Henry John Kaiser (May 9, 1882 – August 24, 1967) was an American industrialist who became known for his shipbuilding and construction projects, then later for his involvement in fostering modern American health care. Prior to World War II, Kaiser was involved in the construction industry; his company was one of those that built the Hoover Dam. He established the Kaiser Shipyards, which built Liberty ships during World War II, after which he formed Kaiser Aluminum and Kaiser Steel. Kaiser organized Kaiser Permanente health care for his workers and their families. He led Kaiser-Frazer followed by Kaiser Motors, automobile companies known for the safety of their designs. Kaiser was involved in large construction projects such as civic centers and dams, and invested in real estate, later moving into television broadcasting with Kaiser Broadcasting.
Early life, family and education
Kaiser was born on May 9, 1882, in Sprout Brook, New York, the youngest of four children and the only son of Franz (a shoemaker) and Anna Marie (née Yops) Kaiser, ethnic German immigrants. His father, who later anglicized his name to Frank, came from Hanau in Hesse and emigrated to the United States in 1872, at about the age of thirty. He settled in Canajoharie, in upstate New York, where he was taken in by the Yops family—fellow emigrants from Steinheim who farmed in the area—and there met their daughter Anna Marie, later known as Mary. The couple married on January 5, 1873, and settled a few miles away in Sprout Brook, where Frank kept a cobbler's shop; they had three daughters—Elizabeth, Anna, and Augusta—before Henry's birth.
Kaiser was baptized two years after his birth as Heinrich Kaiser. The middle name "John" does not appear in the baptismal record, and Kaiser himself adopted both it and the anglicized form "Henry" in later years. The family was of modest means, and around 1889, apparently for economic reasons, it moved west to Whitesboro, a town of about 1,600 residents near Utica on the Erie Canal. Kaiser was especially close to his mother and his three older sisters. His mother died in 1899, a loss that some accounts cite as an early influence on his later interest in health care.
Although his father was Roman Catholic, Kaiser was raised in his mother's Protestant faith, attending the Methodist church in Sprout Brook. He later became a Presbyterian and in 1939 was confirmed in the Episcopal Church, in which he served as a lay reader. He left school after the eighth grade, at about age thirteen and without a diploma, a step generally attributed to the family's financial circumstances.
Kaiser's first job was as a cash boy in a Utica, New York, department store at the age of 16. He worked as an apprentice photographer early in life, and was running the studio in Lake Placid by the age of 20.
Kaiser relocated to Spokane and became a top salesman at a hardware company. He used his savings and started a construction company in 1906 which fulfilled government contracts.
In 1914 Kaiser founded a paving company, Henry J. Kaiser Co., Ltd., one of the first to use heavy construction machinery. His firm expanded significantly in 1927 when it received an $18-million contract to build roads in Camagüey Province, Cuba. In 1931 his firm was one of the prime contractors in building the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, and subsequently the Bonneville and Grand Coulee Dams on the Columbia River.
While doing business among the Six Companies, Inc. and remotely related to his interest in motor boat racing, he set up shipyards in Seattle and Tacoma, where he began using mass-production techniques, such as using welding instead of rivets.
Henry Kaiser was an early advocate of bringing American aid to those suffering from German aggression in Europe. In 1940, a full year before the US had entered World War II, Kaiser served as National Chairman of United Clothing Collection for International War Relief to provide much-needed clothing for the refugees from Hitler's conquests in Europe.
Kaiser fought Hitler far more directly with what he is most famous for: the Kaiser Shipyard in Richmond, California; during World War II adapting production techniques to enable building cargo ships with an average construction time of 45 days. These ships became known as Liberty ships and were later supplemented in the mid-war period by improved, larger and faster Victory ships. He became world-renowned when his teams built a ship in four days. The keel for the 10,500-ton SS Robert E. Peary was laid on Sunday, November 8, 1942, and the ship was launched in California from the Richmond Shipyard#2 on Thursday, November 12, four days and 15+1⁄2 hours later. The previous record had been ten days for the Liberty ship Joseph M. Teal.
A visit to a Ford assembly plant by one of his associates led to a decision to use welding instead of riveting for shipbuilding. Welding was advantageous because it took less strength to do and it was easier to teach to thousands of employees, who were mostly unskilled laborers and many women. Kaiser adopted the use of sub-assemblies in ship construction. Formerly, hundreds of laborers crowded together to complete a ship. Though that practice had been tried on the East Coast and in Britain, Kaiser was able to take full advantage of the process by constructing new shipyards using this concept.
Other Kaiser shipyards were located in Ryan Point (Vancouver) on the Columbia River in Washington state and on Swan Island in Portland, Oregon. A smaller vessel was completed in 71 hours and 40 minutes from the Vancouver yard on November 16, 1942. The Kaiser hulls also became America's smaller, more numerous "escort carriers", over 100 small aircraft carriers employed in both the Pacific and the Atlantic theaters. The concepts that he developed for the mass production of commercial and naval ships are still in use.
One problem with welded hulls that was unknown is the issue of brittle fracture. That caused the loss of some Liberty ships in cold seas as the welds failed and the hulls would crack, sometimes completely into two. Constance Tipper was one of the first people to discover why the Liberty ships were breaking into two. Minor changes in design and more rigid welding control implemented in 1947 eliminated Liberty ship losses until 1955. By his membership in a group called the Six Companies, Kaiser also had a major role in the Joshua Hendy Iron Works of Sunnyvale, California, which built the EC-2 triple expansion steam engines for the Liberty ships. Kaiser and his associates organized the California Shipbuilding Corporation.
At Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California, Kaiser implemented the pioneering idea of Sidney Garfield for a prepaid hospital financing plan. Opened on August 10, 1942, Kaiser Richmond Field Hospital for Kaiser Shipyards was financed by the US Maritime Commission, sponsored by Henry J. Kaiser's Permanente Foundation, and run by Garfield. In part because of wartime materials rationing, the Field Hospital was a single-story wood-frame structure designed in a simple modernist mode. Originally intended for use primarily as an emergency facility, the Field Hospital opened with only 10 beds. Later additions had increased its capacity to 160 beds by 1944.
Kaiser's Richmond Field Hospital served as the mid-level component of a three-tier medical care system that included six well-equipped First Aid Stations at the shipyards and the main Permanente Hospital in Oakland, where the most critical cases were treated. By August 1944, 92.2% of all Richmond shipyard employees had joined Kaiser Permanente, the first voluntary group plan in the country to feature group medical practice, prepayment, and substantial medical facilities on such a large scale. After the war, the Health Plan was expanded to include workers' families. To serve employees at his diverse businesses, Kaiser opened Permanente facilities in Walnut Creek, California; Honolulu, Hawaii; and many other locations. Since then, locations have opened in Hawaii; Dublin, California; Livermore, California; Pleasanton, California; Martinez, California; Santa Clara, California; and Antioch, California.