Vera Jones Bailey was born in Kansas in 1905 and moved to California from Missouri with her husband and children in 1937. Upon their arrival, Bailey began working picking potatoes in the San Joaquin Valley. She remained there until 1942, when the opening of jobs at the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond prompted the family to move. She took a position as a sheetmetal worker in the shipyards and worked there until the layoffs at the end of World War II. She later worked for the Filice and Perrelli Canning Company. In this interview, Bailey discusses her childhood, moving to California, field work in San Joaquin Valley, working in the shipyards and life during the war, the postwar era, working at the Filice and Perrelli Canning Company, and her thoughts on the California dream.
