Transcript The Homefront

Women’s contributions
• Women built 87,000 warships, 300,000 aircraft,
41 billion rounds of ammo, 107,000 tanks, B-24
built every 63 minutes
• 649,000 Jeeps (G.P.= general purpose)1 jeep
every 80 seconds
• Worked in other arenas; lumberjills,
newspapers, radio, stock exchange, cowgirls
• “war would create a new amazon who would out
drink, out swear, and out swagger the men.”
War Manpower Commission, 1942
• Oversaw labor issues
• Lanham Act and establishment of child care centers: by
1945 had served 600,000 children
• 1942- National War Labor Board issued a declaration
that women should be paid equal to men for same job (
not a law) but Army and Navy munitions factories did so
• From 1940-1945 proportion of women in the workforce
rose for 25-36%
• Gov’t could not force industries to hire women: ER
pressured many CEOs but especially used the media to
recruit and to get word out about this valuable work force
Men
• World War I: 3989 were C.O.; 1300 non-combatant duty; 1,200 farm
furloughs;450 court-martialed; 940 remained in camps throughout
war (Fort Devens)
WWII: Conscientious objectors: could (a) be non-combatant in
military (b) confinement in civilian public service corps or in peace
churches (c) go to jail
• 72,354 were C.O : 25,000 non-combatant; 12,000 performed civilian
public service; 6000 in jail
• CPS: performed alternative service under guidance of peace
churches: Mennonites, Quakers, Brethren
• Dr. Keyes of U of Minnesota (K-rations) decided to do an
experiment wondering what would happen to starving refugees
could be brought back to health- 36 volunteers
Lowell
• “Working wives have been the rule rather
than the exception in Lowell for a long
time. No draft was needed to get them in
the factories. So it looks like the feminine
contingent is saving the bacon as well as
cooking it, whenever it can buy it.” Lowell
Sun 3/24/43
The Depression ended when
the war began…
• Case of Lowell – a hard sell
• “There is perhaps more destitution and misery
and degradation in the mill towns of New
England today..than anywhere else in the United
States. Lowell was economically dead. At this
time 2/3 of the labor force was idle; every third
store was vacant; doctors could not collect bills;
charity was the biggest industry in town.”
(President McMahon of the Textile Workers1930)
• Lowell as a wool town- by 1936 woolens and
worsted had replaced cotton
• Mills:100% engaged in war industry work – E
pennant
Lowell
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Mills as training school to produce bleached white twill: 1 out of every 2
sailors wore Boott twill
Merrimack produced corduroy for bathrobes and cloth for pilots’ jackets
One-third more production than in 1939
Atlantic Rayon Co.: Parachute Division – 1000 power stitchers were trained
Breslee Co.: Canvas gear and tents
Ames: Produced serge for army jackets
G.E.: Rocket launchers
John Pilling Shoe factory- Shoes for the army
Commercial printing-Printing for bureaucratic needs of war
Edith, in support of the New England mills, wore cotton dresses and told all
Congressmen to wear cotton suits. She was known as the “cotton queen.”
Remington Arms
• 5000 employees
• R.A. operated plant but gov’t owned it
• Produced .50 caliber armor piercing
cartridges
• Employees mostly women who needed
little skill and paid $.55/hour
• Company gave bonus overtime and paid
holidays and time and a half on Saturdays
• Company paid for annual physicals
Women of Lowell
• By 1943, presidential decree established a 48 hour work
week in munitions factories with overtime on holidays
• Women had choice of jobs: munitions factories paid
more than mills
• Women were mobile- had highest quit rate
• 200 women form Lowell worked in DC – Ellis calls this a
“civil migration”
• Many more commuted to Boston Navy Yard, G.E. in
Lynn and Watertown Arsenal
• 1942- mills received authorization to put women over 30
on third shift
• WLB allowed employers to give pay raises to equalize
pay between the sexes
War Propaganda
• Gov’t needed to direct economy but its means
were limited so needed to depend on the private
sector
• Gov’t thought that propaganda would help
recruit labor shortage
• Propaganda gave homefront an ideological
framework and led to establishment of Office of
War Information (1942): the OWI’s purpose was
to sell the war
Dr. Seuss
• “ Disconnect between what we really think of Dr.
Seuss and the content of his cartoons.”
