7.12 World War II: Mobilization

Japan's surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, killed about 2,400 Americans. Congress declared war on Japan the next day, and on December 11 Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

The federal government took a huge role in the economy. The War Production Board turned factories toward tanks, planes and ships; automakers stopped making cars for civilians. The Office of Price Administration controlled prices and rationed goods like gasoline, sugar, meat and tires. Americans bought war bonds, planted victory gardens and collected scrap metal. Income taxes expanded to most workers, with withholding from paychecks starting in 1943.

Federal spending and production ended the Depression. Unemployment fell from about 15 percent in 1940 to near 1 percent in 1944, and the economy's output, after inflation, nearly doubled between 1939 and 1944. About 16 million Americans served in the armed forces. West Coast and Southern cities grew with shipyards, aircraft plants and military bases, starting the rise of the Sun Belt.

• Women: about 6 million women entered the workforce, many in industrial jobs symbolized by 'Rosie the Riveter'. About 350,000 women served in the military in non-combat roles. Most were expected to give up factory jobs when men returned.
• African Americans: A. Philip Randolph threatened a march on Washington, and in June 1941 FDR issued Executive Order 8802, banning discrimination in defense industries and creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee. The Pittsburgh Courier's 'Double V' campaign called for victory over fascism abroad and racism at home. About a million Black Americans served, in segregated units such as the Tuskegee Airmen. A second, larger Great Migration began, and tensions erupted in riots such as Detroit's in 1943.
• Mexican Americans and Mexicans: hundreds of thousands of Mexican Americans served. The Bracero Program (1942) brought Mexican workers for farms and railroads, a reversal from the 1930s, when hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Mexican Americans had been pushed to leave (7.9). In the 1943 'Zoot Suit Riots' in Los Angeles, servicemen attacked young Mexican Americans.
• American Indians: about 25,000 served, including Navajo code talkers whose unbreakable code protected Marine communications in the Pacific.

After Pearl Harbor, fear and long-standing anti-Asian prejudice on the West Coast led FDR to sign Executive Order 9066 in February 1942. The military forced about 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, about two-thirds of them U.S. citizens, to leave their homes and live in remote, guarded camps. Many lost homes, farms and businesses. No Japanese American was ever convicted of spying. (German and Italian Americans faced far more limited, individual measures.)

Fred Korematsu refused to leave and was convicted. In Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Supreme Court upheld the exclusion order 6–3 as a wartime military necessity. Dissenting justices called it racism. The same day, in Ex parte Endo, the Court ruled the government could not keep detaining citizens it admitted were loyal, and the camps began to close.

Many young Japanese American men still served, and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team became one of the most decorated units of the war. In the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, Congress formally apologized and paid $20,000 to each surviving detainee. In 2018 the Supreme Court said Korematsu had been 'gravely wrong the day it was decided'.