American Home Front

Mobilization for War

men into Armed Forces+

factories to war production

= full employment & end of Depression

Average family income

1938 1942

DC $2227 $5316

NYC $2760 $4044

Union membership increases by over 20%

Government gets some concessions:

Limit on wartime wage increases

No strike pledge – not followed by everyone

1941 – 1945 US spent $321 billion

More than the budgets for the last 150 years combined

Raised $100 billion in bonds

New tax system:Tax Revenue Act of 1942

Starts withholding

National debt:

$49 billion in 1941$259 billion in 1945

Fear of inflation causes government to create the Office of Price Administration or OPA

•Able to keep inflation under control•Not wildly popular due to role in rationing

War Production Board

Supervises conversion to war production

Auto makers trucks, planes, tanksShirt makers uniforms, parachutesRefrigerator ammunition

Lansing Oldsmobile Plant

Henry Kaiser uses pre-fab to cut time to make ‘Liberty Ships’

240 days to 40

Willow Run

1941 6,000,000 industrial workers

1944 18,000,000 industrial workers

Where to get workers?

Native Americans

Hispanic ~ 300,000

Women

African Americans –height of the Great Migration, the shift to Northern cities

7 million from 1910-1970

6,000,000 women work in industry

Get 60% the pay of men

Rosie the Riveter

Armed Forces

15 million serve

10 million drafted

Includes:

900,000 African Americans500,000 Hispanics 25,000 Native Americans300,000 women

Zoot Suit Riots

June 1943

Blacks mostly menial labor

Tuskegge Airmen

Experiment to show Blacks “racially deficient” and can not fly

Graduate 926 fighter pilots

Over 200 missions

66 killed33 captured

Escorted Bombers lost: 0

Had to fly 100 missions to be rotated out instead of 50 missions for white pilots

Relocation of Japanese-Americans

Concerns on West Coast about Japanese-Americans

Attorney General Earl Warren & Governor Olsen Olsen pass law to

dismiss J-A from gov. jobs & right to practice Medicine and law

February 1942 War Relocation Authority

Executive Order 9066

110,000 rounded up, given 48 hours to sell homes and businesses

2/3 of those taken are born in the US

Korematsu v. US 1944

6 to 3

Relocation is constitutional

442nd Regiment

Most decorated unit in ETO

>9000 Purple Hearts7 Presidential unit Citations53 Distinguished Service Crosses19 CMH

Waiting in line for rationed goods

Rationing

A stamp for gas – 3 gallons per week

2 pair of shoes per year

Victory Gardens

Over 20 million around the country

1/3 of fresh vegetables come from Victory Gardens

Who goes to war?

PT Boat

War and the Movies

Fighting Seabees

They Were Expendable

Guadalcanal Diary

Veronica Lake

Sahara

Mrs. Miniver

Destination Tokyo

Dewey

Roosevelt

Election of 1944

Thomas Dewey FDR

Fala

Election issue:

Economy not war

Unspoken issue:

FDR’s health

FDR forced by party to dump VP Henry Wallace and pick Harry S. Truman

FDR 432 53.5%Dewey 99 46%

April 12, 1945 FDR has a stroke in Warm Springs, Georgia while sitting for a portrait.

Lucy Mercer Rutherford is with him