Transcript Document
World War II: Continued • Before the war • US enters the war • The front lines • The Pacific • Europe • End of War • Liberating concentration camps • The Homefront • Japanese Internment • Sacrifice and rationing • Women • Double V • Zoot Suit Riots Front Lines > Some key events of World War II • December 1941 - Pearl Harbor • February 1942 - Executive Order mandates internment of Japanese Americans • May-June 1942 - US wins naval superiority in the Pacific • November 1942 - US lands in North Africa • January 1943 - Casablanca Conference announces unconditional surrender policy • February 1943 - Soviet victory over Germans in Stalingrad • May 1943 - German troops surrender in Africa • July 1943 - Allied invasion of Italy • June-August 1944 - US lands in Normandy; liberates Paris • November 1944 - FDR is elected to fourth term • February 1945 - Yalta conference renews US-Soviet alliance • February-June 1945 - US captures Iwo Jima and Okinawa • April 1945 - FDR dies; Harry Truman becomes president • May 1945 - Germany surrenders • August 1945 - US drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Japan surrenders Front Lines > War in Europe Front Lines > Wartime broadcasts of Edward Murrow and others from London: Trafalgar Square, Rooftop air raid report, and US bombing run Front Lines > Cartoon from Yank: The Army Weekly, 1943 Front Lines > Ben Hurwitz, inside a troop ship, 1943 Front Lines > An African American GI escorts captured German soldiers Front Lines > War in the Pacific Front Lines > War in the Pacific from the soldiers’ point of view U.S. Marine, Guam, 1944 This foxhole is about two feet deep. Now, I would like to be able to speak louder and with more clarity, but unfortunately, the slightest noise, the slightest rustle, will draw fire not only from the Japanese, who are someplace, perhaps, in the dense foliage around us or up on the ridge, but from our own Marines who are huddled nearby in foxholes like this one. I don’t know how they [the Japanese] do it. We can lie here absolutely breathless listening to the slightest sounds and not see anything—in fact, not hear anything— and then we wake up and find that they’re all around us. And it’s a very tough and tedious job to root them out, [inaudible] them and exterminate them. We lost quite a few people in our unit. A very popular captain was killed. Yoshida Kashichi, Guadalcanal, 1942 No matter how far we walk We don’t know where we’re going Trudging along under dark jungle growth When will this march end? Hide during the day Move at night Deep in the lush Guadalcanal jungle Our rice is gone Eating roots and grass Along the ridges and cliffs Leaves hide the trail, we lose our way Stumble and get up, fall and get up Covered with mud from our falls Blood oozes from our wounds No cloth to bind our cuts Flies swarm to the scabs No strength to brush them away Fall down and cannot move How many times I’ve thought of suicide. Front Lines > American soldier killed by mortar fire, 1944 Front Lines > Bill Maudlin, “Up Front,” Stars and Stripes, 1945 “Fresh, spirited American troops, flushed with victory, are bringing in thousands of hungry, ragged, battle-weary prisoners.” End of War > Bodies of victims in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp End of War > Six-year-old orphan wearing a Buchenwald badge Internment > Map of Japanese-American Internment Camps Internment > “How to Tell Chinese from a Jap,” from an Army manual Internment > Inside the fence of an internment camp Internment > Fred Korematsu with a letter of apology from the White House Home Front > Winchester poster urging sacrifice Home Front > Collier’s cover, on rationing, 1942 Home Front > 1943 poster on conserving fuel Home Front > Cigarette ad in McCall’s, 1942 Home Front > Job listings board in Detroit, July 1941 Home Front > “It’s Boats, Boats, Boats!” OWI poster Home Front > “America’s Answer! Production” Office for Emergency Management poster, 1942 Women > Rosie the Riveter Poster Women > After work in a Richmond, California, shipyard Women > War Manpower Commission recruiting posters Double V > Poster for a Double V campaign of 1942 Double V > Members of the United Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Employees Union, Detroit, 1942 Double V > March on Washington Movement Flyer, ca. 1941 and a photograph of March on Washington, 1963 Double V > Policemen arresting women during the riots in Harlem, 1943 Double V > The Detroit Riot, June 21, 1943 Zoot suit > Clyde Duncan from Gainsville, VA, in the New York Times, 1943 and jazz musician Cab Calloway, 1943 Zoot suit > Cartoon, Mercury Herald and News, April 25, 1943 Zoot suit > Los Angeles police officer pretends to clip the hair of a zoot-suiter; headline from Los Angeles Examiner, 1942 Zoot suit > Mexican Americans stripped of zoot suits during the riots, Life, 1943