Transcript Chapter 18 Section 2

Chapter 18
Section 2
The Home Front
Promoting the War
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By this time most Americans supported the war.
The government urged the media to do their part in
keeping morale high
{Movie stars advertised war bonds and traveled
overseas to entertain troops
Hollywood studios began making hundreds of war
films}
Radio stations broadcast war news that was controlled
by the government-run Office of War Information
The war affected the regular programs. Stations cut
spy and sabotage programs during the duration of the
war and others programs banned certain sound
effects they used such as sirens
Life During Wartime
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Americans cut back their use of luxuries to help the
war effort
Americans also planted victory gardens
Fearing an attack on the mainland, cities began
practicing nighttime blackouts (because they thought
brightly lit cities would make easy targets for Japanese
bombers) and practicing air-raid drills
Broadway musicals like Oklahoma became popular as
well
Also as a result of interest in the war more people
starting reading non-fiction books
War time also brought about the first appearance of
paperback books in 1939
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For sixty years
Norman Rockwell
showed the positive
side of American life
in his illustrations. His
most famous are the
ones he drew for the
covers of Saturday
Evening Post.
Rockwell’s
illustrations reminded
people of the reasons
behind the war and
why we were there
without downplaying
the difficulty of the
struggle.
Rosie the Riveter
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Once again women in
America were asked to
return to the workforce in
the absence of soldiers.
Advertisements promoted
{Rosie the Riveter, the
symbol of patriotic
working women.}
Women’s participation in
the workforce gave many
a sense of pride. Without
the efforts of American
women, the United States
could not have produced
the materials necessary
to win the war
Discrimination During the War
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African Americans who went to war were still segregated into
their own units
For some African Americans that stayed home during the war,
many moved into higher paying jobs
Others had a hard time finding work because despite the nostrike pledges, {some white workers staged “hate strikes” to
keep black workers out of high paying factory jobs}
Fearing the possible riots, Roosevelt issued an executive order
prohibiting discrimination in defense plants and government
offices in order to keep A Phillip Randolph from marching on
Washington
On June 25, 1941 Roosevelt created the {Fair Employment
Practices Committee to enforce the order
The FEPC investigated companies to make sure all qualified
applicants, regardless of race, were considered for jobs}
The FEPC was strengthened be an executive order requiring
nondiscriminatory clauses in all war contracts
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Mexican Americans also helped American labor needs and
faced discrimination
Carlos E. Castaneda served as an assistant to the chair of the
FEPC
In 1945 the FEPC ordered a Texas oil company to stop
discrimination against Hispanics
{Under a 1942 agreement between the U.S. and Mexico
thousands of Mexican farm and railroad workers-known as
braceros- came north to work in the Southwest during WWII}
Mexican American youths had adopted the fad of wearing zootsuits
In Los Angeles June 1943 U.S. sailors roamed the streets
looking for zoot-suit clad Mexican Americans in what came to
be know as the zoot-suit riots.
The government eventually came down on the sailors but not
after they had brutally beaten many Mexican Americans
Japanese American Relocation
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During WWII the United States committed a huge injustice
against the Japanese Americans.
{The United States enforced the internment, or the forced
relocation and imprisonment, of Japanese Americans living on
the Pacific coast}
In 1941 about 119,000 people of Japanese ancestry lived in
California, Oregon and Washington.
About 2/3 of them had been born in the United States and were
American Citizens
There was no evidence of disloyalty by the Japanese
Americans, but because of the anti-Japanese attitude in
America at the time they were forced into detention camps.
Because Hawaii’s Japanese population was to large to
relocate, the islands were placed under martial law for the
duration of the war
The entrance to Manzanar, the Japanese internment camp during
World War 2, near lone pine California.