The Homefront in WWIISection 1- FDR and World War II

Foreign policy in the 1930sThe worldwide economic depression of the 1930s took its toll in different ways in Europe, America, and Asia. In Europe, political power shifted to totalitarian and imperialist governments in several countries, including Germany, Italy, and Spain. In Asia, a resource-starved Japan began to expand aggressively, invading China and maneuvering to control a sphere of influence in the Pacific. The United States, on the other hand, chose to withdraw from world affairs and concentrate on its own economic problems.

During the Great Depression, Americans were in favor of isolationism, believing that problems at home could only be exacerbated by engagement in international affairs. Thus, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's engagement in foreign affairs was limited, even as the gathering storm of Japanese and German military aggression dimmed global prospects for peace.

Photograph of two British soldiers taking guns out of crates.British soldiers receive a shipment of American weapons provided by the Lend-Lease Act. Image courtesy the Imperial War Museum.

Even after war broke out in Europe following Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939, Roosevelt, reflecting national sentiment, maintained US neutrality. Indirectly, however, Roosevelt supported the British and the Allies in their fight against Nazi Germany. In 1942, Roosevelt made a speech declaring that the United States would serve as an “arsenal of democracy” for the Allies by supplying them with American-made weapons and equipment through the Lend-Lease program.

Roosevelt as Commander-in-ChiefUS neutrality in World War II ended after the Japanese (who were allied with Nazi Germany) launched a surprise attack on Hawai'i's Pearl Harbor. Rousing the nation in a national radio address the following day, President Roosevelt declared the date of that attack, December 7, 1941, a “date which will live in infamy.”

For the United States, the Second World War was simultaneously fought in two theaters of military combat, in Europe and in the Pacific, a war involving sixteen million American men mobilized into the armed forces—405,000 of whom lost their lives.

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that, "The president shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” In keeping with this Constitutional grant of authority, Roosevelt led the nation in war. He built a close partnership with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and later with Soviet premier Joseph Stalin in the fight against Nazi Germany. True to his word, the United States did become the arsenal of democracy, supplying some $50 billion in desperately needed weapons and equipment to the British, Soviets, and other Allied Forces during the war.

The 'Four Freedoms'During the interwar years and in the war itself, a great worldwide battle of values, forms of government, and economic systems was underway, pitting liberal democracy against fascism, Nazism, and communism. Roosevelt’s advocacy of American ideals and institutions gave eloquent expression to the tenets of liberal democracy for which the nation fought, and included stirring public statements of the importance of America’s founding principles of representative government, religious freedom, toleration, individual liberty, free speech, and capitalism.

In his January 1941 State of the Union Address—often called the Four Freedoms speech—Roosevelt cast the war as a fight for four universal human freedoms, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

Roosevelt's expressions of the core values of a free and open society inspired many in the United States and around the world, even though he did not always live up to those principles. Roosevelt succumbed to fear and racism when he issued Executive Order 9066, which interned 112,000 Japanese Americans during the war.

Roosevelt's death and legacyRoosevelt was in poor health in the later years of his presidency. The combined toll of his struggle with polio and his role as Commander-in-Chief wore him down. On April 12, 1945 Roosevelt died from a cerebral hemorrhage while visiting Georgia. His vice president, Harry S. Truman, took over the presidency. It fell to Truman to see the United States to final victory in World War II.

Nevertheless, Roosevelt is often ranked, along with Washington and Lincoln, as among the nation’s greatest presidents. His wife, Eleanor, was famous in her own right for transforming the position of First Lady into an office of advocacy and activism during his presidency.

Section 2-Japanese Internment Executive Order 9066In February 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the Secretary of War to declare certain areas within the United State as military zones, and to restrict access to those areas on the grounds of wartime military necessity. The president’s order came less than three months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, amid concerns that Japanese American citizens might pose a threat to national security. These concerns were driven by public hysteria grounded in racism and false reports of sabotage and collaboration with the enemy.

Posters ordered Japanese American citizens to report for internment. Image courtesy National Archives.

Under the Executive Order, some 112,000 Japanese Americans—79,000 of whom were American citizens—were removed from the West Coast and placed into ten internment camps located in remote areas. Japanese Americans were given only a few days' notice to report for internment, and many had to sell their homes and businesses for much less than they were worth. In so doing, they lost much of what they had accrued in the course of their lives.

The camps—like the one at Manzanar, California, located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains—were surrounded by fences, barbed wire, guard towers, searchlights and machine guns. Families incarcerated in the camps lived in uninsulated cabins or converted stables. They occupied their enforced idleness by organizing schools and camp newspapers, by running barber or beauty shops, and more. A small number were cleared for work outside the camps.

Map of Japanese internment camps, 1941-1945

Map of Japanese internment camps, 1941-1945.Japanese Americans were ordered to leave the "Exclusion Area" on the West Coast of the United States and to move to remote internment camps. Map courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Korematsu v. United States (1944)Fred Korematsu was an American-born twenty-three-year-old welder of Japanese descent living in the San Francisco Bay area. In May 1942, he was arrested for failing to comply with the order for Japanese Americans to report to internment camps.

