CHAPTER 17
The United States In World War II
SECTION 1: MOBILIZING FOR DEFENSE
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Main Idea: Following the attack on Pearl Harbor,
the United States mobilized for war.
AMERICANS JOIN THE WAR EFFORT
The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor with
the expectation that once Americans had
experienced Japan’s power, they would shrink
from further conflict.
 After Pearl Harbor, eager young Americans
jammed recruiting officers.
 The Selective Service System expanded the draft
and eventually provided another 10 million
soldiers to meet the armed forces’ needs.
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Army Chief of Staff General George
Marshall pushed for the formation of a
Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC).
Women volunteers would serve in noncombat
positions.
 Became law on May 15, 1942.
 Eventually received U.S. Army benefits.
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Worked as nurses, ambulance drivers, radio
operators, electricians, and pilots.
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Many minority races questioned whether or not
this was their war to fight.
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Some, not all, were enlisted however segregation
within still existed.
A PRODUCTION MIRACLE
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Early in February 1942, American newspapers
reported the end of automobile production for
private use.
The nation’s automobile plants were now retooled to
produce planes, boats, tanks, and command cars.
 Many factories around the world were converted to
war production.
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By 1944, despite the draft, nearly 18 million
workers were laboring in war industries, three
times as many as in 1941.
More than 6 million of these new workers were
women.
 Around 2 million minority workers.
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A. Philip Randolph was president and
founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping
Car Porters and the nation’s most
respected African American labor leader.
He protested discrimination both in military
and industry jobs.
 Organized a march on Washington.
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“We Loyal Colored Americans Demand the Right
to Work and Fight for Our Country”
Randolph and Roosevelt conversation led
to Roosevelt backing down.
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Issued an executive order which called for
all employers and labor unions “to provide
for the full and equitable participation of all
workers in defense industries, without
discrimination because of race, creed, color,
or national origin.
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The Office of Scientific Research and Development
(OSRD) was created in 1941 to bring sciences into the
war effort.
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Improved radar and sonar technologies, for locating
submarines underwater.
It encouraged the use of pesticides to fight insects.
The most significant development of the OSRD was
the atomic bomb.

The Manhattan Project
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TAKES
CONTROL
As war production increased, there were fewer
consumer products available for purchase.
 Office of Price Administration (OPA) was created
to control extreme price changes.

Fought inflation by freezing prices on most goods.
 Congress also raised income tax rates and extended
the tax to millions of people.
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The government encouraged the citizens to use
their extra cash to buy war bonds.

The War Production Board (WPA) was created to
ensure that the armed forces and war industries
received the resources they needed to win the
war.
Decided which companies would convert from
peacetime to wartime production.
 Allocated resources to key industries.
 Organized drives to collect certain goods.
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The OPA also set up a system for rationing.
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Establishing fixed allotments of goods deemed
essential for the military.
Under this system, households received ration
books with coupons to be used for buying such
scarce goods.
SECTION 2: THE WAR FOR EUROPE AND
NORTH AFRICA

Main Idea: Allied forces, led by the United States
and Great Britain, battled Axis powers for
control of Europe and Africa.
THE UNITED STATES AND BRITAIN JOIN
FORCES

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill asks to meet with
President Roosevelt.
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They create a remarkable alliance
Churchill arrived at the White House in
December 22, 1941 and stayed for three weeks
creating war plans with Roosevelt.

Churchill believed Germany and Italy were a bigger
threat than Japan therefore urging Roosevelt to go
after Hitler first (than the Pacific).

