WORLD
WAR II: THE HOME FRONT
SOCIAL CHANGE
SOCIAL CHANGE
| Social and
Economic Change |
For most Americans, the war had a disruptive
influence--separating families, overcrowding housing, and creating a
shortage of consumer goods. The war also accelerated the movement
from
the countryside to the cities and it challenged gender and racial
roles, opening new opportunities for women and many minority groups. Overall, the war brought unprecedented prosperity to Americans. Per capita income rose from $373 in 1940 to $1074 in 1945. Workers never had it so good. Rising incomes, however, created shortages of good and high inflation. Prices soared 18 percent between 1941 and the end of 1942. Apples sold for ten cents apiece; the price of a watermelon soared to $2.50; and oranges reached an astonishing $1.00 a dozen. Many goods were unavailable regardless of price. To conserve steel, glass, and rubber for war industries, the government halted production of cars in December 1941. A month later, production of vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, radios, sewing machines, and phonographs ceased. Altogether, production of nearly 300 items deemed nonessential to the war effort was banned or curtailed, including coat hangers, beer cans, and toothpaste tubes. Congress had responded surging prices by establishing the Office of Price Administration (OPA), which had the power to freeze prices and wages, control rents, and institute rationing of scarce items. The OPA quickly rationed food stuffs. Every month, each man, woman and child in the country received two ration books--one for canned goods and one for meat, fish and dairy products. Meat was limited to 28 ounces per person a week; sugar to 8-12 ounces; and coffee, a pound every five weeks. Rationing was soon extended to tires, gasoline, and shoes. Drivers were allowed a mere 3 gallons a week, while pedestrians were limited to two pairs of shoes a year. The OPA extolled the virtues of self-sacrifice, telling people to "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." In addition to rationing, Washington attacked inflation by reducing the public's purchasing power. In 1942, the federal government levied a 5 percent withholding tax on anyone who earned more than $642 a year. |
|||||
Social
Changes During the War
|
World War II produced important changes in American life, some trivial,
others profound. One striking change involved fashion. To conserve wool
and cotton, dresses became shorter; vests and cuffs disappeared, as did
double-breasted suits, pleats, and ruffles. More significant was a tremendous increase in mobility. This set families in motion, pulling them off farms, out of small towns, and packing them into large urban areas. Urbanization had virtually stopped during the depression, but the war saw the number of city dwellers leap from 46 to 53 percent. War industries sparked the urban growth. Detroit's population exploded as the automotive industry switched to war vehicles. Washington, D.C., became another boomtown, as tens of thousands of new workers staffed the swelling ranks of the bureaucracy. The most dramatic growth occurred in California. Of the 15 million civilians who moved across state lines during the war, over 2 million went to California to work in defense industries. Women The war had a dramatic impact on women. Easily the most visible change involved the sudden appearance of large numbers of women in uniform. The military organized women into auxiliary units with special uniforms, their own officers, and, amazingly, equal pay. By 1945 more than 250,000 women had joined the Women's Army Corps (WAC), the Army Nurses Corps, the Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES), the Navy Nurses Corps, the marines; and the Coast Guard. Most women who joined the armed services either filled traditional women's roles, such as nursing, or replaced men in non-combat jobs. Women also substituted for men on the home front. For the first time in history married working women outnumbered single working women as 6.3 million women entered the work force during the war. The war challenged the conventional image of female behavior, as "Rosie the Riveter" became the popular symbol of women who abandoned traditional female occupations to work in defense industries. Social critics had a field day attacking women. Social workers blamed working mothers for the rise in juvenile delinquency during the war. African Americans In 1941, the overwhelming majority of the nation's African American population--10 of 13 million--still lived in the South, primarily in rural areas. During the war, more than one million blacks migrated to the North--twice the number during World War I--and more than two million found work in defense industries. Black leaders fought discrimination vigorously. In the spring of 1941 (months before America entered the war), the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, A. Philip Randolph, with strong backing from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), called for 150,000 blacks to march on Washington to protest discrimination in defense industries. Embarrassed and concerned, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 prohibiting discrimination in defense industries and creating the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC). During the war the marines excluded blacks; the navy used them as servants; and the army created separate black regiments commanded mostly by white officers. The Red Cross even segregated blood plasma. Nevertheless, blacks served with distinction in combat during World War II. As a result of their service, later administrations would see fit to integrate the armed forces. The Double V Campaign In June 1942, James G. Thompson wrote to The Pittsburgh Courier, then the nation's most powerful Negro newspaper, and suggested the "Double V" campaign: Victory at home, and victory abroad; or, winning the fight against Jim Crow as well as against the Axis. The Courier soon created a design of an eagle sitting on a banner that said "Double Victory." Above the eagle was the word "DEMOCRACY." Under the eagle and