The Home Front During the War

1. The Home Front During the War Wartime mobilization of the economy Urban migration and demographic changes Women, work, and family during the war Civil liberties and civil rights during wartime War and regional development Expansion of government power

2. Wartime mobilization of the economy • The soldiers and sailors fighting in Europe and the Pacific were not the only ones to have their lives affected. WWII had a tremendous impact on the home front as well. After Pearl Harbor, mobilizing for the war consumed the nation. • Prosecuting a two front war of this magnitude required every available resource and a rationing system was implemented to ensure the strength of the war effort. Foodstuffs- flour, sugar, coffee, meat- were rationed nationwide with coupons that tracked consumption. People were encouraged to grow “victory gardens” to supplement food rations. Scrap metal and rubber drives were held nationwide. Many women gave up hosiery because the silk was needed for parachutes. Fuel was also strictly rationed. • In addition to rationing, most heavy industry converted to war production. Automakers like Ford and GM, for example, began producing planes and tanks instead of sedans and coupes. Federally funded defense industries were everywhere and the unemployment of the previous decade was a memory.

3. Wartime mobilization of the economy • The war crisis had caused the drooping American economy to snap to attention, as the massive military orders filled the idle industrial capacity of the lingering Great Depression. Under the War Production Board, American factories poured forth an avalanche of weaponry. Although it took some time to ramp production up to full capacity, as the war progressed, American production became more and more efficient. In one stunning example, shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser’s shipyards could produce his “Liberty ships” in a mere 14 days. • On the whole, American industry provided almost two-thirds of all the Allied military equipment produced during the war, 297,000 aircraft, 193,000 artillery pieces, 86,000 tanks, two million army trucks, and billions of bullets and other ordinances. In four years, American industrial production, already the world’s largest, doubled in size. The output of the machine-tools to make weapons tripled in three years. The full might of the American war machine had changed the balance between the U.S. and her enemies. • These miracles of production also brought some economic strains: full employment and scarce consumer goods fueled a sharp inflationary surge in 1942, leading the Office of Price Administration to institute more extensive regulations and stricter rationing of critical goods. • By way of labor issues during the war, union membership grew dramatically as industry reached full capacity. FDR’s revamped NWLB (National War Labor Board) instituted wage controls for critical industries. Although the two largest unions (AFL and CIO) abided by a “no-strike” pledge, other unions representing important industries did not. The most notable example was the 12 day strike in 1943 by the United Mine Workers. • Threats of lost production through strikes became worrisome enough that Congress, in June 1943, passed Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act, authorizing the federal government to seize and operate industries affected by striking workers.On the whole, however, American workers were commendably committed to the war effort.

4. Urban migration and demographic changes • Mobilization and war production had also brought important geographic and demographic change on the home front. Millions of men and women left rural areas for urban centers. Cities and towns all over the country competed fiercely for the government-financed industrial installations, military bases, and production contracts that they saw as a way out of the Depression. • War industries inspired mass migrations and a “boom town” atmosphere for some cities, including Los Angeles, Detroit, Seattle, and Baton Rouge, to name a few. • An especially important demographic change inspired by the war time boom was the substantial migration of African-Americans (The second phase of their “Great Migration” which had begun in WWI). Some 1.6 million blacks left the rural South to seek jobs in the factories in the West and North.

5. Early in the mobilization process and throughout the war there was significant tensions among blacks over access to defense industry employment, adequate housing, and segregated facilities. In 1941, Black labor leader A. Philip Randolph demanded equality in access to war jobs, threatening to lead a march on Washington DC if FDR’s administration did not address the issues. In response, Roosevelt issued an executive order forbidding discrimination in defense industries, and established the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to monitor compliance with his order. As the first official act of government to address civil rights issues in the 20th century, it is considered a watershed moment in the movement that would develop in the 1950s and 60s. • Blacks also volunteered and were drafted into the armed forces, but the vast majority were assigned to service branches rather than combat units—one notable exception were the “Tuskegee Airmen” Black pilots who fought valiantly and earned a remarkable combat service record. • In general, the war helped greatly to embolden blacks in their long struggle for equality . African Americans advocated for what they called the “Double V” campaign: victory over fascist dictators abroad and over discrimination and racism at home. • Despite the gains made by African Americans during the war, the relatively sudden bringing together of unfamiliar peoples produced some distressingly violent friction. Mexican-Americans were attacked in Los Angeles in the so-called “ZootSuit” riots in 1943, and in Detroit, Chicago, and other northern urban areas, especially violent race riots during the war rank as some of the worst in US history.

