World War II: Discrimination In The United States

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Stereotypes \u0026 Racism in U.S.'s World War II Propaganda

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Executive Order authorized military commanders to exclude civilians from military areas. Although the language of the order did not specify any ethnic group, Lieutenant General John L. Next, he encouraged voluntary evacuation by Japanese Americans from a limited number of areas; about seven percent of the total Japanese American population in these areas complied. Because of the perception of "public danger," all Japanese within varied distances from the Pacific coast were targeted. Unless they were able to dispose of or make arrangements for care of their property within a few days, their homes, farms, businesses, and most of their private belongings were lost forever.

From the end of March to August, approximately , persons were sent to "assembly centers" — often racetracks or fairgrounds — where they waited and were tagged to indicate the location of a long-term "relocation center" that would be their home for the rest of the war. Nearly 70, of the evacuees were American citizens. There were no charges of disloyalty against any of these citizens, nor was there any vehicle by which they could appeal their loss of property and personal liberty. Incarceration rates were significantly lower in the territory of Hawaii, where Japanese Americans made up over one-third of the population and their labor was needed to sustain the economy. However, martial law had been declared in Hawaii immediately following the Pearl Harbor attack, and the Army issued hundreds of military orders, some applicable only to persons of Japanese ancestry.

In the internment camps, four or five families, with their sparse collections of clothing and possessions, shared tar-papered army-style barracks. Most lived in these conditions for nearly three years or more until the end of the war. Gradually some insulation was added to the barracks and lightweight partitions were added to make them a little more comfortable and somewhat private. Germany and the other Axis Powers promptly declared war on the United States. After a long string of Japanese victories, the U. Pacific Fleet won the Battle of Midway in June , which proved to be a turning point in the war. On Guadalcanal, one of the southern Solomon Islands, the Allies also had success against Japanese forces in a series of battles from August to February , helping turn the tide further in the Pacific.

In mid, Allied naval forces began an aggressive counterattack against Japan, involving a series of amphibious assaults on key Japanese-held islands in the Pacific. The approach of winter, along with dwindling food and medical supplies, spelled the end for German troops there, and the last of them surrendered on January 31, Soviet troops soon advanced into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, while Hitler gathered his forces to drive the Americans and British back from Germany in the Battle of the Bulge December January , the last major German offensive of the war. An intensive aerial bombardment in February preceded the Allied land invasion of Germany, and by the time Germany formally surrendered on May 8, Soviet forces had occupied much of the country.

Hitler was already dead, having died by suicide on April 30 in his Berlin bunker. President Harry S. Post-war Germany would be divided into four occupation zones, to be controlled by the Soviet Union, Britain, the United States and France. Heavy casualties sustained in the campaigns at Iwo Jima February and Okinawa April-June , and fears of the even costlier land invasion of Japan led Truman to authorize the use of a new and devastating weapon. Developed during a top secret operation code-named The Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb was unleashed on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. On August 15, the Japanese government issued a statement declaring they would accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, and on September 2, U.

Although more than 1 million African Americans served in the war to defeat Nazism and fascism, they did so in segregated units. The same discriminatory Jim Crow policies that were rampant in American society were reinforced by the U. Black servicemen rarely saw combat and were largely relegated to labor and supply units that were commanded by white officers. There were several African American units that proved essential in helping to win World War II, with the Tuskegee Airmen being among the most celebrated. But the Red Ball Express, the truck convoy of mostly Black drivers were responsible for delivering essential goods to General George S. Yet, despite their role in defeating fascism, the fight for equality continued for African American soldiers after the World War II ended.

They remained in segregated units and lower-ranking positions, well into the Korean War , a few years after President Truman signed an executive order to desegregate the U. World War II proved to be the deadliest international conflict in history, taking the lives of 60 to 80 million people, including 6 million Jews who died at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust. Civilians made up an estimated million deaths from the war, while military comprised 21 to 25 million of those lost during the war.

Millions more were injured, and still more lost their homes and property. Americans, for instance, could understand surrender as prudent; many Japanese soldiers saw it as cowardice. What Americans saw as a fanatical waste of life, the Japanese saw as brave and honorable. Atrocities flourished in the Pacific at a level unmatched in Europe. Economies win wars no less than militaries.

But then Europe fell into war, and, despite its isolationism, Americans were glad to sell the Allies arms and supplies. And then Pearl Harbor changed everything. The United States drafted the economy into war service. Governmental entities such as the War Production Board and the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion managed economic production for the war effort and economic output exploded. An economy that was unable to provide work for a quarter of the workforce less than a decade earlier now struggled to fill vacant positions. Government spending during the four years of war doubled all federal spending in all of American history up to that point.

