The Atrocities of WWII: The Holocaust, Japanese Internment, & the Atomic Bombs

The Holocaust Mass, planned extermination of 11 million people the disabled, homosexuals, Roma, Communists, union members 6 million were Jews Driven by Hitler and Nazi’s obsession with creating a racially-superior Third Reich Auschwitz

Progression of Extermination 1933 = Jews banned from government jobs & universities 1935 = Nuremberg Laws removed German citizenship, forbade marriage with non-Jews, segregated from hospitals, theatres, athletic fields Auschwitz

Kristallnacht, November 7, 1938 Arson, looting, murders of Jews across Germany 119 synagogues destroyed, 7,500 shops, 35 Jews killed 20,000 – 30,000 Jews sent to Concentration Camps Rest forced to wear Yellow Star of David Turning point in world’s awareness of plight of Jews

Jewish Migration? By 1939 = 300,000 Jews fled Germany, 200,000 fled Austria US did not allow Jewish refugees in June 1939 = 900 Jewish refugees arrived on St. Louis ship in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida & sent back to Germany 700 of the 900 died in concentration camps

Japanese Internment Issei: First generation Japanese Immigrants (37,000 interned) Nisei: U.S.-born Japanese Americans (75,000) FDR’s Executive Order 9006 = February 1942, all Japanese on West Coast forcibly removed from homes

Internment Camps

$2 billion in property & belongings lost Supreme Court upheld constitutionality of internment policy, Korematsu v. US (1942) 1982 = US government admitted internment “not based on military necessity” 1988 = $20,000 given to 62,000 survivors

The Atomic Bombs 1939 = Einstein warned US about German development of A- bomb Manhattan Project began in 1941 between only US and Britain 2 bombs completed in Los Alamos, NM July = Alamogordo, NM test bomb exploded

US threatened to drop bomb if Japan did not surrender by August 3, 1945 August 6, 1945 = Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy” over Hiroshima August 8, 1945 = Bock’s Car dropped “Hiroshima” over Nagasaki September 6, 1945 = Japan surrendered

Hiroshima = 60,000 died immediately, 75,000 later from radiation and burns Nagasaki = 30,000 died immediately