The Battle of the Atlantic
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After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hitler ordered submarine
raids along the east coast of America.
The German aim was to prevent food and supplies from
reaching Great Britain and the Soviet Union.
In the first four months of 1942, Germans sank 87 ships off
the Atlantic shore.
Seven months into it, German wolf packs had destroyed a
total of 681 Allied ships.
United States were able to combat some of the attacks by
using the convoy system.
By mid 1943, the tide had turned.
Allied tanker Dixie Arrow torpedoed by the German submarine U-71 in 1942.
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Battle of Stalingrad
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Spring 1941 the Germans were ready to roll in the Soviet
Union.
Hitler wanted to capture Soviet oil fields and Stalingrad (a
major industrial center).
On August 19, 1942 the Germans approached Stalingrad.
The German air force prepared the way with nightly
bombing raids over the city.
The whole city was continually under attack. It was
completely destroyed. Stalin urged the citizens to defend his
name.
By the end of September, the Germans controlled 9/10 of
what was left of the city.
When winter set in, the Soviets saw this as an advantage to
use their tanks and counterattack. They were successful.
Although they lost many lives, the Soviet victory was a
major turning point in the war.
THE EASTERN FRONT AND THE
MEDITERRANEAN

While the Battle of Stalingrad continued, Stalin
urged Britain and the United States to open a
“second front” in the Western Europe.
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An invasion across the English Channel would force
Hitler to divert troops from the Soviet front.
Operation Torch

An invasion of Axis-controlled North Africa,
commanded by American General Dwight D.
Eisenhower.

Operation Torch
November 1942, 107,000 Allied troops landed in
North Africa spewing Eastward.
 After many months of heavy fighting, the last of the
Afrika Korps surrendered in May 1943.
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During this operation , Churchill and his
commanders met and agreed only to accept the
unconditional surrender of the Axis powers.

Enemy nations would have to accept whatever terms
of peace the Allies dictated.

The Italian Campaign
Got off to a good start with the capture of Sicily in
the summer of 1943.
 Italian government forced Mussolini to resign.
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Bloody Anzio
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25000 Allied and 30000 Axis powers casualties.
During the year after, German armies continued to
put up strong resistance.
The effort to free Italy did not succeed until 1945,
when Germany itself was close to collapse.

Heroes in Combat
99th Pursuit Squadron, the Tuskegee Airmen. They
won two Distinguished Unit Citations for their
outstanding aerial combat against the German
Luftwaffe.
 92nd Infantry Division, the Buffaloes. The won seven
Legion of Merit awards, 65 Silver Stars, and 162
Bronze Stars for courage under fire.
 Many Mexican American and Japanese Americans
served as well and received many honors.

THE ALLIES LIBERATE EUROPE

Operation Overlord/ D-Day
Dwight D. Eisenhower
 Under direction in England, the Allies gathered a
force of nearly three million British, American, and
Canadian troops.
 Planned to attack Normandy in Northern France.
 To keep everything secret, the allies set up a
phantom army and send messages to the Germans
(making them believe they would attack Calais).
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The go-ahead day was June 6, 1944, the first day of the
invasion.
The largest land-sea-air operation in army history.
German retaliation was brutal.
Despite heavy casualties, the Allies held the beachheads.
After seven days of fighting, the Allies held an 80 mile strip
of France.
General George Patton and the Third Army eventually
reached the Seine River, south of Paris. Two days later the
French capital was liberated from four years of German
control.
By September 1944, the Allies had freed France, Belgium,
and Luxembourg.
These good spirits helped elect Roosevelt to his fourth term
along side Truman.

Battle of the Bulge
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October 1944 Americans captured their first German town,
Aachen.
Hitler responded with a desperate last-grasp offensive.
He ordered troops to recapture Belgium, hoping to disrupt
enemy supply lines and demoralize the Allies.
German tanks drove 60 miles into enemy territory.
The battle raged for a month.
When it was over, Germans had been pushed back, and
little seemed to have changed.
Germans lost costly, numerous troops and goods. They had
nothing left to do but retreat.
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Upon discovery in July of 1944, many allied forces liberated
the concentration camps.
By April 25, 1945, the Soviet Union had stormed Berlin.
The city panicked.
In his underground headquarters in Berlin, Hitler prepared
for the end. He married his long time companion. The same
day he wrote his last letter to the German people.
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In the letter he blamed the Jews for starting the war and his
troops for losing it.
The next day he shot himself and his wife drank poison.
A week later, General Eisenhower accepted the
unconditional surrender of the Third Reich.
On May 8, 1945 the Allies celebrated V-E Day, Victory in
Europe Day. The war was finally over.
President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. He had a stroke.
Truman took on the presidential position.
SECTION 3: THE WAR IN THE PACIFIC

