Transcript The Home Front

World War II
The Home Front
Life on the home front began to change almost
immediately. Christmas 1941 was a somber
holiday. FDR proclaimed New Year’s Day 1942 a
National Day of Prayer and Americans greeted
the New Year with absolute confidence in
victory. Anger at everything Japanese was visible
through adults and children.
•School children kept war maps, proudly
displayed bits of uniforms, wore unit patches on
their sleeves, read comic books such as “Spy
Smasher,” and “GI Joe,” and used their
allowances to buy 10- and 25 cent defense
stamps.
•Students took part in school air-raid drills,
crouching beneath their desks in the approved
fashion until the “all-clear” buzzer sounded.
Young kids picked streets, back yards, and attics
clean of paper, tinfoil, rubber, iron, and tin cans
for scrap drives.
•Church attendance grew throughout the war
and more and more homes displayed blue-star
emblems.
•As the war went on, gold stars would replace
many of the blue ones, signifying the loss of
another loved one.
•America began to emerge out of the depression
and for the first time in years, Americans had
good on their food on their tables and money in
their pockets.
•The Office of Civil Defense enlisted more
than 20 million volunteers and organized most
communities down to the block level, adding
such expressions as “block warden,” “blackout,”
and “dim-out” to our wartime vocabulary.
•Volunteers studied aircraft identification
silhouettes and stored sandbags, helmets,
flashlights, buckets and hoses for use in the
event of an air raid.
The Internment
of Japanese
Americans
•In 1942 war time hysteria and
irrational fears prompted the
U.S. government to order over
100,000 Japanese Americans
living on the West Coast to leave
their homes and live in
internment camps.
•FDR signed Executive Order
9066.
Internment Camps
The Internment of Japanese Americans
•In the case of
Korematsu vs. U.S. in
1944 the U.S. Supreme
Court upheld the
governments internment
policy as justified in
wartime
•In 1988 the federal
government agreed that
an injustice had been
done and awarded
financial compensation
to those alive who had
been interned.
The Internment
of German and
Italian Americans
From the time the Kennedy Camp received its first
internees on April 21, 1942, until it was phased out and
converted into a prisoner of war camp on October 1, 1944,
more than 3,500 aliens passed in and out its gates. The
population of the camp varied between 700 and 1,200
detainees.
Mobilizing the Home Front
•The Selective Service Act required the registration of all men
ages 21-35 for one year military service within the United States.
The Army had grown to more than 1.4 million men and 800,000
reservists by July 1941. After PH, men ages 18-45 were subject to
the draft. All together more than 15 million
men and women would serve.
•In 1942, the War Production Board directed industrial conversion
to war production. The efforts of 13 million workers and 185,999
factories contributed nationwide. Lockheed in Marietta, GA built
the P 38 lightening fighter plane and was the only plane built for
the entire duration of the
war.
The P-38 was responsible for shooting down more
Japanese aircraft than any other U.S. Army Air Force
type during the war!
During World War II the Army
Corps of Engineers needed to
hide the Lockheed Burbank
Aircraft Plant to protect it from
a possible Japanese air attack.
They covered it with camouflage
netting to make it look like a rural
subdivision from the air.
BEFORE: The Lockheed
Factory in Marietta, Georgia
AFTER: The Lockheed
Factory covered
P-38 Bomber Plane made at Lockheed in
Marietta, Ga
Rationing
The federal government established
the Office of Price Administration in
April 1941 to oversee the marketplace
so that goods in short supply could,
through rationing, be made available to
consumers on an equitable basis and to
regulate prices in order to prevent
runaway inflation. The OPA began by
controlling raw materials used in
manufacturing, then expanded to
RATION consumer goods.
The most unpopular item rationed was
gasoline!
The ration stamps in each book represented “points” that
were needed to buy the restricted items. Each person
received 64 red stamps for meat, fish, and dairy products
and 48 blue stamps for processed foods each month. The
number of points needed for a particular product varied
with the scarcity of goods. Applesauce, for example,
required 10 blue points or stamps in March 1943 and 25
twelve months later.
