1. The Zoot Suit Riots

2. Zoot suit > Clyde Duncan from Gainsville, VA, in the New York Times, 1943 and jazz musician Cab Calloway, 1943

3. Zoot suit > Young Mexican American in a zoot suit, Banay, 1944
Young Mexican American man photographed in a zoot suit. Source: Banay 1944: 83.

4. Zoot suit > Cartoon, Mercury Herald and News, April 25, 1943
Zoot suit riot. In the weeks preceding the riots, a nationally syndicated comic strip satirically skewered the zoot suiters. Li’l Abner Yokum, cartoonist Al Capp’s good-natured and dullwitted hero, becomes the pawn of zoot-suit manufacturers. As “Zoot-Suit Yokum,” he performs heroic deeds that prompt a nationwide fashion fad – much to the horror, as this panel shows, of more levelheaded citizens. Capp’s treatment reflected general hostility toward the defiant style favored by many young Mexican Americans. After the riots, the Los Angeles City Council passed a law that made wearing a zoot suit a misdemeanor.
Mercury Herald and News, April 25, 1943 – Copyright Capp Enterprises, Inc All rights reserved.

5. Zoot suit > Los Angeles police officer pretends to clip the hair of a zoot-suiter; headline from Los Angeles Examiner, 1942
“Argentine” hair style

6. Zoot suit > Mexican Americans stripped of zoot suits during the riots, Life, 1943
Mexican American males stripped of their zoot suits during the Zoot Suit Riot. Source: Life, 21 June 1943: 30.

7. Zoot suit > Sailor arrested during the riots, Los Angeles Daily News, 1943
"Zoot Suit" riots, June 1943
Los Angeles Daily News Negatives Collection

8. The Atomic Bomb and Postwar Culture

9. Atomic Bomb > The Trinity Test, New Mexico, July 16, 1945
The world’s first nuclear bomb, code named “trinity,” exploded at Alamagordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, at 5:30 AM. This footage captures the blast.

10. Atomic Bomb > President Harry Truman announces the Hiroshima bombing
Announcer: Good evening from the White House in Washington. Ladies and gentlemen the President of the United States.
Harry S. Truman: My fellow Americans, the British, Chinese and United States governments have given the Japanese people adequate warning of what is in store for them. The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and unfortunately thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately and save themselves from destruction.
In this announcement President Harry Truman told Americans of the first use of atomic weapons—the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. Although Truman describes Hiroshima as a “military base,” civilians outnumbered military personnel in the city by a ratio of six to one.

11. Atomic Bomb > Miyuki Bridge, Hiroshima, 3 hours after detonation, August 6, 1945
Miyuki Bridge, Hiroshima, August 6, Three hours after the atomic bomb detonation, shocked and wounded survivors wander near a bridge a little over a mile from ground zero.
Yoshito Matsushige – Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation.

12. Atomic Bomb > Nagasaki from the B-29 bomber that dropped the bomb, Aug. 8 1945
Nagasaki. A frame from a 16mm film shot from the B-29 bomber that dropped the plutonium bomb on August 8, 1945, shows the fireball engulfing the Japanese city.
United States Air Force.

13. Atomic Bomb > The Atomic Café (1982)