Why did the US government urge civilians to plant victory gardens during the Second World War quizlet?

During World War II the American government asked civilians to participate in the war effort. A common way for the government to communicate with civilians was through posters hung in public places. Inspirational, informative, instructive, imploring—the posters were a major part of the war effort. Virginians would have seen many of these posters.

In addition to activities like buying war bonds and collecting scrap metal, people were asked to conserve food and to plant "Victory Gardens." The idea of growing a victory garden was not new as they had been encouraged during World War I. However, the reasons for victory gardens changed in the early 1940’s as commercial crops, canned, and processed foods were sent abroad to feed the troops. As food was rationed during the war years, the gardens could be used to supplement a family’s diet. Although the rationing of food and shipping food overseas put a strain on families, the government used the idea of planting victory gardens to show solidarity and support for the troops.

One way to preserve the food grown and make the seasonal harvest last, was to can food at home to preserve fruits and vegetables for use throughout the year. The poster was created to inspire those on the home front to see the canning of home grown food as part of their job to support of the war efforts.

Citation: Office of War Information. Can All You Can. It's a Real War Job! Washington, D.C. , 1943, Prints & Photographs, Special Collections, Library of Virginia

1. Marshall became Army Chief of Staff in late 1939, in which position he secured major increases in funding for the armed forces, fearing an eventual conflict with a remilitarized and expansionist Germany. He convinced the government to appropriate $9 billion by May 1940, and also to pass the Selective Service Act, which instituted a peacetime draft and grew the size of the army from 190,000 to several million at its height.
2. Women played a major role in the mobilization of the country in the war effort as well as maintaining the wartime economy. Women joined various branches or subsidiary organizations of the armed forces, including the WACs, WAVEs, SPARs, and WASPs. They also joined the workforce in large numbers and in various industries—some for the first time, such as in airplane or munitions plants to help maintain domestic lifestyles while producing needed tools of war. "Rosie the Riveter" became a common emblem of American life, and many families depended on the woman's income.

As the government worked to mobilize industry and manpower for the war effort, it also took steps to prepare the nation psychologically for a difficult struggle. This task fell to the Office of War Information, established in 1942. The OWI played several roles. One involved coordinating the release of war news via censorship and control of the media. In most instances, the OWI promoted media self-censorship of the media, which complied with many restrictions regarding troop movements, military campaigns, and so on.
The OWI worked to promote patriotism through various means, including posters, propaganda films, and radio shows—many featuring some of the era's bigger celebrities. Similarly, the OWI helped to recruit women to work in the defense industry. The OWI also worked to educate foreign populations about "American democracy" through an international propaganda program, specifically with the Voice of America, a radio network that broadcasted American news and music to various nations in Europe, as well as to other parts of the world.
With the end of the war came the end of the need for the OWI, and it dissolved in late 1945.

While the government churned out propaganda posters in order to maintain popular support for buying war bonds and the war effort, movie studios did the same. Disney Studios produced one of the most famous examples of pro-U.S. propaganda in 1943, a cartoon originally titled Donald Duck in Nutziland. In the cartoon, Donald Duck has a nightmare that he is living in Nazi Germany, working in a German munitions plant, dealing with what the Disney Studios portrayed as life in a dictatorship, and "heiling" Adolf Hitler. At the end of the cartoon, Donald awakens back in the U.S., kisses his model of the Statue of Liberty, and proclaims that he's glad he's an American.
The cartoon became an instant hit, particularly after Spike Jones and His City Slickers recorded and released a version of "Der Fuehrer's Face," a song by Oliver Wallace featured in the cartoon. Disney later changed the cartoon's name to reflect the song title. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences also honored the cartoon, awarding it the Oscar for best cartoon short in 1943.

One of the largest mistakes the Axis nations made was believing that most Americans would not tolerate shifting industrial production to build tanks, planes, and guns, instead of washing machines, automobiles, and radios. However, American industry and the public soon proved that they were willing to make sacrifices for the sake of victory.
Civilian automobile production ended two months after Pearl Harbor. Soon, automobile manufacturers had retooled and were producing airplanes and tanks. Other civilian industries did the same, and by 1942, war production involved one-third of the U.S. economy. American output of materiel equaled that of Germany, Japan, and Italy combined.
The war also spurred the expansion or creation of new industries. For example, Japanese-controlled territory contained most of the world's supply of rubber. In response, the U.S. built nearly 50 synthetic rubber plants across the country. By war's end, the U.S. had become the world's largest importer of natural rubber to the world's largest exporter of synthetic rubber.
All told, U.S. industry produced 300,000 military aircraft, 2.6 million machine guns, six million tons of bombs, and 86,000 warships.