Main Idea: In order to defeat Japan and end the
war in the Pacific, the United States unleashed a
terrible new weapon, the atomic bomb.
THE ALLIES STEM THE JAPANESE TIDE
The Pacific War was a savage conflict fought with
raw courage. Few who took part in the fearsome
struggle would return home unchanged.
 While the Allies agreed that the defeat of the
Nazis was their first priority, the United States
did not wait until V-E Day to move against
Japan.

After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese conquered many
Asian main lands as well as other key areas. This
Japanese advancement was powerful.
 In the Philippines, 80,000 American and Filipino
troops battled the Japanese for control.

At the time of the Japanese invasion in December 1941,
General Douglas MacArthur was in command of Allied
forces on the islands.
 When American and Filipino forces found themselves with
their backs against the wall, Roosevelt ordered MacArthur
and the troops to leave.
 “I shall return.”
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Doolittle’s Raid
In the Spring of 1942, Lieutenant Colonel James
Doolittle led 16 bombers in an attack on Tokyo and
other Japanese cities.
 The next day, Americans awoke to headlines that
read “Tokyo Bombed! Doolittle Do’ed It.”
 Pulling off a Pearl Harbor-style air raid over Japan
lifted America’s sunken spirits.
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Battle of the Coral Sea
The main Allied forces in the Pacific were Americans
and Australians.
 In May 1942 they succeeded in stopping the Japanese
drive toward Australia in the five-day Battle of the
Coral Sea.
 The fighting was done by airplanes.
 Since the first time since Pearl Harbor, a Japanese
invasion had been stopped and turned back.
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The Battle of Midway
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Midway was a strategic island which lies north-west of
Hawaii.
Here the Allies succeeded in stopping the Japanese. The
Americans had broken the Japanese code and knew that
Midway was to be their next target.
Admiral Chester Nimitz, the commander of American naval
forces in the Pacific, moved to defend the island.
By the end of the battle, the Japanese had lost four aircraft
carriers, a cruiser, and 250 plans.
This battle was a turning point in the Pacific War. Soon the
Allies began “island hopping.” Island by island they won
territory back from the Japanese.
THE ALLIES GO ON THE OFFENSIVE

