What were the most significant social and economic challenges on the WWII homefront?

American Yawp, chapter 24: World War II

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Internment

Featured Document:  Executive Order No. 9066 (1942)

“Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order. The designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said Proclamations in respect of such prohibited and restricted areas….

…This order shall not be construed as modifying or limiting in any way the authority heretofore granted under Executive Order No. 8972, dated December 12, 1941, nor shall it be construed as limiting or modifying the duty and responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with respect to the investigation of alleged acts of sabotage or the duty and responsibility of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, prescribing regulations for the conduct and control of alien enemies, except as such duty and responsibility is superseded by the designation of military areas hereunder.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, February 19, 1942

Discussion Question

  • Just over one week before issuing this executive order, FDR advised his secretary of war during a recorded phone call that regarding the prospect of internment for Japanese alien residents and Japanese Americans, “Be as reasonable as you can.”  Why would FDR and so many other policy-makers at this time consider such an order to be “reasonable”?

Dickinson Connection
Popel

Esther Popel (1896-1958) was a teacher, poet, editor, activist and the first female African American graduate of Dickinson College (Class of 1919).  She married a chemist named William Shaw in 1925.  The couple had one daughter.  Popel used her married name, but typically wrote and published under her maiden name.  She identified with the Harlem Renaissance literary movement and is probably best known for her searing poem, “The Flag Salute” (1934), about a lynching that had occurred the previous year in Maryland.  However, Popel also wrote a short, fascinating memoir entitled, “Personal Adventures in Race Relations” (1948) that is available online through the Dickinson College Archives and which probably conveys her smart, witty but subtly combative personality as well as any source.  For a full biographical entry on Esther Popel Shaw with a useful bibliography of her works, see Malinda Triller Doran’s post at the Dickinson Archives. To learn more about how students at Dickinson are engaging with the legacy of Esther Popel in their own lives, visit the Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity.

“The Negro director of a Federal Housing Project in Chicago [Robert Taylor] was asked to find a place on his staff for a Japanese-American girl just out of a relocation center. She was seeking employment. When the director approached his colored office workers on the subject they all objected most strenuously. They didn’t want to work with a “Jap”. In order to change this feeling the director gave a long and stirring lecture to them on proper racial attitudes, until he finally succeeded in overcoming their objections. The Japanese-American girl came, and as the weeks passed she and the one girl in particular who had at first so bitterly opposed her employment became good friends. One day the latter was talking about the Nisei girl to her director. After expressing her affection for the new office worker she said: “You know, Mitsui is very glad she’s working here with us. She said she’d so much rather be here than with those Jews in the downtown office!” —Esther Popel, Personal Adventures in Race Relations (1948)

Flag Salute

Double V Campaign

The famous letter (Pittsburgh Courier, January 31, 1942)

Double V letter

James Gratz Thompson (born 1915, age 26)

Thompson

Career details on Thompson

  • James G. Thompson came to Pittsburgh in late 1942 to help coordinate Double V campaign for the Courier before enlisting in US Army where he served from 1943 to 1946, along with more than one million other African Americans.  Thompson served both stateside and overseas, with tours of duty in the India-Burma theater.
  • Married Erma Hortense Britt in 1944 in San Bernadino, CA  and lived in  Los Angeles California, working for a time as a salesman for a vacuum company while she was a typist.  They appear to have divorced in the 1960s.
  • In 1950, Thompson was denied a pension because he had enlisted from Pennsylvania without being resident long enough.

Thompson’s rejected 1950 pension application (Ancestry.com)

  • Thompson

    Thompson, age 54

    In 1969, J. Gratz Thompson was named as a coordinator for the Human Resources Corporation in Kansas City, MO after recently serving as a youth supervisor at a local boys home and as a substitute teacher.  The article called him a newspaperman, included a photo, and stated that he had most recently worked on the news desk of the Las Vegas Sun.  No mention of the Double V campaign.

  • James G. Thompson died in Wichita in 1999.  His death notice in the Wichita Eagle, October 15, 1999, listed him as journalist but made no mention of the Double V campaign.