Focus:

1. Focus: • Would you support an act of war by congress after the attack on Pearl Harbor? Why or why not? • What would be different in your life during wartime? What things would change? What sacrifices would you make, if any?

2. Americans Join The War Effort • Selective Service-provided 10 million soldiers through the draft. Report for 8 weeks of BT. • These men were known as GI’s(Gov’t Issued) • Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps(WAAC) is formed by Army Chief of staff, General George Marshall. Theses women didn’t receive the same rank/pay as men performing same duties. • Issue? Who will do the cooking, the washing, the mending? In all, over 250k women served during the war effort.

3. Cont… • African Americans, Native Americans, Mexican-Americans, and Asian Americans; “Why die for democracy for some foreign country when we don’t even have it here?” • Under Axis control? • ½ million Mexican Americans join; over a million African Americans served, but were segregated into separate units.; 13k Chinese Americans; 33k Japanese Americans; 25k Native Americans, including 800 women.

4. Life on the Home Front • 1942-no automobiles; retooled for the war effort(tanks, planes, boats, and command cars.) • Mechanical pencil factory began making bombs. • Shipyards began making Liberty ships, tankers, troop transports, and “baby” aircraft carriers. • By 1941, work was at a high demand, and people mobilized, including 6 million women and 2 million minority workers.

5. Cont… • To protest discrimination in the work place, A. Philip Randolph became the nation’s leading African-American labor leader, and leads a march on Washington with success for minorities. • Scientists-OSRD is created(Office of Scientific Research and Development. Develop medicines, pesticides, and war technology, including the A-bomb(Manhattan Project).

6. Cont… • Spending was up b/c wages were up, including for entertainment purposes. • Movies!!Movies!!! Movies!!!(Every week!) • Propaganda films become very popular. • Radio/magazines very popular(covering war)

7. Focus • Discuss what you felt while watching the attack on Pearl Harbor in a 5-6 sentence paragraph. What would your response be? Think about the reality that the Pacific Fleet was completely destroyed!

8. Japanese Internment • The American government stated that the internment was necessary for national security. Many were Nisei, or Japanese Americans born in the U.S.(2/3) • The actual deportations did not start until after February 19, 1942, when the first document was signed giving the military authority to evacuate people

9. Cont…. • After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt cited military necessity as the basis for incarcerating 120,000 Japanese Americans--adults and children, immigrants and citizens alike. Decades later a congressional commission found the justification of military necessity to be false.

12. Economic Controls • Prevent Inflation(define)? Production of consumer goods was falling while income rising-What happens to the value of the dollar? • Congress creates OPA(Office of Price Administration-Froze prices on most goods, raised income taxes, leaving them with less to spend. • War Production Board(WPB)-Conversion from peacetime production to wartime production, allocated raw materials by leading drives.

13. Cont… • OPA sets up rationing, or fixed allotments of goods deemed essential for the military. • Homes received ration books. Used for everyday goods such as meat, shoes, sugar, coffee, and gas. • Black market becomes popular. • Most people behaved like “patriotic, loyal citizens.”

14. Activity with Partner • Compare and contrast the Nazi concentration camps with the Japanese Relocation camps? What was similar and what was different?