The first Allied offensive began in August 1942
when 19,000 troops stormed Guadalcanal in the
Solomon Islands.
This marked Japan’s first defeat on land, but not its
last.
 General MacArthur later stated, “People of the
Philippines: I have returned.”
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The Japanese tried a new tactic during the Battle
of Leyte Gulf called, the kamikaze.
Suicide-plane attack; in which Japanese pilots
crashed their bomb laden planes into Allied ships.
 Translation: divine wind
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Americans watched these attacks with “a strange
mixture of respect and pity.”
 Despite the damage done by the kamikazes, the
Battle of Leyte Gulf was a disaster for Japan.
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After retaking much of the Philippines and
liberating the American prisoners of war there,
the Allies turned to Iwo Jima, an island that was
crucial to America.
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It was crucial to America as a base from which
heavily loaded bombers might reach Japan.
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The Battle of Okinawa
In April 1945, U.S. Marines invaded Okinawa.
 The Japanese unleashed more than 1,900 kamikaze
attacks on the Allies during the Okinawa campaign.
 The Allies faced a fierce opposition and experienced
many causalities.
 This battle was a chilling foretaste of what the Allies
imagined the invasion of Japan’s home islands would
be.
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THE ATOMIC BOMB ENDS THE WAR
The taking of Iwo Jima and Okinawa opened the
way for an invasion of Japan.
 President Truman saw only one way to avoid the
invasion of Japan– the atomic bomb.
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The Manhattan Project
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The atomic bomb was helped researched and created by
General Leslie Groves and J. Robert Oppenheimer.
It was the best kept secret of the war.
At its peak, more than 600,000 people were involved in the
project, although few knew its purpose.
The first test of the bomb took place on July 16, 1945 in
New Mexico. THE BOMB WORKED.
Truman did not hesitate in deciding to use the bomb to end
the war.
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Hiroshima and Nagasaki
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On August 6, a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay
released an atomic bomb, code named Little Boy, on
Hiroshima, an important Japanese military center.
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Every building dropped. Within forty three seconds
Hiroshima had ceased to exist.
Japan’s leaders refused to surrender.
Three days later, a second bomb, code named Fat
Man, was dropped on Nagasaki, leveling the city.
By the end of the year, an estimated 200,000 people
had died as a result of injuries and radiation
poisoning.
On September 2nd, formal surrender ceremonies took
place.
REBUILDING BEGINS
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With Japan’s surrender, the Allies turned to the
challenge of rebuilding war-torn nations.
The Yalta Conference
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In February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin all met
at the Black Sea resort city of Yalta in the Soviet Union.
They toasted to the defeat of Germany.
For eight grueling days they discussed the fate of Germany
and the postwar world.
Stalin favored a harsh approach towards Germany.
Churchill strongly disagreed, and Roosevelt served as
mediator.
Roosevelt wanted Stalin’s support because:
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He hoped the Soviet Union would stand by his side to wage
against Japan in the war that was still happening in the
Pacific.
He wanted Stalin’s support for a new world peace organization,
the United Nations.
A series of compromises were addressed at this
conference.
 Churchill agreed to a zoning of Germany between
the Americans, the British, the Soviets, and the
French.
 Stalin agreed to join in the war against Japan.
 Stalin also agreed to join in on the creation of the
United Nations.
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Nuremberg War Trials
The discovery of Hitler’s death camps led the Allies to
put 24 surviving Nazi leaders on trial for crimes
against humanity, peace, and war crimes.
 In the end, 12 of the 24 defendants were sentenced to
death, and most of the remaining were sent to prison.
 In later trials of lesser leaders, more than 200 more
Nazis were found guilty of war crimes.
 Controversial
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Many Nazis who took part in the Holocaust did indeed go
free.
The principle of individual responsibility was now
firmly entrenched in international law.
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The Occupation of Japan
During the seven-year American occupation,
MacArthur reshaped Japan’s economy by introducing
free-market prices that led to a remarkable economic
recovery.
 He also reshaped their government and called for a
new constitution. To this day, their constitution is
called the MacArthur Constitution.
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Human Rights Legacy
The United Nations adopted the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights which voiced the
world’s commitment to human dignity and
nondiscrimination and formed the basis for
international human rights law.
 Also in 1948, the UN adopted a resolution that made
genocide a crime under international law.
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SECTION 4: THE HOME FRONT
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Main Idea: After World War II, Americans
adjusted to new economic opportunities and
harsh social tensions.
OPPORTUNITY AND ADJUSTMENT
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In contrast to the Great Depression, World War II
was a time of opportunity for millions of Americans.
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At the end of the war, the nation emerged as the world’s
