1. Artifacts from the Home Front
Activity Directions

2. Stow your iPads

3. Categories of Materials
Propaganda (Anti-Nazi, Anti-Japanese, pro-American)
War bonds
Home front/Civil defense
Rationing
Changing role of women
Science and Industry

4. Think About Common themes?
What do these materials tell you about the time period?
Historical empathy: What are Americans feeling and/or being encouraged to feel?

5. Propaganda
Censorship of fighting (letters/newspapers) - not of enemy atrocities
Office of War Information - propaganda in films (courage of allies, difference b/w good & bad Germans, subhuman portrayal of Japanese – “Yellow Peril”)

6. War Bonds
War bonds raised money for the war effort and fought inflation
Sold by celebrities and war heroes
Also, first payroll deduction for income taxes

7. Home Front / Civil Defense
Blackout drills
Scrap drives, backyard “victory gardens”
Rationing
Censorship of fighting
Western Union Telegrams
Blue/Gold Star

8. Rationing
Office of Price Administration (OPA) – fought inflation with rationing
Tires, sugar, coffee, meat, butter, gasoline, shoes
“Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without!”

9. Changing Role of Women 19,000,000 employed in economy (6m before war)
Marine Corps Women’s Reserve (Release men for combat duty) - Serve in over 200 different jobs
WASPS (Women’s Airforce Service Pilots)
ferry military aircraft across U.S.
test planes
Army Nurse Corps - More than 59,000
WACS – Women’s Army Corps
WAVES - (Navy) 8000 Officers, 80,000 enlisted (2.5 % of Navy)
SPARS - (Coast Guard)
What themes do you see in these posters?

11. Science and Industry Office of Scientific Research and Development
New drugs, blood transfusion procedures, weapons systems, radar, sonar, bombsights
War Production Board
invested $17b for new factories, $181b in war contracts
Bans production of nearly 300 items “nonessential” for war effort
The Atomic Bomb
TOP SECRET Manhattan Project
J. Robert Oppenheimer leads scientists in Los Alamos developing nuclear fission bomb
Entire town of Oak Ridge, TN built around facility to enrich common uranium-238 to rare isotope u-235