Focus

1. Focus Discuss how the War in Iraq affects your daily life. Do this is a 6-7 sentence paragraph!

2. Opportunity and Adjustment • Jobs and money!! • Farmers prosper; 50% production increase and triple income • Women…35% boost • Population shifts…war work…creating housing shortages.

3. Social Adjustments • Mothers on their own…children? • Delinquency? • Creates marriage boom before shipped to war. • Many ended w/ “Dear John” letters. • 1944-GI Bill of Rights is passed-it provided education and training for vets, paid for by the gov’t.

4. Discrimination and Reaction • Segregation remained the rule in the military, but with great pressure from civil-rights activists, the military no longer restricted its all-black units to menial tasks. • Buffaloes-7 Legion of Merit awards, 65 silver stars, and 162 Bronze Stars for courage under fire. • Tuskegee Airmen-won two Distinguished Unit Citations(highest military commendation) for air combat vs. Germans

5. At Home… • Progress at home front for African Americans also…finding good jobs during the war. • James Farmer founded CORE(Congress of Racial Equality), which confronted urban segregation in the North. • Riots do, however, break out.(Detroit in ‘43) • Many African Americans believed that “…We’ve shed our blood and proved our loyalty, and we’re going to fight for all that is rightfully due us…”

6. Other Americans • “zoot-suit” riots in L.A. Result was the outlawing of zoot-suits.(Mexican Americans) • Japanese Americans-internment camps. Many joined the army. • Japanese American Citizens League(JACL) is formed. • 1965-Congress authorized the spending of $38 million to compensate those sent to the camps for their lost property.(less than a tenth of actual losses. • 1978-begins a quest to give all who lost during internment. 10 years later, a bill gave 20k to every Japanese American sent to a relocation camp during the war.