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 air forces 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.

10. 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

15. 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.