1. The Office of War Information was formed in 1942 to ensure coordination of war news, promote patriotism, and develop and disseminate propaganda. The OWI produced posters, motivational films, and radio shows to keep Americans focused on the war effort. It also recruited women to work in the war industry by similar means. In addition, the OWI established and ran the Voice of America radio network to broadcast a steady stream of American propaganda to Europe and in the Pacific.
2. Hollywood helped the war effort by providing audiences with movies that showed the evils of the Axis and highlighted the goodness of the Allied cause. Movies such as Casablanca portrayed the Germans as sadistic warmongers, while Yankee Doodle Dandy promoted patriotism on the home front. Cartoons such as Donald Duck in Nutziland put a comic spin on why Americans had to support the war effort. Life on the home front was also brought to the silver screen in films such as Mrs. Miniver and Since You Went Away. Documentary films, such as Frank Capra's series Why We Fight also helped to maintain American interest in fighting the war.
3. Kaiser made two innovations in shipbuilding: First was the use of welded hulls, rather than riveted hulls, which greatly reduced the time spent on construction. The second involved prefabricating sections of the ship at different locations, then bringing them together for final assembly at a shipyard.

As the government became more and more financially involved in the war effort, the Senate created an oversight committee to investigate charges of fraud and mismanagement of federal resources and money in the defense industry. Selected to lead the committee—officially, the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program—was Senator Harry Truman of Missouri.
Driving himself in his own Dodge automobile, Truman made several trips across the U.S. to inspect military installations and defense plants. Although Congress had only allocated $15,000 for the committee's expenses, the Truman Committee saved taxpayers millions and did much to lessen fraud in the defense industry. Along the way, Truman made contacts with the president, and agriculture, labor, and manufacturing agencies, as well as a name for himself nationally. In 1944, supporters saw Truman as a logical choice for FDR's running mate.

World War II demanded significant changes to the nation's economic system. The U.S. spent more than $321 billion (more than $3 trillion in today's dollars) fighting the Axis powers. This amounted to more than twice what the federal government had spent in its entire existence. As a result, the national debt skyrocketed as well, to nearly $260 billion by the war's end.
One way the government helped pay its expenses was with a substantially increased income tax rate. By the end of the war, about 40 million Americans filed tax returns—more than ten times the number in 1941. For the first time, the government required employers to withhold a certain percentage of their employees' paychecks, depending on their salary and how many dependents an employee claimed. That way, the employee would have withheld enough tax to avoid having to pay a much larger sum at the end of the year, or to receive a refund from the government.
In addition, the government raised $185 billion through the sale of war bonds to private individuals, banks, and industry.

The possibility of inflation greatly concerned the federal government. As goods became harder for the civilian population to purchase, their prices would skyrocket. Worried about the inflation's effect on the U.S. economy, the Roosevelt Administration created the Office of Price Administration in early 1942. The OPA established "ceiling prices" for many commodities, most fixed at their March 1942 levels, above which they could not rise. The OPA froze nearly 90 percent of the nation's retail prices during the war.
In addition, the OPA rationed what the government considered "scarce" goods. Several staples of American life, such as gasoline, automobile tires, sugar, coffee, meats, and processed foods were tightly rationed; some supplies were nearly nonexistent. Millions of Americans found themselves either substituting for scarce goods, doing without, or trying to purchase goods on the black market. With the end of the war, the OPA quickly abandoned rationing; the agency ceased to exist in 1947.

The government realized it needed a system for allocating goods so that both military and civilian populations could get what they needed. The response to this problem was rationing, a way to limit the purchase of scarce goods.
Some of the more contested-for rationed goods included meat, butter, sugar, coffee, canned and frozen foods, and shoes. To effectively calculate what goods the consumer might buy, the OPA devised a complicated system of stamps and points. A person without the right combination could not buy the good. Gasoline proved particularly difficult to ration. The OPA granted most motorists an "A" sticker for their car windshield, which guaranteed them four gallons of gas per week. "Essential" workers got "B" stickers entitling them to eight gallons per week. Those whose professions required them to drive (such as physicians, ministers, railroad workers, and mail carriers) received "C" stickers. "X" stickers went to government officials and public servants such as police, firefighters, and civil-defense workers. "T" stickers went to truck drivers who carried goods essential to the war effort; they could buy an unlimited supply of fuel.
Regardless of their level of patriotism, many Americans found doing without staples of daily life to be unappealing, and a robust black market soon developed to sell highly prized and highly priced goods. However, both civilian and military populations generally had the goods and materiel they needed during the war years.

