The nation rapidly geared itself for mobilization of its
people and its entire industrial capacity. Over the next
three-and-a-half years, war industry achieved staggering
production goals – 300,000 aircraft, 5,000 cargo ships, 60,000
landing craft, 86,000 tanks. Women workers, exemplified by
"Rosie the Riveter," played a bigger part in industrial
production than ever before. Total strength of the U.S. armed
forces at the end of the war was more than 12 million. All the
nation's activities – farming, manufacturing, mining, trade,
labor, investment, communications, even education and cultural
undertakings – were in some fashion brought under new and
enlarged controls.
As a result of Pearl Harbor and the fear of Asian espionage,
Americans also committed what was later recognized as an act of
intolerance: the internment of Japanese Americans. In February
1942, nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans residing in California
were removed from their homes and interned behind barbed wire in
10 wretched temporary camps, later to be moved to "relocation
centers" outside isolated Southwestern towns.
Nearly 63 percent of these Japanese Americans were American-born
U.S. citizens. A few were Japanese sympathizers, but no evidence
of espionage ever surfaced. Others volunteered for the U.S. Army
and fought with distinction and valor in two infantry units on
the Italian front. Some served as interpreters and translators
in the Pacific.
In 1983 the U.S. government acknowledged the injustice of
internment with limited payments to those Japanese Americans of
that era who were still living.
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