The American Home Front

America's accomplishments during World War II were fueled largely by the collective efforts of ordinary citizens on the home front. After declaring war on Japan, and then on Germany, in December of 1941, the United States assembled and trained the largest military force in its history. As most of the nation's men joined the ranks of the armed forces, American women stepped into the jobs "the boys" had left vacant on the home front.

Wartime production pulled the American economy out of a twelve-year slump known as the Great Depression (1929-1939). The Great Depression was a period of severe economic decline. Many factories and banks closed; many people lost their jobs. Large numbers of people were homeless and had no way to get food. As World War II heated up in Europe, the economic situation in the United States began to improve. But after the United States actually entered the war in December 1941, unemployment plummeted as more and more manufacturing jobs were created. Factories churned out planes, tanks, ships, jeeps, weapons, and other war materials in record numbers. Money to cover the incredibly high cost of the war was raised through the sale of war bonds, through added taxes, and through mandatory conservation measures, most notably rationing scarce food items, rubber, gasoline, and heating oil.

The hopes and fears of one woman on the home front, Catherine "Renee" Young Pike are captured in a series of letters she wrote over a two-year period to her husband, George Pike, an American soldier. These letters are excerpted from the collection Since You Went Away: World War II Letters from American Women on the Home Front .

In the wake of the Japanese attack on American naval bases at Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans on the home front became victims of intensified discrimination and abuse. Law-abiding Japanese American citizens were treated as potential threats to national security—solely because of their race. In February 1942 President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This move led to the confinement of Japanese Americans in shoddily constructed internment camps that had been set up in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Relocated Japanese Americans lost their homes, their jobs, and virtually everything they owned. I Am an American: A True Story of Japanese Internment, written by Jerry Stanley, tells the story of Shiro Nomuri, an American citizen of Japanese ancestry who was sent to the Manzanar Relocation Center in eastern California.

Catherine "Renee" Young Pike …71

Jerry Stanley … 85