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Mobilizing for Victory

Mobilizing for Victory. Organizing the Economy. The war effort gave Americans a common purpose that softened the divisions of region, class, and national origin while calling attention to continuing inequalities of race .

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Mobilizing for Victory

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  1. Mobilizing for Victory

  2. Organizing the Economy • The war effort gave Americans a common purpose that softened the divisions of region, class, and national origin while calling attention to continuing inequalities of race. • War Manpower Commission: allocated workers among vital industries and the military • War Production Board: invested $17 billion for new factories, $181 billion in war supply contracts

  3. Organizing the Economy • Office of Price Administration (OPA) – fought inflation with price controls and rationing of vital war materials. This convinced Americans to buy war bonds that financed half the war spending • Federal budget grew to $98 billion by 1945 and increased the national debt

  4. Organizing the Economy • Major industries transitioned from producing consumer goods to building war machines • These mass production techniques used to build thousands of warplanes and tanks • War-boom cities: developed due to war production (e.g. San Diego)

  5. The Enlistment of Science • Office of Scientific Research and Development: Vannevar Bush guided spending on research and development which set the pattern of massive federal support for science that continued after the war. • Manhattan Project: U.S. program to develop an atomic bomb

  6. The Enlistment of Science • Physicist Robert Oppenheimer directed the project to design a nuclear fission bomb at Los Alamos • 1st nuclear explosion on July 16,1945 – Trinity site near Alamogordo, New Mexico • Oppenheimer “Now I am become death, destroyer of worlds”

  7. Men & Women in the Military • By 1945, 8.3 million men and women were on active duty in the army and army airforces and 3.4 million in the Navy & Marine Corps. • Total 350,000 women / 16 million men served: 292,000 killed / 100,000 prisoners / 671,000 wounded • 25,000 Native Americans served (racially integrated forces) • Code talkers – Navajo Indians who’s language was unknown to the Axis powers

  8. African Americans • Approximately 1 million served in the armed services during the war • Served in segregated (separate from white soldiers) units – usually in in non-combat, menial jobs • Faced discrimination on and off the base • All black units (761st tank battalion & 99th pursuit squadron) earned distinguished records for combat action. • The war experience helped to invigorate postwar efforts to achieve equal rights.

  9. Japanese Americans • Japanese Americans, unfairly suspected of being possible traitors, in Hawaii and on the west coast are rounded up and shipped to internment camps. • Despite severe prejudice back home, the 442nd Infantry Regiment becomes the highest decorated infantry regiment in the history of the U.S. Army • 8 Presidential Unit Citations • 21 Medal of Honor winners

  10. Women in the military • Received mixed reactions by Americans • Armed services tried to not change established gender roles (primarily worked in clerical jobs) • Women’s Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) – civilian auxiliary of U.S. Army Air Forces • Women pilots ferried military aircraft across the U.S., towed targets for anti-aircraft target practice, tested new planes.

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