Chapter 35
America in World War II
1941-1945
Japanese Internment
• Pearl Harbor= instant unity, no real
worries about immigrants’ loyalties
• Except the Japanese!
• Issesi and Nisei racism, fear, greed
• Executive Order 9066= “evacuation
from west coast”
• Korematsu vs. US 1944
• 1988= apology and reparations for
damage
Campaign Against the Japanese,
Hollywood, California, 1923
Anti-Japanese Poster, World War II
Government propaganda during the war exploited racial stereotypes, often depicting
Japanese people with big teeth and poor vision.
Japanese American Evacuees,
1942
After the U.S. Army’s Western Defense Command ordered the forced evacuation of
all Japanese and Japanese Americans living on the Pacific Coast, families had no
choice but to pack up whatever they could carry and move to the “relocation
centers” hastily erected farther inland.
Three Boys at Manzanar, by Toyo Miyatake (1895–1979)
Miyatake was an acclaimed Japanese American photographer with his own studio in Los
Angeles before he and his family were evacuated to the Manzanar internment camp. He was
determined to pursue his craft there, at first working secretly and then with the knowledge of the
authorities. His pictures are the only photographic records of daily camp life taken by an
internee. The guards allowed him to step outside the barbed-wire fence to take this photograph.
Mobilization
• Military strategy= focus on Hitler first, use
other Allies after to knock Japan out
• Needed time and production to assist in
war effort massive costs
• War Productions Board
• Liberty Ships built by Henry J. Kaiser
• Increased farm production needed
• Office of Price Administration
• War Labor Board
• Smith Connally Anti-strike Act June 1943
More than 6 million women—more than 3 million of them homemakers who had never before
worked for wages—entered the work force during World War II. In contrast to the experience of
women workers in World War I, many of these newly employed women continued as wage
workers after the war ended.
Migration and Racial Issues
• Braceros Program
• $6 million in contracts to Sunbelt
• 1.6 million blacks left South= racial
tension (mechanized cotton picker)
• A Philip Randolph Fair Employment
Practices Commission
• Native American migration to cities
• 1943 Zoot Suit Riot
• 1943 Detroit Race Riot
Few events in American history have moved the American people about so
massively as World War II. The West and the South boomed, and several
warindustry cities grew explosively. A majority of migrants from the South were
blacks; 1.6 million African Americans left the region in the 1940s.
Navajo Code Talkers, 1943
One of the best-kept secrets of World War II was the use of the Navajo language
in a Marine Corps code designed to confuse the Japanese. Two marines in the
leatherneck unit made up of Native Americans from Arizona and New Mexico
transmitted in code during the battle for Bougainville Island in the South Pacific in
1943.
Growing Economy
• By end of war, GNP doubled=
consumer spending!
• Welfare state as a result of the war
• War=National debt
Pacific Theater of War
• Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Guam,
Wake Island, Philippines, Hong Kong,
Malaya (rubber and tin)
• Burma Road Chiang Kai Shek
• General Douglas MacArthur in
Philippines retreat to Bataan and
Corregidor
• MacArthur ordered to Australia early
1942 “I shall return”
Corregidor and Bataan
Assaulting Japanese island fortresses in the Pacific was a bloody, costly business. These
American soldiers perished as they stepped ashore at Buna beach in New Guinea in 1942. Their
damaged landing craft wallows in the surf behind them. Appearing in Life magazine on
September 20, 1943, nearly two years after Pearl Harbor, this was the first photograph of dead
GIs that the War Department allowed to be published.
Pacific Theater of War
• US/Filipino forces (75,000) forced to
surrender April 10, 1942 (Corregidor=
May 6)
• Bataan Death March
• Japan moving toward Australia Battle
of Coral Sea May 1942
• Battle of Midway June 1942 (Admiral
Chester Nimitz)
Pacific Theater of War
• Island hopping= US strategy
• August 1942 Guadalcanal
• Pushed out of New Guinea by August
1944
• June 1944: Marianas and Battle of
Philippine Sea
European Theater of War
• Battle of the AtlanticGerman Enigma
Code
• In North Africa Field Marshall Erwin
Rommel pushed toward Suez Canal
• Blocked by General Bernard
Montgomery at Battle of El Alamein
• Nazis moved toward Stalingrad hold
at any cost!
Soft Underbelly
• USSR needed a 2nd front France?
• Churchill wanted northern Africa and Italy
• Operation Torch November 1942 headed
by General Dwight D. Eisenhower
• Casablanca Conference
• Attacked Sicily and Italy August 1943Mussolini deposed
• Germany invaded- Battles of Monte
Cassino and Anzio to reach Rome
Operation Overlord
• Teheran Conference- decided on
invasion through France
• D Day: June 6, 1944= 1st day with
amphibious landing in Normandy
• Combined with French from south=
Paris liberated by August 1944
Allies Landing in Normandy, June
6, 1944
Liberating France
A GI from Des Moines, Iowa, receives a kiss of welcome from an elderly French
couple after American troops liberated their town of St. Sauveur in August 1944.
End of War in Europe
• Starting December 1944: bombing raids
on Germany pushing them back
• Battle of the Bulge: last Nazi offensive
• March 1945: Us troops at the Rhine
River met Russians near Berlin
• May 7, 1945: Germany surrendered,
May 8th= VE Day
World War II in Europe and North Africa, 1939–1945
Battle of the Bulge, December 1944–January 1945
End of War in Pacific
• Japanese pushed out of New Guinea,
MacArthur moved on Philippines
• Return to Leyte island Battle of Leyte
Gulf October 1944- decimated
Japanese navy
• Moved onto Luzon to liberate Manila (July
1945)
• Battle of Iwo Jima March 1945
• Battle of Okinawa April-June 1945
The Flag Raising at Iwo Jima
Atop Mount Suribachi, press photographer Joe Rosenthal snapped this dramatic
picture, probably the most famous of the war.
Atomic Bombs
• Invasion of Japan set for November
• Potsdam Conference- unconditional
surrender called for
• Manhattan Project completed ($2 billion)
• August 6, 1945: Hiroshima bombed
(180,000 dead, wounded, dying)
• August 9, 1945: Nagasaki bombed
• August 14, 1945= surrender, September
2, 1945= VJ Day
Hiroshima, Japan, August 1945
Two stunned survivors walk through the unbelievable destruction. The single atomic
blast at Hiroshima killed an estimated 130,000 Japanese.