The government devised a system of ration stamps and books, as well as a complex point system, to fairly determine what families and individuals could buy monthly. For example, goods such as meat, butter, fats, and cheese required red stamps; purchasing other goods, including fruits, vegetables, soup, and baby food involved blue stamps. The point system tended to frustrate many households, with some goods requiring a certain number of points, and others not needing any points. In addition to the multi-tiered system for rationing gasoline, drivers had to live with a 35 mph speed limit to conserve gas as well as tires.
Rationing ended along with the war, and all phases of it vanished by 1946.

1. The U.S. government spent more than $321 billion (more than $3 trillion in today's dollars) to fight the war—more than twice what the federal government had spent in its entire existence to this point. One way the government collected revenue was through substantially increased income tax rates, in addition to an expansion of who qualified for the income tax. The government also sold billions of dollars of war bonds (including war stamps purchased by children) to civilians, banks, and private industries.
2. Average Americans could invest in war bonds, which made money when the bonds matured at an interest rate higher than or comparable to other means of investment. War bonds helped the war effort by raising needed revenue and by making citizens feel as if they were directly contributing to the fight.
3. As goods become scarcer, prices tend to rise, making money worth increasingly less; the Office of Price Administration set the highest prices at which goods could sell, essentially freezing them at March 1942 levels. Regarding scarcity, the OPA devised a system of points and stamps for allotting staple items and other goods. With the right combination of stamps and points, a consumer could purchase their allotment of meat, sugar, or other items.

The Roosevelt Administration recognized that protracted disputes between management and labor could cripple the wartime economy and mobilization efforts. To settle these issues, FDR created the National War Labor Board in early 1942. The board comprised four labor union leaders, four corporate executives, and four public representatives. Early on, the board proved its usefulness when management and labor in communications and transportation industries agreed to a "no-strike pledge" for the duration of the war, agreeing that maintaining production outweighed striking for wages and benefits.
Union representatives to the board wanted a "closed shop," in which all workers in a particular industry have to join the union. The NWLB refused that request, but did agree to what became known as the "maintenance of membership" clause, which forbade union members from quitting the union and required them to pay union dues, frequently through an automatic paycheck deduction. This approach helped to greatly increase labor union membership. While labor agreed to keep wage increases to a minimum, they gained significant benefits such as health insurance, vacation time, and pensions.
Regardless of the NWLB's actions, some wildcat (i.e., unauthorized) strikes did occur. However, these generally caused little if any disruption to war production. The United Mine Workers under John L. Lewis struck three times in 1943, gaining some concessions, but losing a great deal of support as many states and Congress took steps to limit the power of unions.

A number of changes to the U.S. economy occurred in the World War II era
(1940-1945):
• The nominal gross domestic product (the value of all goods and services produced inside a country in a year, not adjusted for inflation) of the U.S. increased substantially, from approximately $101 billion to about $223 billion. Wages and salaries rose from $45 billion to $120 billion.
• In 1940, 14 million women worked outside the home; in 1945, the number was nearly 19 million, down slightly from 1944. Civilian employment by the federal government more than tripled, rising from slightly more than one million persons to nearly 3.5 million. Military employment mushroomed, as expected, from less than a million, to nearly 13 million.
• Union membership also grew (due especially to the "maintenance of membership" clause enforced by the NWLB) from nine million to more than 14 million
• Increases in GDP and employment led to a dramatic increase in the national debt, from about $41 billion to nearly $250 billion

Wartime civil-defense measures such as blackouts and air-raid drills prepared Americans for attacks that never occurred, but did little more than inconvenience people. However, the federal government instituted a program to maintain national security that proved far more damaging—the relocation of about 120,000 Japanese nationals (called Issei) and Japanese American citizens (Nisei) to internment camps across the interior of the western U.S.
In early 1942, FDR issued Executive Order 9066, which allowed for the exclusion from "military areas" anyone deemed a threat to national security. Designating the West Coast a "military area," the government removed all persons of Japanese ancestry (along with a few thousand Germans, Italians, and German Jews). Many Americans, especially on the West Coast, supported the policy, contending that they had likely assisted the Japanese navy in planning and carrying out the attack on Pearl Harbor, and might help facilitate future attacks.

