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The Homefront: Life in Wartime America
- Why is WWII remembered as "the good war?"
- What were the effects of WWII on American society?
- How did it affect social conditions for Japanese, black, etc
Over time, the disturbing nature of the war has been downplayed and the
noble bits admired.
1984 "The Good War" by Studs Terkel
- Asserts that this was a noble war
- Combat an evil fascist, expansionist regime
- Americans cooperated beyond ethnic, racial divisions on war bond,
volunteer campaigns
- The war brought prosperity to a depressed nation
- GI Bill of Rights gave federal support to GIs
- More, better jobs
- Advanced the Civil Rights movement by discrediting anti-semitic
Nazi Gremany
- Provided women with unprecedented opportunities in Civil Service,
military, labor force.
- The war did not curtail public rights: freedom of press, speech
protected
- This rosy view is imperfect att best
- Rapid erosion of black and women rights after the war.
- Japanese internment camps
- The romanticism is not a historical belief, a nostalgic
one---shaped by Hollywood
- Shaped by advertising of the gov't
- Freedom of Speech
- Freedom of Worship
- Freedom from Want
- Freedom from Fear
The Arsenal of Democracy
- War Powers Act allowed Roosevelt to reorganize the gov't, modifying
business, even censoring mail
- Production was a primary concern of FDR
- Conversion of industries to wartime production produced huge
numbers of Jeeps, Tanks, trucks, warplanes.
- Outpaced Hitler, Mussolini, Japan combined.
- By 1945, US produces half the goods in the world
- Revenue Act of 1942 covered the huge cost of the war w/ income tax
- The rest was borrowed in the form of war bonds
- Sextupled the national debt
- Jobs were plentiful. Many Americans moved to the jobs
- Homeland shortages created by shipping to Allies and military
- Price ceilings prevented gouging of commodities
- Rationing: coupons for amount of basic goods
- Propaganda
- Pushed image of gov't war policies like war bonds and donating to
the troops being to protect freedom and democracy.
But the war didn't actually support freedom for *everyone.*
- Esp. black people, in an article in a black newspaper, anti-lyncher
says "if my country cannot outlaw lynching...to hell with Pearl Harbor."
- Double Victory = Stop, at home, aggression, prejudice, discrimination
- Defense Industries were critical for Civil Rights; black workers,
who hoped they could find work in defense plants, were often shut
out or placed in menial, low-paying jobs
- Protests began in Spring 1941 by A Philip Randolph
- Called for end to discrimination in Defense/Military
- March on Washington, expected to be huge
- Gets Roosevelt to sign executive order banning discrimination
and protecting rights for African-Americans
- Black residents suffered in what was essentially tenements in
Detroit
- City tried to construct black housing project in white nbhood
- Cross lit in front; Detroit race riot of 1943, showing that
black status caused social unrest
- Grew massively, both groups attacking the other based on
rumors
- Ended by army troops in tanks with automatic weapons
- Terrified residents of Paradise Valley
- No white people killed by police, 17 black people
Tuskegee airmen, creation of segregated (black-only) platoons run by
white officers (black officers could not control white soldiers).
- Several more years until the military was really integrated
- 1942 Emergency Farm Labor "Bracero" Program
- Mexico agreed to provide ~70K seasonal, undocumented workers
- US agreed to ensure work conditions
- Extended after the war, annual numbers increased
- Zoot Suit Riots
- Mexican-American teens in baggy pants, long-tailed coats
- Sailors patrolled and viciously beat zoot suiters
- Latino Civil Rights movement eventually emerged by veterans
realizing they had rights to participate fully in US
Women worked in military, 8mn women entered the workforce
- Rosie the Riveter, Rosina Bonavita.
- Many men opposed, purporting domestic work
- Women were eager to escape grinding domestic life and wanted the
ability to work in factory and make money
- Often women workers were wives entering was-exclusive industries
- Still worked in sex-segregated work like clerical/service
- Earned 65% of what men made
Discrimination against Japanese
- Hunger for vengeance against Nisei, Japanese descent living in US.
- "No Japanes wanted," banks stopped cashing checks, grocers stop
serving them food
- Hastily constructed War Relocation Camps
- guarded by sentry towers and machine guns
- Internment Camps initiated by Roosevelt
- 75% were already American citizens
- No trials, due process, or concerns of civil rights
- "Military necessity"---no evidence of any espionage
- Actually just to quell fears of white Americans after Pearl..
- Japanese Americans served in the Armed Forces
- Only in 1983 did US government even acknowledge the injustice
- $20K each in compensation for still-living nisei
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