The Home FrontAmerican Society during WWII

Young men were eager to volunteer. 5 million men volunteered

Draft: mandatory recruitment for military service. 10 million men drafted

The Armed Forces

The Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC) is established in May 1945 [just WAC in July 1943]

350,000 women served in the auxiliaries “There are innumerable duties now being

performed by soldiers that can be done better by women” -General George Marshall

The Armed Forces cont’d

Nurses, drivers, electricians, pilots…; non-

combat

“Just carve on my tombstone, ‘Here lies a black man killed fighting a yellow man for the protection of a white man.’” –African-American draftee

“Why die for democracy in another country when we don’t even have it here?” –African-American newspaper editorial

Minorities treated unequally in the United States at this point: segregation, racism, discrimination

Japanese-American were put in concentration camps during WWII

The Armed Forces cont’d

The Armed Forces cont’d

Tuskegee Airmen

Navajo Code

Talkers

Japanese-Americans

American Latinos

Production and rationing

American factories were converted to produce the tools and supplies for war

~instead of making consumer goods, factories were making supplies for the armed forces

rationing

World War II ended the Great Depression

What is rationing?

Rationing1930s 1940s

Zoot Suit Riots

Los Angeles, 1943: For 5 days, Sailors and Marines attacked young men who wore the zoot suit

-more than 150 injured-500 arrested for “rioting” or

“vagrancy”

"Marching through the streets of downtown Los Angeles, a mob of several thousand soldiers, sailors, and civilians, proceeded to beat up every zoot suiter they could find […] Mexicans, and some Filipinos and Negroes, were jerked from their seats, pushed into the streets and beaten with a sadistic frenzy.“

-C. McWilliams

"The question goes deeper than just suits. It is a racial protest. I have been worried for a long time about the Mexican racial situation. It is a problem with roots going a long way back, and we do not always face these problems as we should." – First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt

The L.A. Times responded by accusing Mrs. Roosevelt of having communist leanings and stirring "race discord".

Zoot Suit Riots cont’d