city Ralph Palmer would return home to.

Detroit residents waiting at a sugar-rationing board in spring 1942
DETROIT CONTEXT

Detroit at wartime scale.

Factories, workforce change, and the wartime city stay together here as the Detroit Ralph Palmer returned to after service.

Wartime Detroit combined enormous industrial output with population pressure, housing strain, transportation demands and social change. That wartime city is the immediate backdrop to Ralph Palmer’s industrial work and military departure.

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