Blog discussion.
-The US Homefront
- Women's role: vital role; worked the jobs in factories while men were away in the war; Rosie the Riveter "Women can do it!" represented women workers in WWII; nurses during WWII; worked as secretaries and in war jobs; farmer workers, typists, bus drivers, teachers, conductors, and many more; every branch of the military had something different for women (non-combat roles or related) Women's Army Corps (during the war, would make maps and other things); WAVES- Women's Navy; WASP- Women's Army Service Pilots (Air Force)
- Factories-War Production Board: tried to encourage mass production of goods; much of the reason we won was the fact that we made so much (products, goods, and what not); make as much stuff as you can
- National War Labor Board: all about workers and owners working together; no strikes and what not, put aside your differences and work together, for now, to get stuff done; "Together We Win!"
- War bonds: how we paid for the war; people would have to buy these based on how much money you had; if you can't pay for the war you lose the war
- Japanese relocation camps: racism played a big part; about 110,000 put in the camps; Japanese-Americans in these camps; 62% were US citizens; a lot of people thought it took away our rights as Americans; made because many thought there would be Japanese spies and gov't was worried about that after Pearl Harbor, thought they couldn't be trusted; forced to leave their homes; mainly located on the west coast; children could go to school and had entertainment and sports and what not, men and women could get jobs and actually be paid for it (no slave labor), women were taught how to be typists and other jobs like that; desolate land, very plain and small and not very nice; some died but mostly due to lack of medical attention not just killing them off.
- Propaganda: persuading people to do something; (lots of urgency) during WWII, get people to buy war bonds, enlist today!, made US look good in the war (sometimes other countries bad), do your part today!; trying to get people to do their part TODAY.
- War rationing-Office of Price Administration: people joined together to maintain supplies for the troops; making so each family could only have so much per week (to prevent hoarding, which some people did and you could get arrested for that); 5 gallons of gas per week; sticker system set up so people could see what they get; black market set up for stickers; for gas, food, clothing, etc.; some people had ration books; no rationing put on horse meat
- Hollywood in WWII: notes on assigned blog 5; Bob Hope and the USO Tour- go around and entertain the troops who were on the front lines (music, comedy acts, etc.)
- The story of "Kilroy was here": no one really knows what the real story is so there has been many other stories on it; this is the most well-known/told: James J. Kilroy was a shipyard worker (made ships and weapons for the war); had to keep track of their hours so the workers would stick rivets in the ships to keep track of their hours but people would move the rivets around and Kilroy got tired of it so he started carving that into the ship to keep track of it. The ships would then get sent over seas and the soldiers would see it, and it would just be a little inspirational thing from home; freaked out Hitler and other powers like that thinking Kilroy was a spy and they had to kill him but he wasn't really there obviously
- War production board: factories making consumer goods were then ordered suddenly to make a bunch of different war-related items
US Fighting
-US in Africa: Italy was attacking Ethiopia and this led the war into North Africa; Britain went down with a bunch of forces to fight Italy and Germany went to help Italy; went for resources and to take over colonies in North Africa (Africa was still divided up and not self ruled), to take over the Mediterranean; America went to help out here first once joined in the war; France was there on both sides due to the divided gov't; countries were trying to get the materials back to their countries, Britain had no problem getting it over the Med. Sea but Germany and Italy didn't had troubles because Britain said they were taking control of the Sea with there navy but Italy came in with a lot more weapons and ships and stuff so Britain sent in the RAF; Med. Sea was a major fighting ground; took place in the Libyan and Egyptian desert land and it was very flat and dry so a lot of battling with tanks; Allied powers won and took place from June 1940 until Axis surrendered in May 1943; May 1942 was when we started to give a lot of assistance in North Africa to help out (6 months after Pearl Harbor); major invasion that really put us in the war in Africa called Operation Torch (November 1942), landing in Morocco; US started here because they thought the Axis forces were weakest there
-Erwin Rommel: called "the Desert Fox" because he could usually out smart his opponents; has gone down as a great German general (probably the most famous); Germans killed him because he was on a list that was helping to assassinate Hitler; went up against George Patton
-George Patton: British general
-Dwight Eisenhower: one of the greatest generals (supreme general of all allied forces) US has ever seen
-Bradley: another great general in US history
-Nimitz: Navy against Japan
-General Douglas MacArthur: most famous general arguably; army against Japan; stationed in the Philippines and wasn't going to leave until he got the land back but the president had to order him to leave and go to Australia; vowed to go back to the Philippines though
-Bataan Death March:
-US in Italy: thought we could invade Italy first because it was weaker than the US and would be easy to take them out (weakest of Nazi controlled Europe but didn't end up being that easy); US, British and Canadian forces attacked and thought it would only takes a few weeks but ended up taking about a year; didn't account for all the German forces that were there in the mountain (high grounds really give you the advantage); surrendered in 1943 but until a few months before the end of the war, Italy was still under Nazi control, even though Mussolini was really done in the war; long hard battle in Italy
-D-Day: Germany controlled France and the goal was to get them out
-US bombing of Germany: Great Britain and US were bombing Germany every single day, trying to take out rail lines/transportation, communication lines, factories that makes war goods; US used the Incendiary bomb specifically (fire bombs); tons of civilians killed in Japan and Germany because they were taking out cities
-VE Day and the story of Germany surrendering: May 8, 1945; Battle of the Bulge happens (worst amount of loses/worst battle for the US; Hitler's last ditch effort to try and win); slowly pushed German forces back to Berlin and they finally surrendered multiple times officially
