Evaluate the effects of WWII on women and minorities in the US

Effects of WWII on Americans

Women• New job opportunities opened for women

– Men went to war, over 6 million women went to work in factories– Sound familiar?– The government even established daycare facilities for children while their mom’s worked– After the war, over two-thirds returned to their traditional role as housewife

• Rosie the Riveter – iconic symbol for the working woman

Japanese Americans• Fearful of disloyal Japanese

in the US, the government begins interning Japanese-Americans

• Internment - “war relocation camps” were set-up for U.S. citizens of Japanese descent

Executive Order 9066 issued February 19, 1942, which allowed local military commanders to designate "military areas" as "exclusion zones," from which "any or all persons may be excluded." This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and much of Oregon, Washington and Arizona, except for those in internment camps

Japanese Internment – Years Later• In 1980, President Jimmy Carter conducted an investigation to

determine whether putting Japanese Americans into internment camps was justified. He appointed the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) to investigate the camps. The commission's report found little evidence of Japanese disloyalty at the time and recommended the government pay reparations to the survivors - a payment of $20,000 to each individual internment camp survivor.

• In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed into law legislation that apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation said that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership". The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion in reparations to Japanese Americans who had been interned as well as their heirs.

African-Americans• Discrimination and

segregation continued against African-Americans, even in the midst of a world war– Over 2.5 million

African-American men registered for the draft

• Tuskegee Airmen: a group of African-American pilots who fought in WWII

American Indians• Code talkers: from the

Navajo tribe• Used to fight in the Pacific • Japanese never broke the

code• In May 1942, the first 29 Navajo recruits

attended boot camp. Then this first group created the Navajo code. They developed a dictionary and numerous words for military terms. The dictionary and all code words had to be memorized during training.

• Once he completed his training, he was sent to a Marine unit in the Pacific theater. Their primary job was to talk, transmitting information on tactics and troop movements, orders and other vital battlefield communications over telephones and radios.

• 6 Navajo code talkers worked around the clock during the first 2 days of the Battle of Iwo Jima. Those 6 sent and received over 800 messages, all without error.