WORLD WAR II:
AMERICAN HOMEFRONT
WACS AND OTHER
CONTRIBUTIONS
• Marshall establishes the Women's Auxiliary Army Corp (WAAC)
• Noncombat duties for women, but not same benefits as men
• Auxiliary status eventually dropped, becomes Women's Army Corp
• Receives same and full benefits as men
• Despite discrimination, many Mexican, Asian, and African, and Native
Americans enlist in the army
• Companies switch to wartime production materials
• What sort of things would they be producing?
EQUAL LABORING RIGHTS FOR ALL
• African Americans still largely not hired for production factories
• Philip Randolph, AfAm labor leader, calls upon African Americans to march
on Washington and show their want to be included
• Roosevelt asks him to call off the march and Randolph refuses
• Roosevelt issues an executive order calling for the inclusion of African
Americans in the workplace
MANHATTAN PROJECT AND
GOVERNMENT CONTROL
• Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) starts work on the
atomic bomb after being tipped off by Albert Einstein
• Starts researching Uranium
• Becomes called the Manhattan Project
• Production for war overtakes production of consumer products
• What happens when demand increases but supply drops?
• Office of Price Administration (OPA)
• Froze prices on most goods, increased income tax rates, and extended tax to
millions of others
• Encouraged people to buy war bonds
• Inflation remained below 30% for entire war
WPB AND RATIONING
• War Production Board (WPB) ensured armed forces and war industries
received resources they needed
• Held nationwide drives to collect resources like scrap metal, paper, rags,
etc.
• Rationing=fixed allotments of goods
• What items would rationing affect?
RACIAL TENSIONS ON THE RISE
• Rise in racial violence at the home front
• James Farmer founds Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to combat the
issues
• Mexican Americans also attacked in the rising racial tension
• Mass beatings for almost a weak fueled by rumors
INTERNMENT OF JAPANESE
AMERICANS
• Rumors fly about potential Japanese American saboteurs
• Japanese get rounded up into internment camps "for their protection and
our protection"
• Two-thirds were Nisei (born in the United States from emigrated Japanese
citizens)
• Most citizens sold their belongings and housing for less than the actual value
as they were being forced to leave it
• Korematsu v. United States: evacuating Japanese Americans is legal based
on "military necessity"
POPULATION MIGRATIONS AND
ADJUSTMENTS
• World War II saw massive migrations from the south into industrialized
northern cities.
• What reasons could there be for this?
• As some GIs returned home, there was trouble readjusting to society
• GI Bill of Rights: provided education and training for veterans
LOYALTY BEING TESTED
• Truman creates Federal Employee Loyalty Program
• Includes Loyalty Review Board
• Individuals being reviewed not allowed to see evidence against them
• House Un-American Activities Committee
• Investigated movie industry (including celebrities)
• Hollywood Ten=celebrities refusing to cooperate with hearings
• Hollywood executives made a blacklist
• Blacklist=500 Hollywood persons can't work anymore
THE ROSENBERGS
• 1949-Soviet Union exploded its own atomic bomb
• People suspected spies
• 1950-Klaus Fuchs admits giving Soviets info about A-bomb
• Implicates Ethel and Julius Rosenberg…didn’t help they were members of
the American Communist Party
• Plead the fifth
• Found guilty of espionage and sentenced to death
• Appealed to Supreme Court, refused to overrule
MCCARTHY’S WITCH HUNT
• Senator Joseph McCarthy=terrible legislator…needed something to improve
his career
• Preyed on fears of Communism…claimed they were in the government
• McCarthyism=accusing people of disloyalty…without any evidence
• Started accusations against US Army…bullying of witnesses on television
turned people against him
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJzV6-wJ3SQ
POST WAR AMERICA
• GI Bill of Rights=Benefits for Veterans (Covering education costs and
unemployment benefits)
• Rise of the suburbs (same exact looking houses for rows and rows)
• Postwar boom in consumer spending kept United States out of postwar
depression
• Truman wins 1948 election...but after stiff resistance from Dixiecrats (Southern
Democrats)
• Didn't like his stance on advancing civil rights
IKE RUNS FOR OFFICE
• Truman decides not to run again in 1951
• General Eisenhower runs on Repub. ticket
• Ike elected to office
• Dynamic Conservatism (also known as "Modern Republicanism")=
"Conservative with money, liberal with human beings"
THE AMERICAN DREAM 1950S
• What do you think is the American Dream today?
• Suburban Lifestyle-House, car, white picket fence
• The Baby Boom=soldiers returning home from war and settling to start
families; population soared
CULTURAL 1950S
• Dr. Jonas Salk=discovers cure for polio
• Women encouraged to stay at home
• Yet more and more start getting jobs
• Leisure in the 50s-40 hour work week, several weeks paid vacation, labor
saving devices
• Automania=suburban living required cars for transportation
• Interstate + Highway system established
• Consumerism=buying material goods meant success
• Planned obsolescence=items planned to be obsolete in short period of time
• What items do we see like that today?
CULTURAL 1950S CONT.
• Television develops rapidly
• Federal Communications Commission (FCC)=agency regulate and licenses
television, telephone, radio, etc.
• Beat movement=people who were discontent with society
• Called beats or beatniks
• Sought higher consciousness through Zen Buddhism, music, or drugs
• Rock n Roll=music that was both black and white
THE OTHER SIDE OF AMERICA
• White Flight=people leaving the city for suburban lives...thus isolating
themselves from races and classes...as the poor migrated to urban cities
• Urban renewal=tear down old, ruined homes and rebuilding low income
housing
• Federal government announced it would stop aiding the Native American
tribes (known as termination policy)
• Eliminated federal support, discontinued reservation system, and distributed
tribal lands among individual natives
• Race relations are at an all time high with tension
• Brown v. Board of Education
• Desegregated schools…people didn’t react well to that