-Island hopping/ Pacific Theatre: hopped islands around the Pacific while they were fighting; thousands of little islands in the Pacific that allies would invade; most of the time, US would encircle a bunch of little islands and scare the island inside that hadn't been invaded would just surrender because they would lose supplies; the goal was to get control of an island close enough to Japan
-Battle of Coral Sea: May 1942; aerial battle with planes taking off from aircraft carriers not land; fought in between Australia and New Guinea; first time aircraft carriers fought each other; Japanese technically won because they got more of our planes down but we stopped them so they really didn't; big moral win for US and mental loss for Japan; Japan would bomb Australia occasionally but never invaded them mainly because US had so many troops stationed there and this attack pulled them away; significant because it is considered the start of the turning points against Japan because, though the battle was a stalemate, Japan never moved further ahead after this, we kind of stopped their progress/ their advance
-Battle of Midway: June 1942; Japanese plan was to take over Midway by ambush but American code-breakers were able to crack their code and find out when, where, and what time the battle would take place, so US was prepared and ready for the attack; inevitable that Japan was going to lose after this because we took out so much of their military (mainly the navy) and they couldn't keep pumping out stuff like we could; major turning point against Japan because they were never able to recover; US just destroyed them; the land isn't much more than just an airstrip but Japan wanted them for naval base and air strip; Japan did some damage but not as much as US did to them
-Battle of Iwo Jima: February 19, 1945; US vs. Japan and month long; one of the fiercest, bloodiest battles out of the Pacific wars; from the start of the battle, Japan knew they were going to lose but the commander ordered them to fight to the death, never surrender; Japan lost about 21,000; US won obviously; air, sea, and land battle but we didn't have any trouble getting on the island, Japan really just led the US onto it; Japanese were dug underground and just let us on shore for whatever reason and planned to fight as we came entered the island; wanted US to go more into the jungle; US lost almost 7,000
-Battle of the Philippines: first part was Pearl Harbor day but Japanese attacked a bunch of other islands that day, including the Philippines which US had control of
-Battle of Okinawa: fought on an island; started in April and lasted a few months; between Allied and Axis powers; Japan used suicide bombers (Kamikaze: Japan was hoping it would change the tide of the war against the US but it just wounded up a bit) that would crash into other planes and take them out; first truly Japanese island that we took from Japan and really close so we could bomb from there; everyone assumed an invasion of Japan was inevitable because no one knew about the bombs except high up officials
-Navajo code-talkers: transmitted our info over the airwaves; deserved a lot of credit for winning because we could decipher the enemies code but they couldn't decipher ours with this language because the language wasn't in any books it was just handed down
-Manhattan Project: J. Robert Oppenheimer (scientist selected to head the project discovering the atomic bomb); Groves was a military general who was to oversee the development of the bomb and wasn't too thrilled about this because he wanted to go fight in Germany but was assigned to this task, which he eventually realized this was a very big important deal; worked in Alamogordo, New Mexico to make this; first test was the "Trinity" test; the test was a little different in that the bomb was dropped from a tower and it wiped out everything.
-Hiroshima bombing: plane was a "Enola Gay" (B-29 super fortress) which was specifically designed to carry this bomb because no other plane could carry it because of it's weight; Paul Tibbits was the pilot; the bomb was nicknamed the "Little Boy"; ordered only to drop the bomb if they could see the city (going for an industrial city to take out factories making war goods); August 1945; about 40,000 killed instantly, and about 150,000 later through the years by radiation; the blast was so bright that it burned shadows into the ground "Atomic shadow"; people were horrified by the pictures of the devastation it caused and wondered if it was really worth it
-Nagasaki bombing: Japan did not surrender after this; called the "Fat Man"; dropped within a few days of the Little Boy; plutonium based bomb whereas the Little Boy was a uranium based bomb (scientists wanted see which one worked better); it imploded (sucked in to a small mass and they just BOOM.); a lot of people thought that this didn't cause as much damage but it did, the mountains in Nagasaki just blocked a lot of it; there was a lot of problems; almost everything went wrong- they were running out of gas and had to drop it even though they couldn't see their target; ran out of gas as they hit the runway
-VJ Day and the story of Japan surrendering: ended WWII; August 14 (US) & 15 (Japan), 1945; this was when the famous picture of the sailor kissing the nurse took place; bombing led to the surrender
Next two are the conferences are what ended the war....
-Yalta Conference: February 1945; conference where the 3 big countries came together to see how they were going to get Germany to surrender; Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin were the leaders discussing it; decided Germany would be broken into four occupation zones (US, GB, France, USSR); Stalin promised free elections in Eastern Europe (but lied and later took them over; forced these eastern countries into the communism; East=Communism, West=Democracy; Stalin also promised to join the war against Japan after war with Germany was over (did do this but the day after the atomic bomb was dropped; did this to get back at us because we waited a long time to invade France and thought that we were okay with the communists and Nazis killing each other off); a conference was set up in San Francisco to set up the United Nations
-Potsdam Conference: July 1945; Truman, Stalin, and GB's representatives (in the middle of an election); set up to make sure Germany never did this again (punishing Germany); Germany would have to become a lot more democratic, Nazi group was disbanded, Germany and Austria split into 4 zones, Germany could only export certain goods and NOTHING war related, and a few other things (demilitarized, denazified, and democratized); prosecution of Nazi war criminals; reverse all German annexations and given back to the rightful owners; Indochina- temporarily divide Vietnam at the 17th parallel line and Vietnamese thought they'd gain there independence (didn't happen), the Vietnamese war kind of began here (start of the problems) because it divided the north and south
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