The economy that came out of the war looked nothing like the one that had begun it. Military production came at the expense of the civilian consumer economy. Appliance and automobile manufacturers converted their plants to produce weapons and vehicles. Consumer choice was foreclosed. Every American received rationing cards and, legally, goods such as gasoline, coffee, meat, cheese, butter, processed food, firewood, and sugar could not be purchased without them.

The housing industry was shut down, and the cities became overcrowded. But the wartime economy boomed. The Roosevelt administration urged citizens to save their earnings or buy war bonds to prevent inflation. Bond drives were held nationally and headlined by Hollywood celebrities. Such drives were hugely successful. They not only funded much of the war effort, they helped tame inflation as well. So too did tax rates. The federal government raised income taxes and boosted the top marginal tax rate to 94 percent. As in World War I, citizens were urged to buy war bonds to support the effort overseas. With the economy booming and twenty million American workers placed into military service, unemployment virtually disappeared.

More and more African Americans continued to leave the agrarian South for the industrial North. And as more and more men joined the military, and more and more positions went unfilled, women joined the workforce en masse. Other American producers looked outside the United States, southward, to Mexico, to fill its labor force. Between and , the United States contracted thousands of Mexican nationals to work in American agriculture and railroads in the Bracero Program. Jointly administered by the State Department, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Justice, the binational agreement secured five million contracts across twenty-four states. With factory work proliferating across the country and agricultural labor experiencing severe labor shortages, the presidents of Mexico and the United States signed an agreement in July to bring the first group of legally contracted workers to California.

Discriminatory policies toward people of Mexican descent prevented bracero contracts in Texas until The Bracero Program survived the war, enshrined in law until the s, when the United States liberalized its immigration laws. Though braceros suffered exploitative labor conditions, for the men who participated the program was a mixed blessing. Interviews with ex-braceros captured the complexity. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration had encouraged all able-bodied American women to help the war effort.

He considered the role of women in the war critical for American victory, and the public expected women to assume various functions to free men for active military service. While most women opted to remain at home or volunteer with charitable organizations, many went to work or donned a military uniform. World War II brought unprecedented labor opportunities for American women. Industrial labor, an occupational sphere dominated by men, shifted in part to women for the duration of wartime mobilization. Women applied for jobs in converted munitions factories. The iconic illustrated image of Rosie the Riveter, a muscular woman dressed in coveralls with her hair in a kerchief and inscribed with the phrase We Can Do It!

But women also worked in various auxiliary positions for the government. Although such jobs were often traditionally gendered female, over a million administrative jobs at the local, state, and national levels were transferred from men to women for the duration of the war. With so many American workers deployed overseas and so many new positions created by war production, women entered the work force in massive numbers. Wikimedia Commons. For women who elected not to work, many volunteer opportunities presented themselves.

The American Red Cross, the largest charitable organization in the nation, encouraged women to volunteer with local city chapters. Millions of women organized community social events for families, packed and shipped almost half a million tons of medical supplies overseas, and prepared twenty-seven million care packages of nonperishable items for American and other Allied prisoners of war. Other charity organizations, such as church and synagogue affiliates, benevolent associations, and social club auxiliaries, gave women further outlets for volunteer work. Military service was another option for women who wanted to join the war effort. Over , women served in several all-female units of the military branches. Jim Crow segregation in both the civilian and military sectors remained a problem for Black women who wanted to join the war effort.

Even after President Roosevelt signed Executive Order in , supervisors who hired Black women still often relegated them to the most menial tasks on factory floors. Segregation was further upheld in factory lunchrooms, and many Black women were forced to work at night to keep them separate from whites. The American Red Cross, meanwhile, recruited only four hundred Black nurses for the Army and Navy Nurse Corps Reserves, and Black Army and Navy nurses worked in segregated military hospitals on bases stateside and overseas. And for all of the postwar celebration of Rosie the Riveter, after the war ended the men returned and most women voluntarily left the workforce or lost their jobs.

The nation that beckoned the call for assistance to millions of women during the four-year crisis hardly stood ready to accommodate their postwar needs and demands. In early , months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the largest Black trade union in the nation, made headlines by threatening President Roosevelt with a march on Washington, D.

While the armed forces remained segregated throughout the war, and the FEPC had limited influence, the order showed that the federal government could stand against discrimination. The Black workforce in defense industries rose from 3 percent in to 9 percent in More than one million African Americans fought in the war. Most Black servicemen served in segregated, noncombat units led by white officers. Some gains were made, however. The number of Black officers increased from five in to over seven thousand in The all-Black pilot squadrons, known as the Tuskegee Airmen, completed more than 1, missions, escorted heavy bombers into Germany, and earned several hundred merits and medals.

