World War II and the American Home Front

National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior National Historic Landmarks Program

World War II and the American Home Front

Draft, February 2004

A National Historic Landmarks Theme Study

Cover: Upper Left: An electric phosphate smelting furnace is used to make elemental phosphorus in a TVA chemical plant in the vicinity of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. June 1942. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information (FSA/OWI) Collection, [LC-USW36-333]. Upper Right: Image of workers on the Liberator Bombers at Consolidated Aircraft Corporation in Fort Worth, Texas. October 1942. FSA/OWI Collection, [LC-USW36-384]. Lower Left: Women workers at the Long Beach, California plant of Douglas Aviation Company groom lines of transparent noses for deadly A-20 attack bombers. October 1942. FSA/OWI Collection, [LC-USE6-D-006632]. Lower Right: Women workers install fixtures and assemblies to a tail fuselage section of a B-17F Bomber at the Long Beach, California plant of the Douglas Aircraft Company. October 1942. FSA/OWI Collection, [LC-USW361-103]. Center: War poster encourages participation in civil defense efforts and shows family prepared for work. January 21, 1943. Works Project Administration Poster Collection, [LC-USZC2-1107]. All images courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division.

WORLD WAR II &

THE AMERICAN HOME FRONT

A National Historic Landmarks Theme Study

Prepared by:

Marilyn M. Harper, Project Manager & Historian Essays prepared by the Organization of American Historians:

John W. Jeffries, Historian William M. Tuttle, Jr., Historian Nelson Lichtenstein, Historian Harvard Sitkoff, Historian

Produced by:

The National Historic Landmarks Program Cultural Resources National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior Washington, D.C.

October 2007

Contents

Historic Contexts Foreword ..........................................................................................................................................1 Introduction......................................................................................................................................3 Part One: Mobilization and its Impact ............................................................................................9 Part Two: The American Family on the Home Front ...................................................................50 Part Three: Labor and the Working Class in World War II..........................................................80 Part Four: African Americans and Other Minorities on the Home Front ...................................104

Associated Property Types Types of Historic Home Front Properties....................................................................................128 Registration Requirements for National Historic Landmark Designation...................................129

Methodology ...............................................................................................................................138

Study Results National Historic Landmarks ......................................................................................................139 National Historic Landmarks Study List .....................................................................................140

Bibliography Mobilization and its Impact .........................................................................................................149 The American Family on the Home Front...................................................................................152 Labor and the Working Class in World War II............................................................................162 African Americans and Other Minorities on the Home Front .....................................................165 Other Unpublished Sources .........................................................................................................171

Appendices A. Registration Requirements for Listing in the National Register of Historic Places ..............173 B. National Register Properties and Study List ..........................................................................182 C. World War II Home Front-Related National Park Service Units ..........................................192 D. World War II Home Front National Historic Landmarks......................................................193

Foreword

1

HISTORIC CONTEXTS

Foreword

On October 24, 2000, Congress directed the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a theme study of the World War II home front.1 The purpose of the study is to identify historic places that best represent the wartime mobilization that occurred in the United States and its territories and possessions between 1939 and 1945 to assist in identifying whether any of these places should be considered for potential inclusion in the National Park System.

The task of identifying places that can tell the home front story is a challenging one. Thousands of factories, government office buildings, research laboratories, housing projects, military bases, United Service Organization (USO) canteens, day care centers, and schools were built or expanded during the war. Theaters in hundreds of communities across the nation sponsored War Bond drives and showed both terrifying news reels and uplifting and entertaining movies. Railroad and bus stations in large cities and small towns could barely contain the millions of men and women passing through them on their way to military service or new defense jobs. Other places represented less positive wartime stories: segregated housing and military bases, war relocation centers for persons of Japanese descent, prisons where conscientious objectors were held, and sites of racial conflict or labor/management confrontation.

Some home front properties have already been recognized. A number are included in the National Park System. The Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park, in Richmond, California, was established in 2000 specifically to recognize the important wartime contributions of workers, including women and minorities, and ordinary citizens, who collected and saved and sacrificed on the home front. Others have been designated as National Historic Landmarks or listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Because World War II is still so recent, most home front properties have not yet been comprehensively surveyed or evaluated. In addition, many sites have been lost to demolition or destructive change, in part because no one knew they were important. While these facts have made the completion of this theme study more difficult, they have also underlined the urgent necessity of providing the historic contexts needed to identify and recognize these properties as quickly as possible.

The historic contexts section is divided into four parts. The first, written by John W. Jeffries, Professor of History at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, gives a general overview of the wartime home front, concentrating on the critical role of the federal government in mobilizing industry, science and technology, agriculture, manpower, money, morale, and security. It also discusses the impact of mobilization on the nature of the American political economy, on prosperity and living standards, on opportunities and expectations, on demographic and geographic change, and on national politics.

The second part was written by William M. Tuttle, Jr., Professor of American Studies at the University of Kansas. It provides more detail about how ordinary men, women, and children

1 As contained in Public Law 106-352, Sec. 4. WORLD WAR II HOME FRONT STUDY. "The Secretary shall conduct a theme study of the World War II home front to determine whether other sites in the United States meet the criteria for potential inclusion in the National Park System in accordance with section 8 of Public Law 91-383 (16 U.S.C. 1a-5)."

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