US Mobilization for WW2

US Mobilization for WW2

How the United States prepared itself for war

Multiple Choice

What do you think mobilization means?

• Moving from place to place

• A country building a lot of automobiles

• A country preparing its military for active service

The US mobilizing for war

• 16 million Americans joined the armed forces!

• Factories started focusing production on making weapons for the war effort

• Military bases were built across the country to train new soldiers

• Unemployment dropped dramatically! Unemployment in 1944 was 1.2 percent!!

Multiple Choice

What was the process Henry Ford used to mass produce cars during the 1920s?

• The Assembly Line

• The Construction Line

• The Henry System

• Santa's Elves

The Assembly Line

Mass production was utilized to produce planes, tanks, ships and weapons at a tremendous pace. This picture is of the Ford Willow Run MILE LONG assembly line.

Multiple Choice

Based on this picture do you think the military had a hard time getting people to join the war effort?

• Yes, that is why they forced people into the draft!

• No, People were signing up by the million!

Marginalized groups contributed to the effort

• Women

• African Americans

• Mexican Americans

• Native Americans

• Chinese Americans

Women

• Women across the country took jobs in factories building planes, tanks, ships for the war effort

• 1,000 women served in the Women Air force Service Pilots (WASPs) flying warplanes to wherever they needed to go.

• Women also worked in offices in defense positions to make sure paper work ran smoothly.

• More women were working outside of the home than ever before

African Americans

• A. Philip Randolph, an African American union leader, advocated against discrimination towards African Americans in defense jobs

• One million African Americans serve in the military during WW2

• The Tuskegee Airmen were an African American fighter group during WW2. They were so well respected that many bomber groups requested them for their escorting.

Mexican Americans

• Mexico and the United States agreed on allowing Mexicans to enter the United States to work in jobs of agriculture. This was know as the Bracero Program

• Between 250,000 and 750,000 members of the armed services were of Mexican ancestry

Native Americans

• 40,000 Native Americans worked in the defense industries to support the war effort

• 25,000 served in the military

• Members of the Navajo nation served by acting as "code talkers". Their native language was impossible for the Japanese to decipher.

Chinese Americans

• Chinese Americans suffered increased racism during WW2 due to being mistaken for Japanese

• Chinese Americans worked a variety of jobs such as working in the shipyards during ww2