FDR ordered end to strike
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June 9, 1941: Three thousand of the 12,000 workers at North American Aviation returned to their jobs making warplanes 12 hours after the U.S. Army arrived at the plant with rifles and bayonets.
In an executive order issued that day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized seizure of the plant to end the strike.
“Continuous production in the Los Angeles plant ... is essential to national defense,” Roosevelt wrote. “It is engaged in the production of airplanes vital to our defense and much of the property in the plant is owned, directly or indirectly, by the United States.”
The Army pushed striking workers a mile from the plant, The Times reported.
The Times said most strikers yielded before the waves of infantrymen, although one strike captain was bayoneted in the thigh.
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