• Yertle the Turtle: dictatorships
• The Sneetches: Racial Intolerance
• The Butter Battle Book: Cold War and military
deterrence
• Suportive of FDR: Drew posters for the
Treasury Depart. and in 1943, joined army and
was commander of the Animation department of
the First Motion Picture Unit of the US Army air
Forces; wrote the film Our Job in Japan (1947)
Dr. Seuss and Political Cartoons
• Created over 400 cartoons for PM, a leftwing daily newspaper in NY from 1940-48
• When drawing Hitler and Mussolini there
were obvious likenesses
• However when drawing Hirohito not so
much: “ Dr. Seuss draws Japanese as
piggish nose, coke-bottle eyeglasses,
slanted eyes, brush mustache, lips parted
(usually in a smile): overtly racist?
Walt Disney and the War Effort
• With WWII- revenues from European audiences
declined
• Government approached him to do propaganda
films: Walt received a call from John Sullivan,
assistant secretary of the Treasury, hoping that
Disney could make films to encourage people to
pay their taxes: “What John Barrymore can’t do,
maybe Mickey Mouse could.”
• Film produced: The New Spirit (The Spirit of 43):
36 million saw it and 37% said in had an effect
on their willingness to pay taxes: gov’t asked for
a 5% victory tax on income
Disney and the war effort
• Disney also produced films for the armed
services
• These included: der Fueher’s face,
Commando Duck, Education for Death –
The Making of a Nazi, Victory through Air
Power
Coca Cola Posters
• 55 years old at beginning of WWII and bottled in
41 countries=first overseas plant in France in
1926
• Robert Woodruff, chairman, in 1941 said he
would make it available to any serviceperson for
5 cents
• Technicians followed troops to every continent
and set up bottling plants: 5 billions of bottles
were consumed by armed services
Other posters and magazines
• Ad houses needed new clients due to reduction by 29%
of consumer goods: defense industry accounted for 80%
business
• Magazines: 1942 established a magazine war guide to
induce women to stay in jobs in civilian economy like
waitressing, work in laundries
• Writer’s War Board: to recruit talented writers that would
support the war effort
• Created Pulp fiction: books to attract blue collar
audience and were easy to read, sensational, portrayed
exotic locales and characters
Pulp fiction
• Collection of detective stories, science
fiction, westerns written on cheap pulp and
then thrown out: authors Dashiell
Hammett, Raymond Carver, Ellery Queen
• Women became sensual, partook in
orgies, self-motivating and even
frightening
Wonder Woman
• “ Not even girls want to be girls so long as our
feminine archetype lacks force,strength, and
power. Not wanting to be girls, they don’t want
be tender, submissive, peace-loving as good
women are. Women’s strong qualities have
become despised because of their weakness.
The obvious remedy is to create a feminine
character with all the strength of Superman plus
all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.”
Wm. Marston
Hollywood
• Since1898 silent movie of the atrocities of war in Spanish American war,
Hollywood had been making war movies: was Hollywood trying to get us
into war? (Great Dictator- 1940)
• After Pearl Harbor, Hollywood was 100% into the war cause and portrayed
WWII as a “people’s war”. Greatest contribution- morale
• Vargas girls-by 1945 ¼ of industry’s male population enlist
• 90 million a week went to movies!
• War Bond drives
• Bureau of censorship; prohibited the export of films that showed racial
discrimination, depicted Americans as single-handedly winning the war, or
painted allies as imperialists.
• Bing Crosby’s presence in rallies brought in $14 million of bonds and
Carole Lombard -$2 million
African Americans
• ER more concerned with homefront than the war
and especially the African American experience;
“The nation cannot expect colored people to feel
that the US is worth defending if they continue to
be treated as they are treated now.”
• The case of Dorie Miller and West Pointer Colin
Jelly
• Triple Nickels: Fu-Go project: only US civilian
casualties
Women as an economic army:
Jane Crow
• Black women (12,000) did benefit
financially by working in defense
industries, but after the war 80% were
employed in domestic work
• First time A.A. women had access to high
paying industrial jobs and entered “white”
jobs as nurses and clerical: 6 to 18%
growth
Baseball
• Benefit games to support war effort: Ruth
and Walter Johnson came out of
retirement to play in NY 1942 and raised
$80,000
• Babe bought $100,000 of war bonds
• Yoggi Berra- volunteered and served in
Normandy. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not
to volunteer!”
Baseball
• Baseball saved many lives by ferreting out
spies” What position did Di Maggio play?”
• When in 1943 Yankees beat the St. Louis
Cardinals, Goebbels said, “There are fresh
atrocities in the US. The Yankees most
content with their pious intervention all
over the world, are beating up their own
cardinals.”
