Chapter 17: The U.S. in WWII Section 1: Mobilization on the Home Front

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Chapter 17The U.S. in WWIISection
1Mobilization on the Home Front
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Standards

• 11.7.3, 5, 6
• .3 Identify the roles and sacrifices of
  individual American soldiers, as well as the
  unique contributions of the special fighting
  forces (e.g., the Tuskegee Airmen, the 442nd
  Regimental Combat team, the Navajo Code Talkers).
  
• .5 Discuss the constitutional issues and impact
  of events on the U.S. home front, including the
  internment of Japanese Americans (e.g., Fred
  Korematsu v. United States of America) and the
  restrictions on German and Italian resident
  aliens the response of the administration to
  Hitler's atrocities against Jews and other
  groups the roles of women in military
  production and the roles and growing political
  demands of African Americans.
• .6 Describe major developments in aviation,
  weaponry, communication, and medicine and the
  war's impact on the location of American industry
  and use of resources.

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Objectives

• Following lecture and reading of this section,
  students will be able to
• Explain how the U.S. expanded its armed forces in
  response to Americas entry into WWII.
• Describe wartime mobilization of industry, labor,
  scientists, and the media.
• Describe the efforts of the federal government to
  control the economy.

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Selective Service and the GI

• Japan thought they had scared us with their
  attack on Pearl Harbor
• If anything, the attack gave a perfect excuse to
  get into the FDR knew we had to fight
• After Pearl Harbor, 5 million men volunteered for
  military service
• With the Selective Service System, 10 million
  more soldiers were drafted
• High s to meet needs of the two-front war
• 8 weeks basic training, then off to war

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Expanding the Military

• Womens corps
• General George Marshall, Army Chief of Staff,
  calls for women to increase of soldiers
• Womens Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC)women in
  noncombat positions
• Thousands of women enlisted
• auxiliary dropped from their titles (1943)
• Got full U. S. army benefits
• Worked as
• Nurses Electricians
  Pilots
• Ambulance Drivers Radio Operators

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Recruiting and Discrimination

• Minority groups, especially African Americans,
  are denied basic citizenship rights
• They are only allowed to serve in segregated
  units
• Question whether they should fight for democracy
  in other countries when they do not even have
  basic rights here in America

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Dramatic Contributions

• 300,000 Mexican Americans join armed forces
• 1 million African Americans served
• Lived worked in segregated units
• Mostly non-combat positions
• Saw combat late in the war
• 13,000 Chinese Americans served
• 33,000 Japanese Americans served
• Spies interpreters on the front lines
• 25,000 Native Americans enlisted

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The Industrial Response

• Factories converted from civilian production to
  war production
• Car factories? boats, planes, tanks, command cars
• Bed spreads makers? mosquito nets
• Soft-drinks producers? explosive shells
• Shipyards defense plants expanded and new ones
  were built
• Produced ships and arms rapidly
• Used prefabricated parts
• People worked at record speeds
• Built ships in 4 days!

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Labors Contribution

• Nearly 18 million workers worked in war
  industries
• 6 million are women
• Paid about 60 of mans wage for same job
• Over 2 million minorities were hired
• faced strong discrimination
• A. Philip Randolph, organized a march on D.C.
  which could have been very divisive
• FDR issued an executive order forbidding
  discrimination in the workplace

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Mobilization of Scientists

• Office of Scientific Research and Development
  (OSRD)
• Developed new technologies medicines
• Pesticides
• Radar
• Sonar
• Manhattan Project (division of the OSRD)
  developed the atomic bomb
• Later the bomb would be used on Japan to end the
  war

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Economic Controls

• Office of Price Administration (OPA)
• Fought inflation by freezing prices on goods
• Raised and extended income taxes, which lowered
  demand for scarce goods
• Encouraged the purchase of war bonds
• Rationing (stamps)
• Common people could only buy certain amounts of
  goods because the military needed their share

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Economic Controls

• War Production Board (WPB)
• Decided which companies would convert from
  consumer production to wartime production
• Allocated raw materials
• Organized collection of recyclable materials
• Paper, tin, scrap metal, rags, cooking fat