APUSH Chapter 35 – America in World War II

Japanese Internment Camps

Similar to the Red Scare in WWI, many Americans feared Japanese Americans were a threat to American safety. 110,000 Japanese-Americans were forced into these camps because the US feared that they might act as saboteurs for Japan in case of invasion. The camps deprived the Japanese-Americans of basic rights, and the internees lost hundreds of millions of dollars in property. In the Supreme Court ruling in Korematsu v. U.S. (1944), the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the concentration camps.

End of New Deal Era

Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration, and the National Youth Administration were dissolved. President Roosevelt declared in 1943 that the New Deal reform era was over.

War Production Board (WPB)

American factories produced an enormous amount of weaponry, such as guns and planes. The War Production Board halted the manufacture of nonessential items such as passenger cars. It assigned priorities for transportation and access to raw materials. Took America out of the Great Depression

Inflation 1942

In 1942, a sharp inflationary surge occurred as a result of full employment and scarce consumer goods. The Office of Price Administration (OPA) eventually brought the ascending prices down.

Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act

June 1942 – The WPB imposed price ceilings, or a cap on the increasing wages. The union workers were not happy with this and decided to strike, however, the strike threatened a great loss of production. Congress passed this act to authorize the federal government to seize and operate tied-up businesses. Washington took control of the coal mines and, for a brief period, the railroads. Though, the vast majority of American workers were committed to the war effort.

braceros

Mexican agricultural workers that were brought to American in 1942 to harvest the fruit and grain crops of the West. With the military draft imposed for the war, many farmers were taken from their duty to produce food, so they brought mexicans here to do that for them.

WAAC

Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps. Women volunteering for the army would not be given the same rank, pay, or benefits as men who were doing the same thing as them.

Women in WWII

The armed services enlisted nearly 216,000 women in WWII. Millions of women also took jobs outside the house, working in the war industry. WWII foreshadowed an eventual revolution in the roles of women in American society.

A. Philip Randolph

1941 – "Negro March on Washington" America’s leading black labor leader who called for a march on Washington D.C. to protest factories’ refusals to hire African Americans, which eventually led to President Roosevelt issuing an order to end all discrimination in the defense industries. Many of them from the south wanted to come to the North and the West for working opportunities in the industries making weaponry.

Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC)

Established by FDR to monitor compliance with his executive order forbidding discrimination in defense industries.

mechanical cotton picker 1944

millions of black tenant farmers and sharecroppers headed north because their cheap labor was no longer needed and replaced by this invention

code talkers

Navajo radio operators who helped secure communications in the Pacific. 25,000 Native Americans served in the Army in WWII

national debt

rose from $49 billion in 1941 to $259 billion in 1945. Most of the war costs were borrowed.

Japanese attacks

American outposts of Guam, Wake, and the Philippines.

General MacArthur

commander of the US forces in the Philippine Islands who directed the Allied occupation of Japan.. held out against the invading Japanese force for 5 months. The America troops surrendered on April 9, 1942. They were treated with vicious cruelty in the 80-mile Bataan Death March to prisoner-of-war camps.

Corregidor

the peninsula and island in the Philippines where Japanese forces besieged American forces in World War II. Surrendered on May 6, 1942, giving the Japanese complete control of the Philippines.

Coral Sea

a Japanese defeat in World War II (May 1942) — a crucial naval battle was fought in this area. An American carrier task force, with Australian support, engaged in the first battle in which all the fighting was done by carrier-based aircraft. Japan won

Midway

An important battle in the Asian part of the war, the Americans sank 4 Japanese aircraft carriers. Combined with the Battle of Coral Sea, the U.S. success at Midway halted the powerful Japanese.

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

naval strategist who lead a smaller carrier at Coral Sea and Midway; commander of Pacific fleet. Led under Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, against the powerful invading Japanese fleet.

Guadalcanal Island

the strategic island in the Solomans held by American ground forces from August 1942 until the Japanese evacuated in February 1943. Control over these islands were meant to protect the lifeline from America to Australia through the Southwest Pacific.

leapfrogging

refers to the tactic of the US forces in WWII that involved sinking Japanese troopships and warships bringing reinforcements, thereby neutralizing Japanese strongholds and moving on, leaving them to die on the vine. It was a major factor contributing to the Allied victory. he new strategy of island hopping called for bypassing some of the most heavily fortified Japanese posts, capturing nearby islands, setting up airfields on them, and then neutralizing the enemy bases through heavy bombing.