Female baseball leagues
• Out of 26 minor leagues (male), only 9 had full roster
• 50% of big leaguers went to war
• Phil Wrigley and Branch Rickey created All American
Girls Baseball League: 4 teams initially especially in
factory towns (Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana): formed in
1943
• There were already existing softball leagues- why the
name- however, the girls played by baseball’s rules –
end of 1943, named All-American Girls Professional Ball
League ( because shorter in-field distances and
underhand pitching)
• $45-80$ week for 4 months
Female Baseball League
• Combined women’s softball rules and men’s: from men’s
baseball they allowed runners to lead off and steal
bases: women’s softball had 10 players- reduced to 9
and extended length of pitching distance
• Women recruited and out of 280 finalists, 60 chosen
• Some femininity rules: had to wear skirts (hurt sliding
into bases); formed V at the beginning of each match;
Helen Rubinstein beauty kit beginning of playing Star
Spangles Banner; image of All-American girl who
learned the art of speaking, walking, speaking and
applying makeup; always accompanied by chaperones
Female Baseball League
• Managers were ex-male players: season midMay to September equaled 108 games
• Very successful: Women in defense industry
were already examples of non-traditional roles
and because of rationing, people needed to
spend leisure time close to home
• By 1944 played in major league fields: problems
• Continued after the war until 1954 with over 600
women who played
Japanese American Internment
• 10 camps built by the War Relocation Authority
for 100,000 evacuees
• Bitter and threatening letters received by W.H. :
feared popular revolt
• Unexpected consequences was the
Americanization of many Nisei: girls allowed to
go to dances, intro. to American food
• Split between generations when in 1943 Nisei
could enlist in a special army unit.
Women in the Armed Services
• “ The American women of today are awake to
the danger threatening our country. They want
an active part in winning the war. They are just
eager, just as loyal and patriotic as their
ancestors in colonial days, who withstood the
peril and dangers of Indian warfare.”
(E.N.R.3/41)
• “The women of America must share the
responsibility for the security of their country in a
future emergency as the women of England did
in WWII.” (Gen. Eisenhower)
Women Army Auxiliary Corps
• Different from Army Nursing Corps
• Equity for those women who helped overseas in
WWI and received no legal protection, benefits
or recognized status
• Purpose to work with the Army by “making
available to the national defense the knowledge,
skill, and special training of the women of the
nation.”
• 150,000 auxiliaries provided with food, uniforms,
living quarters, pay and medical care.
• Director of WAAC was assigned rank of Major
WAACS
• Applicants had to be 21-45 years old, no dependents,
and at least 5 feet tall and weigh 100 pounds or more.
• Segregation of African-American WAACs
• Jobs included: radio operators, cryptographers, weather
observers, sheet metal workers, control tower operators,
parachute riggers, statistical control tabulating machines,
draftsmen, mechanics, ordnance department workers
(velocity of bullets etc..).dental and X-ray technicians,
Manhattan Project (worked on cyclotron)
• Only 50% were clerical.
• Women served in North Africa, Europe, Pacific, China,
India, Burma and the Middle East: only highly qualified
WAACS=WACS
• Many men questioned the moral values of
women who were attracted to military.
Opposition especially by Southern
Congressmen: “Who will then do the cooking,
the washing, the mending , the humble homey
tasks to which every woman has devoted herself
and who will nurture the children?”
• WAAC converted into Women’s Army Corps in
order to get benefits- with possibility of Allied
invasion in Europe, manpower issue was critical.
1978- complete assimilation into Army
Conclusion
• “ The figures are so astronomical that they cease to
mean very much. Say that we performed the equivalent
of building 2 Panama Canals every month with a fat
surplus to boot; that’s an understatement…the total is
simply beyond the compass of one’s understanding.
Here we displayed a strength even than cocky
Americans in the old days of unlimited self-confidence
had supposed ; strength to which nothing –literally
nothing, in the physical strength- was any longer
impossible.” Bruce Catton
Conclusion
• GNP jumped form $100 billion to $215 b.
• In 1940 only 7.8 million (132 m) paid taxes; by 1945- 50
million( out of $140 m.)
• First time a redistribution of income downward: 50% of
Americans had doubled their salaries
• Blacks by the end of the war had obtained ranks of
soldier: Ranks of blacks in the military increased in 5
years form 5000-920,000; Black officers 5 to 70,000more happened in the field of race relations in 5 years
than in all years between C.War and 1940
Conclusion
• FDR was the true leader in mobilizing the
Nation ..by understanding public opinion
and “leading people one step at a time.”
• By 1947 women would return to workplace
to reach war levels
• Problems: “ my husband did not like my
independence. He had left a shrinking
violet and came home to a very strong oak
tree.”
Conclusion
• War as a unifier and as a disrupter of
home life; 15 million had moved from their
small towns, 12 million in armed services;
20% total took part in the great migration
• Sense of being and becoming an
American: 2 million after war became
citizens; record numbers of buying flags;
fewer foreign language radio shows