1. Native Americans Enlistment during WWII 42,000 Indian men representing nearly all tribal community in the U.S. registered their names for military service by early autumn 1941 One-third of all Native Americans were classed “unfit” for military service and also faced other hurdles Reasons of enlistment: a sense of identity with the United States, protection of the land, travel, promise of an adequate income In total, around 25,000 Native Americans served in WWII

2. Native Americans at War The Office of Indian Affairs’ monthly publication, Indians at Work, kept Native American readers informed of individual and tribal contributions to the war effort Native Americans served in every branch of America’s armed forces, held every rank from private and seaman to general and admiral, and performed most every military task in military service The case of Ira Hamilton Hayes Code Talkers during the war

3. Lieutenant Ernest Childers, a Creek, is pictured here congratulated by General Jacob L. Devers after receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor in Italy for wiping out two machine gun nests, July, 1944

4. Ira Hamilton Hayes (Pima) captured the imagination of the American public and ultimately came to represent Indian contribution to the war effort This photo taken by combat photographer Joe Rosenthal captured the essential spirit of the Marine Corps and America ’ s inevitable victory in the Pacific, and it soon graced the cover of magazines across the U.S.

6. The Marine Corps selected only Navajos as code talkers. Few German academics and no Japanese scholars in the interwar period studied the language since it was a difficult language to master

7. Artist and author Charles Banks Wilson (1918-2013) created this painting titled Freedom’s Warrior – the American Indian (1995) to honor the service of Native Americans to the U.S. in times of both war and peace

8. War Comes to the Reservations Native communities faced WWII much like all other Americans towns and cities Many tribal communities formed Home Guard paramilitary units to provide defense of local bridges, dams, and power plants American Red Cross offices opened on many reservations Reservations, like all other communities in America, looked to redirect local resources to the war effort: Indian farm production

9. The War Relocation Authority (WRA) established a 90,000 acre camp with 7,500 Japanese-Americans on Indian lands at Parker, Arizona, in 1942, and another facility to accommodate 5,000 detainees was planned for the Gila Reservation in southern Arizona Pictured here are Apache Indians unloading of beds for evacuees of Japanese ancestry in Poston, Arizona (April 1942)

10. Migration and Work during WWII During the war years, around 40,000 Native Americans moved from the reservation to urban communities to work in the defense industry Women in the war effort increasingly found greater job opportunities and assumed increased tribal responsibilities within their communities War Bonds – whether individual or tribal purchases, total Indian bond sales totaled $50,000,000 by spring 1945