This document summarizes aspects of life on the American home front during World War II. It discusses how the US government implemented price controls, encouraged victory gardens and war bond purchases to support the war effort. It also describes the large-scale industrial production that helped the Allied forces, as well as rationing that Americans faced on the home front. The document additionally outlines some of the social impacts of the war, including the entry of more women into the workforce and instances of racial discrimination and civil unrest during this period.

1. The WWII Home
Front

2. 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.

3. “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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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.

22. Discrimination

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. 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.

28. 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.

29. 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.

30. Internment of Japanese Americans
 120,000 Americans of Japanese
heritage were sent to one of 10
internment camps—officially 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.

31.  Multimedia Citations
 Slide 2: http://thesituationist.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/food-is-a-weapon.jpg
 Slide 3: http://www.umkc.edu/lib/spec-col/ww2/WarNews/victorygarden.htm
 Slide 4: http://www.nisk.k12.ny.us/fdr/ideas/portfolio/dorn/gifs/33031801.GIF
 Slide 5: http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/english/exhibits/posters/pics/16171_bring_him_home_770.jpg
 Slide 6: R.A.C. Parker, The Second World War: A Short History (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1997),
133.
 Slide 7: R.A.C. Parker, The Second World War: A Short History, (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1997),
135.
 Slide 8: http://www.cofc.edu/~speccoll/ration.gif
 Slide 10: http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/Frame.htm
 Slide 11: http://www.internationalposter.com/vintage_poster/worldwarII_poster_files/usl08329.gif
 Slide 12: http://afsf.lackland.af.mil/Images/WWII/images/WWII%20Wanted_jpg.jpg
 Slide 13:
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/powers_of_persuasion/stamp_em_out/images_html/images/more_production.jpg
 Slide 14: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d2/AntiJapanesePropagandaTakeDayOff.gif
 Slide 15: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c3/PropagandaNaziStabsBible.gif;
http://www.vulture-bookz.de/imagebank/Propaganda/images/1942x~This_is_the_Enemy_US_%5B2%5D.jpg;
http://www.vulture-bookz.de/imagebank/Propaganda/images/1942x~This_is_the_Enemy_US_%5B1%5D.jpg
 Slide 16: http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/st/~cg3/pics/wneeded.jpg
 Slide 18http://www.solpass.org/7ss/Images/Rosie-Riveter_small.jpg
 Slide 19: http://libweb.uoregon.edu/speccoll/exhibits/morse/Photo/Panel4/WomenWelders.gif
 Slide 20: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/images/at0071.2s.jpg
 Slide 21: http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/fsac/1a35000/1a35300/1a35341v.jpg
 Slide 22: http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/Frame.htm
 Slide 23: http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/Frame.htm
 Slide 24: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/african/images/dairy.jpg
 Slide 25: http://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/harlem_history/pe_politics.html
 Slide 27: http://info.detnews.com/dn/history/riot/images/mob.gif
 Slide 28: http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/immig/alt/images/mexican7_3.jpg
 Slide 29: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/japanese_internment/20-1681a.htm
 Slide 30: http://www.twogypsies.com/assets/images/internment-notice.jpg