between the banner were two "V"s on top of each other. Under the "V"s were the words "AT HOME--ABROAD." The paper gave birth to the "Double V" campaign by featuring [the] emblem on its front page, on February 7, 1942, with no explanation of what it meant. Readers nevertheless grasped its meaning immediately, and letters poured in congratulating The Courier on its double-barreled challenge to oppression at home as well as abroad. Almost immediately, other black newspapers followed. Then the slogan began to move outside the world of newsprint. As this wartime theme took hold in the African-American community,the "Double V" insignia began appearing on posters and sheet music," as well as other items. Some black women even sported a "Double V" haristyle. Race Riots As urban areas swelled with defense workers, blacks and whites began sharing already crowded public spaces. Public buses, parks, beaches, and other facilities forced new arrivals--many of whom had only lived heretofore in segregated communities--to live side-by-side. Such proxminity, combined with white prejudices, often produced unfortunate oputbreaks of violence. The most notable incident occured in 1943, when a riot broke out in Detroit in a federally sponsored housing project, when whites wanted blacks barred from the new apartments named, ironically, in honor of Sojourner Truth. White soldiers from a nearby base joined the fighting, and other federal troops had to be brought in to disperse the mobs. The violence left 35 blacks and 9 whites dead. Things were worse in the South. When government contractors attempted to abide by new federal hiring practices, including rules that mandated the promotion of blacks into skilled positions (which had previously been whites only), more violence erupted. In May of 1943, word circulated in the Beaumont, Texas, area, that blacks would be promoted to skilled positions at the local shipyards. This would mean black men working alongside white women. Soon, rumors spread that a black man had raped a white woman. White war workers, armed with clubs and guns, spread out into the black areas of the city and begtan indiscriminately attacking black people. Many blacks were wounded or killed and black property destroyed by fire. The Governor of Texas soon declared martial law and sent in the National Guard and state police to restore order. Similar conflicts erupted across the nation, exposing in each instance the same jarring contradiction: White Americans espoused equality abroad but practiced discrimination at home. One black soldier told Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal, ``just carve on my tombstone, here lies a black man killed fighting a yellow man for the protection of a white man.'' A 1942 survey showed many black Americans sympathized with the Japanese struggle to expel white colonialists from the Far East. Significantly, the same survey revealed a majority of white industrialists in the South preferred a German victory to racial equality for blacks. During World War II, the NAACP intensified its legal campaign against discrimination, and its membership grew from 50,000 to 500,000. Some African Americans, however, considered the NAACP too slow and too conciliatory. Rejecting legal action, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), founded in 1942, organized a series of "sit-ins." Civil disobedience produced a few victories in the North, but the South's response was brutal. In Tennessee, for example, angry whites savagely beat the civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, for refusing to move to the back of the bus. Mexican Americans Almost 400,000 Mexican-Americans served in the armed forces during the war. For many Mexican-Americans, jobs in industry provided an escape hatch from the desperate poverty of migratory farm labor. In New Mexico, about one-fifth of the rural Mexican-American population left for war-related jobs. The need for farm workers rose dramatically after Pearl Harbor. To meet the demand, the United States established the bracero (work hands) program in 1942, and by 1945 several hundred thousand Mexican workers had immigrated to the Southwest. Commercial farmers welcomed them, but labor unions resented the competition, leading to animosity and discrimination against Mexicans and Mexican-Americans alike. In Los Angeles, these ethnic tensions erupted into violence. Anglo society both feared and resented newly formed Mexican-American youth gangs, whose members celebrated their ethnicity by wearing flamboyant "zoot suits." In June 1943 hundreds of Anglo sailors on liberty from nearby naval bases invaded downtown Los Angeles. Eager to put down the Mexican-American youths, they attacked the zoot suiters and riots broke out for several nights. The local press blamed Mexican-American gangs, and the riots did not end until military police ordered sailors back to their ships. |
|||||
| Italians, Germans, Japanese Aliens and European Jewry |
The day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt suspended
naturalization proceedings for Italian, German, and Japanese
immigrants, required them to register, restricted their mobility, and
prohibited them from owning items that might be used for sabotage, such
as cameras and shortwave radios. In general, Italian and German aliens
received lenient treatment, while Japanese aliens suffered gross
