Transcript The Home Front

The Home Front
How the war affected workers,
families, women, minorities
Jobs
• Full employment
– People had money
– Shortages and rationing meant no consumer
spending
– Wages rose
– Farm production + income rose, too
– Jobs opened up for women; 35% worked
Migration
• African Americans moved N and W
• Workers moved to cities with defense
plants
• California population rose the most
GI Bill of rights
• To ease the transition of soldiers back to
civilian life
– Free education
– Low cost home, farm, business loans
Early Civil Rights
• James Farmer founded C.O.R.E.
– Congress on Racial Equality
– To confront urban segregation
• Sit ins
– Summer 1943: Race Riot- Detroit
• Zoot Suit Riot, Los Angeles
– Sailors claimed they were attacked by Zoot
Suit wearing Mexican Americans.
– Mobs poured into Mexican Neighborhoods
• Riots lasted a week
Japanese Internment
• After Pearl Harbor
– Fear of Japanese sabotage grew in Hawaii and west coast
– FDR issued executive order to move Japanese Americans away
from the coast and defense plants
– Gov of CA: Earl Warren ordered forced internment of California’s
Japanese Americans
• Fred Korematsu defied the relocation order
• Arrested
• Korematsu v U.S. 1944: Supreme Ct decided evacuation = military
necessity
• Families were forced to sell homes, businesses for fraction of value
• 1965 some payment was made by gov.
• 1978 federal restitution payment: $20,000- passed a decade later.