With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, Korematsu sued on the grounds that as an American citizen he had a right to live where he pleased. But in a 6-3 decision in Korematsu v. United States the Supreme Court ruled that interning Japanese Americans during the war for purposes of "military necessity" was constitutional.

Photograph of Fred Korematsu wearing the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Fred Korematsu received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. In 1942, Korematsu refused to comply with the internment order and was arrested. The Supreme Court ruled against him, citing the "military necessity" of Japanese internment. Image courtesy Capital New Service.

In his dissenting opinion in Korematsu, Justice Frank Murphy asserted that the internment program “goes over ‘the very brink of constitutional power’ and falls into the ugly abyss of racism.” He added: “I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism. Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States.”

In 1984, a federal court voided Korematsu’s conviction, and in 1998 President Bill Clinton bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, on Fred Korematsu.

Aftermath and redressIn the aftermath of the wartime internment, young Japanese Americans who had been interned went on to become among the best educated Americans, earning salaries more than a third above the national average.

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 provided financial redress of $20,000 for each surviving detainee from the camps. In 2001, Congress made the ten internment sites historical landmarks, asserting that they “will forever stand as reminders that this nation failed in its most sacred duty to protect its citizens against prejudice, greed, and political expediency."

Section 3-American Women and World War IIWomen on the home frontWorld War II is often falsely identified as the first time that American women worked outside of the home in large numbers. In fact, about a quarter of women worked outside the home in 1940. Before World War II, however, women's paid labor was largely restricted to "traditionally female" professions, such as typing or sewing, and most women were expected to leave the labor force as soon as they had children, if not as soon as they married.

World War II changed both the type of work women did and the volume at which they did it. Five million women entered the workforce between 1940-1945. The gap in the labor force created by departing soldiers meant opportunities for women. In particular, World War II led many women to take jobs in defense plants and factories around the country. These jobs provided unprecedented opportunities to move into occupations previously thought of as exclusive to men, especially the aircraft industry, where a majority of workers were women by 1943.

But most women in the labor force during World War II did not work in the defense industry. The majority took over other factory or office jobs that had been held by men. Although women often earned more money than ever before, it was still far less than men received for doing the same jobs. Nevertheless, many achieved a degree of financial self-reliance that was enticing.

The challenges of wartime workWorking women, especially mothers, faced great challenges during World War II. To try to address the dual role of women as workers and mothers, Eleanor Roosevelt urged her husband Franklin Delano Roosevelt to approve the first US government childcare facilities under the Community Facilities Act of 1942. Eventually, seven centers, servicing 105,000 children, were built. The First Lady also urged industry leaders to build model childcare facilities for their workers. Still, these efforts did not meet the full need for childcare for working mothers.

Photograph of an African American woman working on a battleship.Eastine Cowner at work on the SS George Washington Carver, 1943. 17 Liberty ships were named for outstanding African Americans. Image courtesy Library of Congress.

There was also some cultural resistance to women going to work in such male-dominated environments. In order to recruit women for factory jobs, the government created a propaganda campaign centered on a figure known as Rosie the Riveter. Rosie was tough yet feminine. To reassure men that the demands of war would not make women too masculine, some factories gave female employees

lessons in how to apply makeup, and cosmetics were never rationed during the war. Keeping American women looking their best was believed to be important for morale.

Minority women faced particular difficulties during the World War II era. African American women struggled to find jobs in the defense industry, and found that white women were often unwilling to work beside them when they did. Although factory work allowed black women to escape labor as domestic servants for a time and earn better wages, most were fired after the war and forced to resume work as maids and cooks.

Japanese American women in western states had little access to new job opportunities, given that the policy of Japanese internment had resettled them in remote locations. Cramped into converted barns, living with as many as eight people in a single room, Japanese American women struggled to retain a semblance of normalcy in the face of terrible privation.

Women in the warApproximately 350,000 American women joined the military during World War II. They worked as nurses, drove trucks, repaired airplanes, and performed clerical work to free up men for combat.

Photograph of four white women pilots from the Women's Airforce Service Pilots division.Women's Airforce Service Pilots flew planes from factories to military bases. Here, Frances Green, Margaret Kirchner, Ann Waldner and Blanche Osborn leave their plane, "Pistol Packin' Mama," in Ohio. Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Those who joined the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) flew planes from the factories to military bases. Some were killed in combat or captured as prisoners of war. Over sixteen hundred female nurses received various decorations for courage under fire.Many women also flocked to work in a variety of civil service jobs. Others worked as chemists and engineers, developing weapons for the war. This included thousands of women who were recruited to work on the Manhattan Project, developing the atomic bomb.

Minority women, like minority men, served in the war effort as well, though the Navy did not allow black women into its ranks until 1944. As the American military was still segregated for the majority of World War II, African American women served in black-only units. Black nurses were only permitted to attend to black soldiers.

Women after the warSocial commentators worried that when men returned from military service there would be no jobs available for them, and admonished women to return to their "rightful place" in the home as soon as victory was at hand. Although as many as 75% of women reported that they wanted to continue working after World War II, women were laid off in large numbers at the end of the war.

But women's participation in the work force bounced back relatively quickly. Despite the stereotype of the "1950s housewife," by 1950 about 32% of women were working outside the home, and of those, about half were married. World War II had solidified the notion that women were in the workforce to stay.