Many bomber crews specifically requested the Red Tail Angels as escorts. And near the end of the war, the army and navy began integrating some of their units and facilities, before the U. Ellison returns the salute of Mac Ross, one of the first graduates of the Tuskegee cadets. While Black Americans served in the armed forces though they were segregated , on the home front they became riveters and welders, rationed food and gasoline, and bought victory bonds.

But many Black Americans saw the war as an opportunity not only to serve their country but to improve it. It called on African Americans to fight two wars: the war against Nazism and fascism abroad and the war against racial inequality at home. During the war, membership in the NAACP jumped tenfold, from fifty thousand to five hundred thousand. The Congress of Racial Equality CORE was formed in and spearheaded the method of nonviolent direct action to achieve desegregation. Between and , some 1. But transitions were not easy. Racial tensions erupted in in a series of riots in cities such as Mobile, Beaumont, and Harlem. The bloodiest race riot occurred in Detroit and resulted in the death of twenty-five Black and nine White Americans.

Still, the war ignited in African Americans an urgency for equality that they would carry with them into the subsequent years. Those who received an order for internment were sent to government camps secured by barbed wire and armed guards. Such internments were supposed to be for cause. Thirty thousand Japanese Americans fought for the United States in World War II, but wartime anti-Japanese sentiment built on historical prejudices, and under the order, people of Japanese descent, both immigrants and American citizens, were detained and placed under the custody of the War Relocation Authority, the civil agency that supervised their relocation to internment camps.

They lost their homes and jobs. Over ten thousand German nationals and a smaller number of Italian nationals were interned at various times in the United States during World War II, but American policies disproportionately targeted Japanese-descended populations, and individuals did not receive personalized reviews prior to their internment. This policy of mass exclusion and detention affected over , Japanese and Japanese-descended individuals.

Seventy thousand were American citizens. In , President Reagan signed a law that formally apologized for internment and provided reparations to surviving internees. But if actions taken during war would later prove repugnant, so too could inaction. But the Holocaust—the systematic murder of eleven million civilians, including six million Jews—had been under way for years. How did America respond?

Initially, American officials expressed little official concern for Nazi persecutions. At the first signs of trouble in the s, the State Department and most U. Roosevelt publicly spoke out against the persecution and even withdrew the U. He pushed for the Evian Conference in France, in which international leaders discussed the Jewish refugee problem and worked to expand Jewish immigration quotas by tens of thousands of people per year. But the conference came to nothing, and the United States turned away countless Jewish refugees who requested asylum in the United States.

In , the German ship St. Louis carried over nine hundred Jewish refugees. They could not find a country that would take them. The passengers could not receive visas under the U. The ship was forced to return to Europe. Hundreds of the St. Anti-Semitism still permeated the United States. In and , the U. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt endorsed the measure, but the president remained publicly silent. The bill was opposed by roughly two thirds of the American public and was defeated. Historians speculate that Roosevelt, anxious to protect the New Deal and his rearmament programs, was unwilling to expend political capital to protect foreign groups that the American public had little interest in protecting.

Knowledge of the full extent of the Holocaust was slow in coming. When the war began, American officials, including Roosevelt, doubted initial reports of industrial death camps. But even when they conceded their existence, officials pointed to their genuinely limited options. The most plausible response for the U. Whether bombing would have saved lives remains a hotly debated question.

Late in the war, secretary of the treasury Henry Morgenthau, himself born into a wealthy New York Jewish family, pushed through major changes in American policy. The WRB saved perhaps two hundred thousand Jews and twenty thousand others. But it was already , and such policies were far too little, far too late. Americans celebrated the end of the war. At home and abroad, the United States looked to create a postwar order that would guarantee global peace and domestic prosperity.

The inability of the League of Nations to stop German, Italian, and Japanese aggressions caused many to question whether any global organization or agreements could ever ensure world peace. In , Roosevelt believed that postwar security could be maintained by an informal agreement between what he termed the Four Policemen—the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, and China—instead of a rejuvenated League of Nations. But others, including secretary of state Cordell Hull and British prime minister Winston Churchill, disagreed and convinced Roosevelt to push for a new global organization. As the war ran its course, Roosevelt came around to the idea. And so did the American public.

The United States had rejected membership in the League of Nations after World War I, and in only a third of Americans polled supported such an idea. But as war broke out in Europe, half of Americans did. Whatever his support, Roosevelt had long shown enthusiasm for the ideas later enshrined in the United Nations UN charter. That same year he signed the Atlantic Charter with Churchill, which reinforced those ideas and added the right of self-determination and promised some sort of postwar economic and political cooperation.

Roosevelt first used the term united nations to describe the Allied powers, not the subsequent postwar organization. But the name stuck. It would have a Security Council—the original Four Policemen, plus France—which would consult on how best to keep the peace and when to deploy the military power of the assembled nations. There would also be a General Assembly, made up of all nations; an International Court of Justice; and a council for economic and social matters.