THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED
STATES 1877-1945
LECTURE 10
U.S. AND WORLD WAR TWO
AFTER PEARL HARBOR
• Losses in the Pacific (Wake Island, Gilbert
Islands, Japan takes Burma, Hong Kong,
Singapore, Java)
• 1942: loss of the Philippines, defeat at
Corregidor
• Death march of Bataan
• Japanese push into the South Pacific
BATAAN DEATH MARCH
• A Japanese war crime
• 75,000 American and Filippino soldiers forced
on a 97 km march
• One week march in tropical heat
• Physical abuse: beating, starvation, murder,
surrendering soldiers seen as coward
• War criminals: Masaru Homma, (1945) Hideki
Tojo (1958) were executed
BATAAN DEATH MARCH
TURNING POINT AT THE PACIFIC
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1942: Battle of the Coral Sea-saving Australia
1942: Battle at Midway
Admiral Nimitz v. Admiral Yamamoto
Greatest naval battle fought without ships
(bombers, carriers)
BATTLE AT MIDWAY
MOBILIZATION AT HOME
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German submarine warfare in the Atlantic
Government orders military production
Extending military service to age 18-45
15 million people drafted
Churchill: Once the fire is lit under the boiler
there is no limit to the power it can generate
ECONOMIC CONVERSION AND
MOBILIZATION
• War Production Board
• Office of Scientific Research and Development
(radar, sonar)
• War bonds
• Full employment
ECONOMIC MOBILIZATION
• Federal government takes an active role in the
economy
• Guarantees loans, provides subsidies,
eliminates bidding
• Automobile industry converted to wartime
production
• 100,000 planes are produced by the end of
the war
ECONOMIC MOBILIZATION
• Office of Price Administration
• Established in 1942
• Freezes prices, controls rents, institutes
rationing
• Promoting self-sacrifice: use it up, wear it out,
make it do, or do without!
EFFECT ON SOCIETY
• Women: employment in previously male
dominated jobs
• Rosie the riveter, 6 million women enter the labor
force
• Women Army Corps WACS
• Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency
Service WAVES
• Do your part, free a man for service!
• Older,married women in the workforce
ROSIE THE RIVETER
EFFECTS ON SOCIETY
• Blacks:
• 1941: March on Washington (NAACP, Brotherhood of
the Sleeping Car Porters) led by A Phillip Randolph
• I million serve in the armed forces and defense
industry
• Segregated units, but start of desegregation efforts
• Govt. reinforces Fair Employment Practices
• Forbidding discrimination in defense work and training
programs
• 1943: Detroit Race Riots
EFFECTS ON SOCIETY
• Japanese: Immigration Act of 1924 bars their
immigration
• 1941: 260,000 Japanese, 150,000 live in Hawaii
(small farmers, business people)
• After Pearl Harbor, fear of Japanese invasion
• Governor of Idaho: The Japs live like rats, breed
like rats and act like rats. We don't want them."
• 10 relocation camps, resembling minimum
security prisons
EFFECTS ON SOCIETY
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Japanese:
War Relocation Camps both for Isei, Nisei
Executive order by FDR authorizing relocations
Manzanar, Topaz,
Japanese seen as security risks
Fears are unfounded
EFFECTS ON SOCIETY
• Japanese:
• 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd
Regimental Combat Team containing Japanese
soldiers fight bravely on the Italian Front.
• Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of
internment: Korematsu v. U.S. (1944)
• Ex parte Endo: Court declares the War
Relocation Authority acted unconstitutionally
in detaining a citizen loyal to the U.S.
EFFECTS ON SOCIETY
• Mexican-Americans
• 1943 Zoot Suit Riot
• Clash between young Mexicans and American
sailors in Los Angeles
• Bracero program 1942-1945
ZOOT SUITERS
THE HOME FRONT
• Women as managers of the home, main task:
rationing and dealing with shortage of domestic
resources
• Carry groceries instead of driving, plant victory
gardens
• Who was Rosie the Riveter?
• Not a promoter of change in society, but the
representation of the ideal female worker
• All day long whether rain or shine, she is part of
the assembly line, she is making history working
for victory
WARTIME PROPAGANDA
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Women do their part for the war
Patriotic duty
High earnings
Glamour of work
Same as housework
Spousal pride
DOMESTIC CONSERVATISM
• Dissatisfaction with New Deal
• Republican resurgence American Liberty
League
• Charles Lindbergh speaks up against U.S.
involvement in the War, June 20th 1941
• Rolling back labor legislation
• Criticism of working women
• Children left alone, increased youth crime
TURNING POINT IN EUROPE
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1941: Germany attacks the Soviet Union
1942: Defeat of Afrika Korps at El Alamein
1943: Stalingrad
1944 June 6 D-Day
1945 May 8 V-E Day
D-DAY
• probably the most carefully planned and
executed military operation in history
• combined amphibious and aerial assault across
the English Channel
• Importance of meteorologic information
• Moon’s influence on tides
• Invasion starts at 6.30 AM
• Decision day, disembarkation day, H hour, D day
D-DAY
• 150,000 men, 30,000 vessels
• 13,000 parachuters, 300 planes dropping 13 000
bombs
• George Hicks: radio broadcast: You see the ships
lying in all directions, just like black shadows on
the grey sky. . . Now planes are going overhead...
Heavy fire now just behind us... bombs bursting
on the shore and along in the convoys.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnomrhP6sV
s
THE PACIFIC OFFENSIVE
• Island hopping
• Three directional Allied offensive
• From Australia to Japan, from Hawaii to the
Central Pacific, a push to Burma, to free
Southeast Asia
• Capturing islands that are strategically
important, bypassing others
IVO JIMA
• Sulphur Islands, needed as an emergency landing strip
for B-29s, preparing for the invasion of Japan
• 36 day battle ,
• 5th Marine Division 28th Marines 110 000 men
• Attack on Mount Suribachi
• throwing human flesh against reinforced concrete.
• 1945, February: flag raising
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnomrhP6sVs
IVO JIMA
IVO JIMA
• ”Among the Americans serving on Iwo island,
uncommon valor was a common virtue."
(Adm. Chester A. Nimitz)
• "Holland, the raising of that flag on Suribachi
means a Marine Corps for the next 500 years."
(Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, after
witnessing the flag raising on 23Feb45)
• Storm'd at with shot and shell Bravely they rode
and well Into the Jaws of Death Into the Mouth of
Hell
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT
• July 16, 1945 Alamogordo test explosion
• 428 000 acre industrial complex in New
Mexico
• It (the explosion) rose from the desert like a
second sun, a searing, brilliant, expanding
ball of fire, and it struck terror in everyone
who witnessed it. Stephen Walker
CLOSING THE WAR
• 1945 August 6: Hiroshima
• 1945 august 9: Nagasaki
• President Truman ordered the dropping of the
A-bomb
• September 2, 1945 Japan surrenders
• World War Two is over
• https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A2KLqIWHzWlUcG8AkIn7
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NUCLEAR DAWN
HIROSHIMA
VJ day
• https://video.search.yahoo.com/video/play;_ylt=A0LEV
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LEGACY OF WORLD WAR TWO
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400,000 deaths
Military, economic, political superpower
Formation of the military-industrial complex
Vast social changes, increasing economic role
for women
• Foreign policy will be built on the expectation
of war
• Beginning of the Cold War