Admiral Chester Nimitz

He decoded Japanese naval codes, planning to knock out the American fleet, but he knew the plans and locations of the Japanese ships. He was the commander of the Pacific Fleet during WW2, and he was the man who directed the U.S. victories at Midway, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa

Saipan Island, Tinian Island, and the Marianas

1944 – From the Marianas, the United States’ new B-29 superbombers were able to carryout round-trip bombing raids on Japan’s home islands

Bernard Montgomery

British general who in an attack at El Alamein was able to drive the Germans, who were led by Marshal Erwin Rommel, all the way back to Tunisia and away from the Suez Canal

Stalingrad 1942

City in Russia, site of a Red Army victory over the Germany army in 1942-1943. The Battle of Stalingrad was the turning point in the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. Russians captured thousands of German soldiers.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

leader of the Allied forces in Europe then was elected to be Pres. of the USA

Allied powers

France, Britain, USSR, United States, and China as well as 45 other countries

Axis powers

Germany, Italy, Japan

Tunisia Invasion May 1943

The plan for the invasion of North Africa was to trap the Axis troops led by Erwin Rommel (1891-1944) between British and U.S. forces. By May 1943 the North African operation had succeeded and the Allies had taken control of Africa.

Casablanca

The meeting place of Roosevelt and Churchill where they decided to not surrender until the Axis surrendered unconditionally, aport on the Atlantic and the largest city of Morocco

August 1943

Allied forces captured Sicily

September 1943

Italy surrendered unconditionally and Mussolini was overthrown. Although Italy surrendered, the Germans would not let the Allies take control of Italy. The Germans fiercely fought the Allies and killed the Italian civilians who had surrendered.

June 4, 1944

Allies capture Rome

May 2, 1945

thousands of axis troops in Italy surrendered and became prisoners of war. The Italian second front opened the Mediterranean and diverted some German divisions away from the Soviet and French battle lines.

Teheran Conference November 28th to December 1st

President Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Stalin met in Teheran, to coordinate a second front. One of the most important achievements of the conference was the agreement on broad plans, especially those for launching Soviet attacks on Germany from the east simultaneously with the Allied assault from the west. Double hit on Germany

D-Day, June 6, 1944

Allies crossed the English Channel and landed in Normandy, France. The largest land-sea-air operation in history launched to liberate Europe.

General George S. Patton

American General who pushed German troops into Tunisia and saved the allied forces at the battle of the bulge

Election of 1944

Republicans = Thomas E. Dewey for the presidency and isolationist Senator, John W. Bricker for the vice presidency. Democrats = Roosevelt for the presidency Harry S Truman was chosen for the vice presidency. Roosevelt won.

Ardennes Forest

The unprotected area between Germany and France that was stormed by the Germans in their invasion in 1940. Hitler threw all of his forces against the thinly held American lines on December 16, 1944.

Battle of the Bulge

December, 1944-January, 1945 – After recapturing France, the Allied advance became stalled along the German border. In the winter of 1944, Germany staged a massive counterattack in Belgium and Luxembourg which pushed a 30 mile "bulge" into the Allied lines. The Allies stopped the German advance and threw them back across the Rhine with heavy losses. Led by Brigadier General A. C. McAuliffe.

April 1945

General Eisenhower’s troops reached the Elbe River, finding the concentration camps where the Nazis had murdered over 6 million Jews.

April 30, 1945

Hitler died, committing suicide

April 12, 1945

President Roosevelt died suddenly from a brain hemorrhage. Harry S Truman took over the presidency.

May 7, 1945

the German government surrendered unconditionally.

Leyte Gulf

largest naval battle of World War II; Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) mobilized nearly all of its remaining major naval vessels in an attempt to defeat the Allied invasion, but failed to achieve its objective, suffered very heavy losses, and never afterwards sailed to battle in comparable force; first battle in which Japanese aircraft carried out organized kamikaze attacks – October 23-26, 1944

Iwo Jima

a bloody and prolonged operation on the island of Iwo Jima in which American marines landed and defeated Japanese defenders. The island was needed for closer bases from which to blast and burn enemy cities and industries. The Americans finally captured the island after fighting from April to June of 1945. The American navy suffered heavy damage from the "kamikaze" Japanese pilots.

kamikaze

a fighter plane used for suicide missions by Japanese pilots in World War II

Potsdam conference

The final wartime meeting of the leaders of the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union was held at Potsdamn, outside Berlin, in July, 1945. Truman, Churchill, and Stalin discussed the future of Europe but their failure to reach meaningful agreements soon led to the onset of the Cold War. They issued an ultimatum to Japan: surrender or be destroyed.

July 16, 1945

date the US detonated the first atomic bomb (Los Alamos)

Hiroshima

City in Japan, the first to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, on August 6, 1945. The bombing hastened the end of World War II.

Nagasaki

Japanese city in which the second atomic bomb was dropped. August 9th

September 2, 1945

WWII was officially over, August 10th Tokyo surrendered and August 14th the allies accepted

Casualties

USA – 1 million. Soviet Union – 20 million.