6. Women, work, and family during the war • The armed services enlisted nearly 15 million men in World War II and some 216,000 women, who were employed for noncombat duties; “women in arms”—WAACs, WAVES, SPARs • As the draft net was tightened after Pearl Harbor, millions of young men were inducted into the armed forces, although some key industrial and agricultural workers were exempted from the draft. • The draft left the nation’s farms and factories so short of personnel that new workers had to be found. For example, an agreement with Mexico in 1942 brought thousands of Mexican agricultural workers, called braceros, across the border to harvest crops. • With so many men gone to fight, war production employers scrambled to find enough workers. Women were encouraged to take war jobs- even in heavy industry. Women all across the country were employed as metalworkers, shipbuilders, welders, and the most iconic of women workers in the war- Rosie the Riveter. • More than 6 million women took up jobs outside the home, over half of which had never earned wages. So many women entered the workforce that the government was obliged to set up some 3,000 day-care centers across the nation. • At war’s end, Rosie and many of her sisters were in no hurry to put down their tools and wanted to keep on working and often did after the war. • Nonetheless, the great majority of American women did not work for wages in the wartime economy, but continued in their traditional roles. And at war’s end, two-thirds of women war workers left the workforce. As men returned from overseas service, many women were pressured to exit the labor pool. • Even though most women war workers eventually returned to more traditional domestic roles, their experience in WWII went a long way to opening doors for women working in jobs traditionally reserved for men, and eroding the stigma of working outside the home generally.

7. Women, work, and family during the war • The home front brought less positive developments for families too. Though most Americans understood the need for rationing and wage and price control, they were never happy about limits on their own income, and many bought at least some goods on the wartime black market. • In spite of the fact that the war was widely described as a fight to preserve the family-centered “American way of life,” wartime changes put enormous stress on families. One out of every five American families had one or more members serving in the military. These families waited, and worried, and honored the 400,000 men and women who did not come back with gold star service flags in their windows. • Servicemen’s wives and women war workers frequently had difficulty finding appropriate care for their children, particularly those who had moved to new communities Government and private child care and after school care programs became increasingly popular and effective as the war progressed, but some children were left unsupervised or forced to stay out of school to tend their younger siblings. Most children participated eagerly in scrap and paper drives and enjoyed their wartime cartoons, serials, war games, and radio programs, but they also endured the anxiety created by school air raid drills, terrifying newsreels and photographs, and the trauma of “Daddy’s” departure.

8. Civil liberties and civil rights during wartime • During WWII, the government sometimes adopted policies that curtailed certain civil liberties and the flow of information. In the interests of morale and security, the Office of War Information and Office of Censorship used domestic propaganda and censorship to promote positive images of the United States and to restrict sensitive information. • In the most egregious violation of civil liberties, nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of them American citizens, were removed from their homes and incarcerated in bleak, isolated relocation centers for the duration of the war.

9. War and regional development • Mobilization and war production had brought important geographic and demographic change. Millions of men and women left rural areas for urban centers. Cities and towns all over the country competed fiercely for the government-financed industrial installations, military bases, and production contracts that they saw as a way out of the Depression. • While established industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest obtained many of these projects, others went to new aircraft, shipbuilding, and other defense-related industries in the “Sunbelt” area of the South and West. Many military bases were also located in Sunbelt states. Millions of war workers, G.I.s, and their families moved there during the war, many to stay after it. Of the ten urban areas identified by the Census Bureau as most congested as the result of wartime migrations, all but two were located along the Pacific, Gulf, and South Atlantic coasts. In these newly prosperous areas, marriage and birth rates surged. • California, in particular experienced a huge influx during the war, as its population grew by nearly 2 million. Areas of the South also experienced similarly dramatic changes. Roosevelt used the boom of war industry to accelerate the still depressed and backward region’s economic development by pouring $6 billion into military bases and war production scattered through the region

10. Expansion of government power • In mobilizing the nation for war, the federal government expanded to dimensions and powers far beyond those of the New Deal state of the 1930s. The authority of the executive branch grew enormously as the government managed production, materials, and labor, rationed goods, set prices, limited wages, conscripted men and money, controlled information and sometimes curtailed liberties, and spent and taxed more than it ever had before. • The number of civilian employees quadrupled, from fewer than one million in 1939 to nearly four million in 1945. Federal spending (more than half of it deficit spending after 1942) soared from about one-tenth to nearly one-half of the (much larger) Gross National Product. In what has been termed the "ratchet" effect of war, the government never returned to its prewar dimensions. And the introduction of tax withholding and the rise of personal income tax receipts as the largest source of federal revenues gave the postwar government new powers to manage the nation’s economy by raising or lowering taxes. • The processes and successes of mobilizing the American economy for war contributed to the increased power and prestige of all of the large, centralized, public and private, bureaucratic organizations basic to the modern American political economy. World War II both greatly hastened the development of a more highly organized society in the United States, and strengthened the faith of millions of Americans in the role of big government, big business, agriculture, and labor unions in dealing with the nation’s major problems. • What some have called “big science” also became part of the picture because of the war, with the government increasingly underwriting science and technology, especially in universities, in the postwar era.