World War II: U.S. Home Front

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World War II U.S. Home Front
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U.S. Enters the War

• On December 7, 1941, a massive Japanese air
  attack on the U.S. Navy Base at Pearl Harbor in
  Hawaii caused the U.S. to enter World War II.

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U.S. Prepares for War

• In order for the U.S. to enter the war the nation
  needed to strengthen its armed forces.
• Congress created a draft requiring all men from
  21 to 36 to register for military service

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All Americans Pitch In

• The United States needed to prepare the economy
  and gather a new labor force to work the
  factories.

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• The unemployment brought about by the Depression
  dropped drastically when thousands of men and
  women found work in defense industries or joined
  the military.

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Rationing

• On the home front, food and products that were
  needed for the war effort were rationed.

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Americans Work Hard

• As war became a part of everyday life, Americans
  at home increased their war efforts by recycling
  products and planting victory gardens.

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Women in the Work Force

• Due to the draft, many women replaced men in the
  workforce.
• Rosie the Riveter became the symbol of the new
  working woman.

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Japanese Internment

• Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor,
  President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive
  Order 9066.
• This Order allowed the military to circumvent the
  constitutional safeguards of American citizens in
  the name of national defense.
• The order set up the evacuation and mass
  incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese
  ancestry living in the West Coast.

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Military Necessity

• Most who were forced to evacuate were either U.S.
  citizens or legal permanent resident aliens.

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• These Japanese Americans, half of whom were
  children, were incarcerated for up to 4 years,
  without due process of law, in bleak, remote
  camps surrounded by barbed wire.

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• They were forced to evacuate their homes and
  leave their jobs. President Roosevelt himself
  called the 10 facilities concentration camps.

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Korematsu v. Unites States, 1944

• This Supreme Court Case challenged the
  constitutionality of these Japanese Internment
  camps when Korematsu, a Japanese American,
  refused to leave his home in California and was
  convicted in federal court.
• Koremastsu lost. The Court statedhardships are
  part of warCitizenship has its responsibilities
  as well as its privileges, and in time of war the
  burden is always heavier.

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An Apology, Too Little Too Late

• It was not until the Civil Liberties Act of 1988
  that the government admitted the internment camps
  were wrong.
• All surviving victims of the WW II internment
  were issued 20,000 in reparations.

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A War for Equality

• Ethnic and racial minorities did not always
  benefit from the opportunities offered by the
  war.
• Yet, in 1941, President Roosevelt signed an
  Executive order stating that jobs and training be
  given to African Americans in defense plants.
• As a result, over 2 million African Americans
  migrated from the South to the North.

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Segregation in the Armed Forces

• The armed forces remained segregated It made a
  mockery of wartime goals to fight fascism only to
  come back to the same kind of discrimination and
  racism here in this country.
• -Alexander J. Allen

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The War Ends

• On May 8, 1945 Germany surrendered to the Allies.
• Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt met at Yalta (in
  the Soviet Crimea) in February of 1945 to discuss
  Germanys fate and other issues.

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Hiroshima and Nagasaki

• In August of 1945, to avoid a long and deadly
  land war with the Japanese, President Henry
  Truman decided to drop two Atomic Bombs on the
  Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945.

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The War Ends

• They decided to divide Germany and its capital
  into four zones, each controlled by a different
  Allied Power.
• They also discussed the establishment of the
  United Nations and plans to end the war with
  Japan.

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