War work in cloth: raincoats and clothing lines at the boundary plant; no wartime cloth contract on this ground

1917–18 AND 1941–45, TESTED · KOREAN WAR ERA NOTED

The wartime cloth products the checklist names — raincoats, diving suits, aviator boots, army socks — belong, in this county's reachable record, to the boundary plant and to South Bend, and each is tested here rather than assumed. At Mishawaka, Ball Band entered coated fabrics in 1934 — the first, Leatherette, used for clothing — and raincoats were made at the factory. The plant joined the war effort in 1941 with self-sealing fuel containers; its own postwar planning paper, printed in the company magazine in 1945 and preserved by Michiana Memory, speaks in the first person of the wartime plant: it expects to continue “the raincoat and clothing lines” with a large personnel, it has run a foam pilot plant making war products such as helmet paddings and hospital rings, and it intends after the war to make women's wear fabrics and to consider wool fabric shirts. In 1943 women made up more than half the labour force on the “victory shift.” During the Korean War the plant's Ensolite was used in boots, jackets and pants worn by the military. Of the checklist's four named products, then: raincoats are documented at the boundary plant, in and after the war; military boots, jackets and pants material is documented for the Korean War era; diving suits and aviator boots and army socks by those names were not returned by any source for either city, and they are not claimed. South Bend's cloth war work runs through its shirt and underwear factories (the following article's succession carries Wilson Brothers and the Stephenson Underwear Mills at their dates), but no contract-by-contract wartime clothing record for them was reached in open sources either. For Clay and Harris townships the test is clean and it is a TESTED NEGATIVE: no plant, workshop, contract, subcontract or home-work clothing scheme seated in either township in 1917–18 or 1941–45 appears in the county histories, the record, the company record or the trade record searched. The townships' war work in cloth was the work their residents travelled to — to Mishawaka and South Bend — and the record names the destination plants, not a home plant, because there was none to name.

Sources:

1. Ball-Band Factory historical marker record (coated fabrics from 1934, Leatherette for clothing, raincoats made at the factory; war effort from 1941, self-sealing fuel containers; 1943 victory shift; Korean War Ensolite in military boots, jackets and pants), consulted November 2026.
2. “What Postwar Future Has the Ball-Band War Plant?”, Ball-Band company magazine, 1945, via Michiana Memory, SJCPL (the raincoat and clothing lines, helmet paddings and hospital rings, the women's-wear-fabrics intention), consulted November 2026.
3. Searches run November 2026 for diving suits, aviator boots and army socks against Mishawaka and South Bend manufacture: no source returned naming any of the three for either city; not claimed.