injustices. The United States and the Holocaust The images are indelibly etched into our collective memory: slave laborers with protruding ribs; piles of hair; and bodies heaped like kindling. During World War II Nazi German and its allies systematically exterminated approximately six million Jews during World War II. No more than 450,000 to 500,000 Jews survived World War II in German-occupied Europe. Despite efforts by retreating Nazis to destroy incriminating evidence, meticulous German records allow us to document the number of people killed. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler, a top Hitler aide, stated that "we have the moral right...to destroy this people," and called the extermination program "a glorious page in our history." The Nazis operated six death camps in Eastern Europe between December 1941 and the end of 1944: Chelmno, Belzek, Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz. At Auschwitz in Poland, gas chambers and crematorium overs killed 20,000 victims a day. Zyklon B crystals were injected into gas chambers by small openings in the ceiling or on the side. Altogether, 1.6 million people were killed at Auschwitz--1.3 million were Jews and 300,000 were Polish Catholics, Gypsies, and Russian prisoners--and their ashes dumped in surrounding ponds and fields. The ashes of about 100,000 people lie in a small pond near one of the crematories. As early as June 1942, word reached the United States that the Nazis were planning the annihilation of the European Jews. A report smuggled from Poland to London described in detail the killing centers at Chelmno and the use of gas vans, and it estimated that 700,000 people had already been killed. Anti-Semitism fueled by the Depression and by demagogues like the radio priest Charles Coughlin influenced immigration policy. In 1939 pollsters found that 53 percent of those interviewed agreed with the statement "Jews are different and should be restricted." Between 1933 and 1945 the United States took in only 132,000 Jewish refugees, only ten percent of the quota allowed by law. Reflecting a nasty strain of anti-Semitism, Congress in 1939 refused to raise immigration quotas to admit 20,000 Jewish children fleeing Nazi oppression. As the wife of the U.S. commissioner of immigration remarked at a cocktail party, "20,000 children would all too soon grow up to be 20,000 ugly adults." Instead of relaxing immigration quotas, American officials worked in vain to persuade Latin American countries and Great Britain to admit Jewish refugees. In January 1944, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, the only Jew in the Cabinet, Morgenthau presented the President with a "Report to the Secretary on the Acquiescence of this Government in the Murder of the Jews." Shamed into action, Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board, which, in turn, set up refugee camps in Italy, North Africa, and the United States. |
|||||
Japanese-American
Internment
Click here
to view a map of internment camps operated by the War Relocation
Authority
|
Barred from migrating to the United States by the Immigration Act of
1924, they comprised a tiny portion of the population in 1941, totaling
no more than 260,000 people, of whom 150,000 lived in Hawaii, with the
remaining 110,000 concentrated on the West Coast, where they worked
mostly as small farmers or business-people serving the Japanese
community. After Pearl Harbor, rumors spread about Japanese troops
preparing to land in California, where they allegedly planned to link
up with Japanese-Americans and Japanese aliens poised to strike as a
fifth column for the invasion. On February 19, 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Department of War to designate military areas and to exclude any or all persons from them. Armed with this power, military authorities immediately moved against Japanese aliens. In Hawaii, where residents of Japanese ancestry formed a large portion of the population and where the local economy depended on their labor, the military did not force Japanese-Americans to relocate. On the West Coast, however, military authorities ordered the Japanese to leave, drawing no distinction between aliens and citizens. Forced to sell their property for pennies on the dollar, most Japanese-Americans suffered severe financial losses. Relocation proved next to impossible, as no other states would take them. The governor of Idaho opposed any migration, declaring: "The Japs live like rats, breed like rats and act like rats. We don't want them." When voluntary measures failed, Roosevelt created the War Relocation Authority. It resettled 100,000 Japanese-Americans in ten isolated internment camps scattered across seven western states. Called relocation camps, they resembled minimum security prisons. In these concentration camps, American citizens who had committed no crimes were locked behind barbed wire, crowded into ramshackle wooden barracks where they lived one family to a room furnished with nothing but cots and bare light bulbs, forced to endure bad food, inadequate medical care, and poorly equipped schools. Nearly 18,000 Japanese-American men won release from those camps to fight for the United States Army. Most served with the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. In Italy, the 442nd sustained nearly 10,000 casualties, with 3600 Purple Hearts, 810 Bronze Stars, 342 Silver Stars, 123 divisional citations, 47 Distinguished Service Crosses, 17 Legions of Merit, 7 Presidential Unit Citations, and 1 Congressional Medal of Honor. In short, they fought heroically, emerging as the most decorated military unit in World War II. In one of the most painful scenes in American history, Japanese-American parents, still locked inside concentration camps, received posthumous Purple Hearts for their sons. Japanese-Americans protested their treatment in court. In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the internment order by a six to three vote. Citing national security considerations, the Supreme Court in 1944 backed the government six to three in Korematsu v. U.S. But in a dissenting opinion, Frank Murphy admitted federal policy had fallen "into the ugly abyss of racism." On December 18, 1944, in the Endo case, the Supreme Court ruled a civilian agency, the War Relocation Authority, had no right to incarcerate law-abiding citizens. Two weeks later the federal government began closing down the camps, ending one of the most shameful chapters in American history. |
|||||
| Proceed
to: Social Change (II) |
| Sources:
Digital
History, Mobilizing for War, accessed November 11, 2003. Todd Steve Burroughs, "The Double V (Pt. 1)," BlackPressUSA.com, http://www.blackpressusa.com/history/Timeline_Essay.asp?NewsID=104 Kahne R. Parsons, "The Limits of Community: Conservatism and Change in Caddo Parish, Louisiana, 1933-1964," Doctoral dissertation, Tulane University, 2001. |