76 UTAH INTERNATIONAL: A BIOGRAPHY OF A BUSINESS Henry Kaiser, a major force when Six Companies built the Hoover Dam, teamed again with Utah Construction to build ships during World War II. launched hundreds of new ships to aid in the war effort: Joshua Hendy Iron Works, Permanente Steamship, and Todd-Bath Iron Shipbuilding, as well as the California, Houston, Oregon, Richmond, South Portland, and Todd-California shipbuilding companies. By November 1941, these nine companies, along with SeattleTacoma, had undertaken defense contracts worth more than $750 million. By war’s end, companies in which Utah participated had completed work on contracts worth billions of dollars, many of them for Liberty ships that set sail from the Richmond yard in California at the remarkable rate of one every four days. “There was no miracle formula available to the shipbuilders,” observed the British-American writer Alistair Cooke. “The government kept insisting upon a miracle, however, and got it in the shape of a lumbering, undramatic tub called a ‘Liberty ship.’ In its final form