The Defense City: An Overview, Then Firm by Firm

Mishawaka's war record runs through its works gates. The overview first: in both world wars the city's industrial plant — rubber and woolens on the river, power-transmission machinery on the east side, abrasive machinery after 1932, and from 1971 the military-vehicle works that became the city's second flagship — turned in part or in whole to war orders, and the military fragment's home-front record (the bond drives, the salvage, the casualty lists) is the civilian face of that industrial fact. Firm by firm, at the strengths the build's own record prints: The Mishawaka Woolen Company, later Ball Band and Uniroyal, was the city's great wartime employer of the first half of the century: its rubber footwear and fabric lines supplied the armed forces in both world wars — the works that made the Red Ball boots for the civilian trade made military footwear and rubber goods under war contracts, and its wartime employment stands in the Ball Band flagship's course in the businesses section, which carries the firm's record whole. AM General is the second half of the century's defense line, and it needs no summary here: the military-vehicle works on the city's east side, builder of the HMMWV and of 11,818 H1s in its commercial line, holding the plant to its sale to GEM on 10 June 2025 — the AM General flagship in the businesses section is this build's fullest defense-firm record, eleven thousand words at the firm's true size. Dodge Manufacturing, the power-transmission house, stands next: its pulleys, hangers and shafting were the kind of industrial goods war production consumed in quantity, but a firm-level account of Dodge's war contracts does not reach the open record this build holds, and the entry prints that plainly rather than dressing the probability as a record. Wheelabrator, the abrasive-cleaning machinery works, stands the same: seated here from the 1930s, its wartime course is not separately documented in the record reached. For both firms the settling records are named: the War Production Board's contract and facility records at the National Archives, and the companies' own archives. The defense city thus prints at its documented size — two firms whole, two firms named with their gaps showing, and the overview they add up to: a city whose wars were fought, on the home side, at the bench and the loom as much as at any front.