•By the end of 1942, half of U.S automobiles were
issued an 'A' sticker which allowed 4 gallons of
fuel per week. That sticker was issued to owners
whose use of their cars was nonessential.
•Hand the pump serviceman your Mileage Ration
Book coupons and cash, and she (yes, female
service station attendants because the guys were
over there) could sell you three or four gallons a
week, no more.
•For nearly a year, A-stickered cars were not to
be driven for pleasure at all.
Women at Work
•More WOMEN went to work. With men
going to war, demand for labor shook up
old prejudices about sex roles in the
workplace and military.
•Rosie the Riveter posters reflected this
and women went to work “for the
duration.” Older, married women went
to work for the first time and by 1945
24% of all married women had gone to
work.
•Defense jobs however, would be the
first to cut workers when the war ended.
Six million entered the workforce, an
increase of 50% and 110% in
manufacturing
African Americans in WWII
•More than 500,000 Blacks served in
the armed forces in every branch and in
every theater of the war. Blacks were
segregated.
•In 1940 office candidate schools were
desegregated except those for Air
Force cadets.
•A separate flight school at Tuskeegee,
Alabama trained black pilots.
•More than 600 served in combat and
the Tuskeegee Airmen distinguished
themselves proudly.
African Americans on the Home Front
•In 1941 A. Philip Randolph, head
of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
Porters, organized a march on
Washington, DC, demanding an end
to discrimination in defense
industries.
•They agreed to call off the march
in exchange for an executive order
banning discrimination in defense
work and in training programs.
•The federal government set up the
Fair Employment Practices
Commission (FEPC). The Congress
of Racial Equality(CORE) was
founded in 1942.
Atomic Bomb: Hiroshima and
Nagasaki Aug. 1945
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FDR had a team of scientists working secretly on the
Manhattan Project-development of A-bomb
FDR dies in April, 1945
Harry Truman becomes president
Project is so secret that when Truman was V.P. he
didn’t even know of the A-bomb
Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer-develop bomb
Truman is notified of bomb and decides to use it
against Japan
Aug. 6th, 1945 First A-bomb is dropped on Hiroshimadestroyed the entire city
Aug. 9th, 1945 A-bomb is dropped on Nagasaki
Both bombs kill close to 200,000
Sig? Caused Japan to surrender ENDS THE WAR!
The Los Alamos
Experiments
Albert Einstein and
Robert Oppenheimer
On July 16, 1945, an implosion
bomb was successfully tested
near Alamogordo, New
Mexico. The production of
this bomb, and its gun-type
counterpart, ushered in the
atomic age. The development
of these weapons represented
the culmination of more than
three years of intense
research and development
effort. At Los Alamos,
science and technology
combined to produce a weapon
of incredible power; enough
even to end the most
destructive war in history.
The Los Alamos Experiments
Throughout the summer of 1943, hundreds of bewildered families
moved to Los Alamos to begin an unforgettable adventure.
Scientific personnel had only a very general idea about the nature
of the work that awaited them. They were instructed to tell their
families nothing. Most administrative and technical personnel knew
only that they were moving to an unknown place for an unknown
length of time.
Truman’s Decision
to drop the
Atomic Bomb
Hiroshima,
Japan
August 6,
1945
Hiroshima: after the bomb
Hiroshima: after the bomb
Hiroshima: after the bomb
Nagasaki: before the bomb
Nagasaki,
Japan
August 9,
1945
Nagasaki: after the bomb
Cost and Significance of WWII
1. Most costly war in history in terms of human and
material resources expended
2. It has been estimated at more than $1 trillion, more
than all other wars combined
3. More than 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust
4. 55 million dead—25 million of those military and 30
million civilian
5. The world balance of power was affected as Britain,
France, Germany, and Japan ceased to be great
powers in the traditional military sense
6. The United States and the USSR became super
powers  the cold war began
7. Beginning of the atomic age