dominant economic and military power.
The war years were good ones for working people.
AS defense industries boomed, unemployment fell to a low
of 1.2 percent.
 Average weekly pay grew 10 percent during the war.
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Farmers benefited from good weather, improvements
in farm machinery and fertilizer, and reaped the
profits from rising crop prices.
Women gained employment opportunities during the
war.
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The war triggered one of the greatest mass
migrations in American history.
Americans whose families had lived for decades in
one place suddenly uprooted themselves to seek work
elsewhere.
 California was a major hotspot of migration.
 Cities with defense industries saw a major influx.
 There was a migration of many African Americans
from the South to the North.
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GI Bill of Rights was a bill passed by Congress
that provided education and training for
veterans, paid for by the federal government.
About 7.8 million veterans attended colleges and
technical schools under this bill.
 The act also provided federal loan guarantees to
veterans buying homes or farms or starting new
businesses.
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DISCRIMINATION AND REACTION
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Despite the opportunities that opened up for
women and minorities during the war, old
prejudices and policies persisted.
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African Americans made some progress on the
home front.
Between 1940-1944, the percentage of African
Americans working in skilled or semiskilled jobs rose
from 16 to 30 percent.
 Wherever African Americans moved, however,
discrimination presented tough hurdles.
 In 1942, civil rights leader James Farmer founded an
interracial organization called the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE) to confront the urban segregation in
the North.
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CORE staged their first sit in movement in Chicago.
Tensions rose in cities where migration occurred.
 In 1943 a tidal wave of racial violence swept across
the country.
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This violence made Americans realize how bad racial
tensions had become.
By 1945, over 400 committees had been created to
improve race relations.
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Mexican Americans also experienced prejudice
during the war years.
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In the violent summer of 1943, Los Angeles exploded
in anti-Mexican “zoot-suit” riots.
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The “zoot suit” was a style of dress adopted by MexicanAmerican youths as a symbol of their rebellion against
tradition.
The riots began when 11 sailors in LA reported that
they had been attacked by zoot-suit-wearing Mexican
Americans.
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this charged triggered violence involving thousands of
servicemen and civilians.
During the riots, the Mexicans were stripped of their
dress and beat senseless.
 The riots lasted about a week long.
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INTERNMENT OF JAPANESE AMERICANS
When the war began 120,000 Japanese
Americans lived in the United States. Most of
them were citizens living on the West Coast.
 After the attack on Pearl Harbor, an
overwhelming sense of fear and uncertainty
caused a wave of prejudice against Japanese
Americans.
 Early in 1942, the War Department ordered for
the mass evacuation of all Japanese Americans
from Hawaii.
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General Delos Emmons, the military governor of
Hawaii, resisted the order because the Japanese
Americans made up about 37 percent of the
population.
To remove them would have hindered the economy
and U.S. military operations in Hawaii.
 He was eventually forced to order the internment of
1,444 Japanese Americans, 1 percent of the 37
percent population.
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Confinement
In California, only 1 percent of the people were
Japanese, but they constituted a minority large
enough to stimulate the prejudice of many
whites, without being large enough to effectively
resist internment.
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Newspapers whipped up anti-Japanese sentiment by
running ugly stories attacking Japanese Americans.
On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt
signed an order requiring a removal of people of
Japanese ancestry from California and parts of
Washington, Oregon, and Arizona.
 He justified this step as necessary for national
security.
 In the following weeks the army rounded up
some 110,000 Japanese Americans and shipped
them to ten hastily constructed remote
“relocation centers,” euphemisms for prison
camps.
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About two-thirds were Nisei, or Japanese people born
in this country of parents who emigrated from Japan.
No specific charges were filed against Japanese
Americans, and no evidence of subversion was ever
found.
The Japanese tried to fight for justice in the courts.
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In 1944, the Supreme Court decided that the government’s
policy was justified on the basis of “military necessity.”
After the war, The Japanese American Citizens
League (JACL) pushed the government to compensate
those sent to the camps for their lost property.
In 1965, Congress authorized the spending of $38 million
for that purpose– less than a tenth of Japanese Americans’
actual loses.
 A decade later, Ronald Regan later passed a bill that gave
200,000 to every Japanese American sent to a relocation
camp.
 “We can never fully right the wrongs of the past. But we
can take a clear stand for justice and recognize that serious
injustices were done to Japanese Americans during World
War II.” (George Bush, 1900)
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