The WWII Home Front

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The WWII Home Front
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Inflation Food Prices

• Facing rapidly increasing food prices and wage
  rates, Roosevelt submitted a bill to Congress on
  September 7, 1942.
• Roosevelt spoke to the American people that
  evening warning that farm prices may succumb to
  drastic inflation unless the government
  establishes further price controls.
• He also explained to the nation the need for the
  government to increase the federal income tax
  rates.
• The Office of Price Administration established
  price controls to control inflation.
• Congress passed a stabilization bill on October
  2.

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Victory Gardeners

• The federal government, through the Office of War
  Mobilization, encouraged citizens to participate
  in the war effort. One popular idea was the
  creation of victory gardens.
• 30-40 of all the produce grown during the war
  years were grown in such gardens.

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Stabilization of the Economy

• As the war began, FDR attempted to stabilize the
  national economy by creating an Office of
  Economic Stabilization led by an Economic
  Director.
• In the process, the president assumes an
  unprecedented executive control over the American
  economy.

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Victory Loan Drive

• To finance the war, the federal government
  encouraged citizens to purchase war bonds.
• By borrowing money, the federal government
  financed approximately 40 of the cost of the
  war.
• However, the high levels of deficit spending also
  boosted the national debt five-fold from 1940
  1945.

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Aircraft Production
Ranking behind the USSR, Britain Germany in
1939, the U.S. became the top aircraft producer
in the world by 1941. By war's end, the U.S. had
produced 86,500 more aircraft than Germany, Italy
Japan combined tripled the combined output of
Germany Japan.
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Merchant Ship Production
Another insightful statistic illustrating the
United States' enormous industrial output is the
gross tonnage of merchant ships built during the
war. When compared with England and Japan, the
second and third largest fleets respectively, the
U.S. output is staggering.
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Rationing

• The productive capacity of the United States
  during World War II surpassed all expectations.
• Americans at home were asked to conserve
  materials and to accept ration coupons or stamps
  that limited the purchase of certain products
  such as
• Gasoline
• Rubber
• Sugar
• Butter
• Certain cloths
• American responses to rationing varied from
  cheerful compliance to resigned grumbling to
  instances of black market subversion and
  profiteering.

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Home Front Propaganda

• Having sustained losses in World War I and only
  now coming out of an economic crisis, most
  Americans thought that energies should be spent
  here at home, improving America, instead of
  becoming involved in war overseas.
• However, the government recognized that American
  participation was necessary, and quickly stepped
  up pro-war propaganda.
• This was not extremely successful until after
  Pearl Harbor, when the war no longer seemed
  comfortably distant but very close to home.
• It was also necessary to begin stepping up
  production and conservation of materials for the
  war effort, because the Allies only tremendous
  advantage was their great production power.
• As the war began in earnest, America increased
  the flood of propaganda, utilizing especially the
  radio and visual media, most specifically
  posters.

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Demonizing the Enemy

• During the war, both sides attempted to demonize
  their adversary. In these American posters, the
  Germans and Japanese are depicted in less than
  flattering light.

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Women and the Homefront

• Not all women were asked to join the workforce,
  there was much public resistance to the idea of
  working mothers, contributed to the low rate of
  women aged 25 to 34 that participated in the
  labor force.
• An obstacle that the 1940's housewife ran into
  was the shortage of steel. In 1943 civilians were
  only allotted 15 of the nation's steel
  production.
• This caused the rationing of such items as
  bottled, canned, dried, and frozen vegetables, as
  well as canned fruits, juices, and soups.
• Women who lived in big cities felt this squeeze
  more than ever, while women who lived on farms
  and in small towns were able to garden and
  preserve their own supply of fresh produce.

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Women in the Workforce

• Before the United States entered World War II,
  several companies already had contracts with the
  government to produce war equipment for the
  Allies.
• At first companies did not think that there
  would be a labor shortage so they did not take
  the idea of hiring women seriously. Eventually,
  women were needed because companies were signing
  large, lucrative contracts with the government
  just as all the men were leaving for the service.
• Americans agreed that having women work in the
  war industries would only be temporary.
• The government decided to launch a propaganda
  campaign to sell the importance of the war effort
  and to lure women into working.
• They promoted the fictional character of Rosie
  the Riveter as the ideal woman worker loyal,
  efficient, patriotic, and pretty.
• Women responded to the call to work differently
  depending on age, race, class, marital status,
  and number of children.
• Half of the women who took war jobs were minority
  and lower-class women who were already in the
  workforce. They switched from lower-paying
  traditionally female jobs to higher-paying
  factory jobs.

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Discrimination
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Double V Campaign

• The Pittsburg Courier designed this ad campaign
  to symbolize the efforts of African-Americans who
  were fighting for victory against fascism abroad
  and fighting racism at home.
• This slogan was adopted on a national scale to
  criticize the discrimination that
  African-Americans were facing in defense-related
  industries.

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Executive Order 8802

• As wartime mobilization was underway in the
  United States, American businesses and the
  federal government continued to practice racial
  discrimination in the workforce.
• Pressure by civil rights leaders and their threat
  to organize a march on Washington D.C. caused
  President Roosevelt to issue an executive order.
• In return, the organizers postponed the march
  which curbed a potential political mess for FDR
  during a period in which he was emphasizing
  American democratic ideals in his foreign policy.
  

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Detroit Race Riot (1943)

• After the start of the war, employers in Detroit
  turned to a ready pool of African American labor
  from the South.
• The muggy summer evening of June 20, 1943 saw
  rioting.
• Exacerbating the conflict, rumors circulated
  among the black population that that "whites" had
  thrown a black woman and her baby over the Belle
  Isle bridge.
• Enraged, many African-Americans stormed white
  districts where they looted and destroyed stores
  and indiscriminately attacked anyone with white
  skin.
• Similarly, white mobs had been stirred up by a
  rumor that a black man had raped and murdered a
  white woman on the bridge.
• Eventually, 6,000 federal troops had to be called
  in to quell the violence.

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Zoot Suit Riots

• A series of riots that erupted in Los Angeles
  during World War II between sailors and soldiers
  and Mexican American youth gangs.
• On June 3, 1943, a group of servicemen on leave
  complained that they had been assaulted by a gang
  of pachucos.
• The headed to east LA where they attacked all the
  men they found wearing zoot suits, often ripping
  off the suits and burning them in the streets.
• In many instances, the police intervened by
  arresting beaten-up Mexican-American youth for
  disturbing the peace.
• The government finally intervened on June 7, by
  declaring that Los Angeles would henceforth be
  off-limits to all military personnel.

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Executive Order 9066

• February 19, 1942 Executive Order 9066 allowed
  the United States military the authority to
  establish military zones from which they could
  then exclude any persons they deemed a threat to
  national security.
• Taken to an extreme, the military designated the
  entire West Coast of the United States a military
  zone and began the systematic, forced removal of
  over 110,000 Japanese-Americans from their homes
  and businesses.
• They were sent to relocation centers located in
  the deserts of the southwest and other parts of
  the United States.

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Internment of Japanese Americans

• 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage were sent
  to one of 10 internment campsofficially called
  "relocation centers"in California, Idaho, Utah,
  Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas.
• More than 2/3 of the Japanese who were interned
  in the spring of 1942 were citizens of the United
  States.
• The U.S. internment camps were overcrowded and
  provided poor living conditions.
• Food was rationed out at an expense of 48 cents
  per internee, and served by fellow internees in a
  mess hall of 250-300 people.

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