Japanese Americans, faced with their immediate removal from cities on the West Coast, found themselves forced to sell their homes, businesses, and personal possessions for whatever they could get. The Nisei together lost an estimated $2 billion in property.

A 1943 War Department report noted that the internees were housed in "tar paper covered barracks of simple frame construction without plumbing or cooking facilities of any kind." The Heart Mountain, Wyoming, relocation camp greeted internees with barbed-wire fences, toilets with no partitions, cots rather than beds, and a food budget of 45 cents per day. Temperatures at Heart Mountain frequently dropped to below zero during the winter months, and since many of the internees were not told where they were going, they did not include winter clothing in their belongings.

One challenge to the relocation order came from Fred Korematsu, a Japanese American from San Leandro, CA, who refused to obey the relocation order. Authorities arrested him and put him in a relocation camp with his family until trial. He was convicted in federal court and sentenced to five years' probation. With help from the American Civil Liberties Union, Korematsu appealed his conviction until it reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1942, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 against Korematsu, stating that Roosevelt's order requiring relocation of Japanese Americans was a valid use of his power as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. However, Justice Frank Murphy's scathing dissent noted that "the exclusion of Japanese falls into the ugly abyss of racism," and equated relocation with the same type of racism exhibited by the Axis Powers.
In the early 1980s, documents came to light showing that the federal government had purposely withheld key evidence that might have cleared Korematsu, including documents proving that Japanese Americans had never posed any meaningful risk to national security. In 1984, a federal appeals court vacated the original judgment (that is, declared that Korematsu's conviction had never legally happened), citing a WWII-era government report condemning the case for interment as having been based on "willful historical inaccuracies and intentional falsehoods." The appeals court, however, did not overturn the Supreme Court's decision concerning the president's war powers.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Korematsu with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his ongoing work in the field of civil rights. Fred Korematsu died in 2005.

While many Nisei went to relocation camps across the West, some decided on enlisting in the armed forces as the best way to protest against concerns about their patriotism. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team (known as the "Go for Broke" regiment) became one of the best known and most well-respected army units during the war.
The government originally excluded Nisei from the armed forces, but had reversed its policy by 1943, accepting some from relocation camps and many from National Guard units in Hawaii. Trained at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, the 442nd was deployed in September 1944, and soon saw action in the Italian campaign, including Anzio. More than half of the unit became casualties during their Italian service. While a few Nisei served as intelligence agents in the Pacific Theater, the military prohibited them from fighting against Japan. German Americans and Italian Americans had no such restrictions placed on their service.
After the liberation of Rome, the 442nd assisted in the invasion of southern France. In the Italian and French campaigns combined, the unit saw an extraordinarily high casualty rate, with some sources estimating casualties (including cases of trench foot and various injuries) as high as 93 percent, giving the 442nd the nickname, the "Purple Heart Battalion."
At the end of the war, the 442nd became the most decorated unit in U.S. military history, with more than 18,000 awards and medals earned, including more than 9000 Purple Hearts. Soldiers from the 442nd also were awarded 21 Congressional Medals of Honor; the unit as a whole received seven Presidential Unit Citations for its service in the European Theater.

1. Many Americans (including many government officials) believed that many Japanese nationals (Issei) and Japanese Americans (Nisei) constituted a risk to national security, either due to possible espionage or sabotage. Since most Japanese lived along the West Coast—the region which the Japanese would likely attack—the government decided to remove them and relocate them to the interior of the U.S. Executive Order 9066, signed by FDR in February 1942, gave U.S. military commanders the authority to remove anyone ("exclude") from a "military area" considered a threat to national security.
2. White Americans held many stereotypes about Japanese Americans, most of which were documented by the films of the period, as well as by propaganda posters encouraging Americans to become more involved in the war effort. These sources generally showed Japanese with buck teeth, thick eyeglasses, slanted eyes, rumpled clothes, etc. In addition, these also depicted Japanese as only being able to speak in halting, pidgin English.
3. Answers may vary, but students will likely say that internment was not justified, especially in light of the report that emerged from the Korematsu case in the 1980s stating that the government had already concluded that Japanese Americans posed a negligible threat to national security. Students may also say that American citizens have a constitutional right regardless of race because of due process and habeas corpus. Others may say that in the times of uncertainty that accompany war, the government has the authority to take such actions to protect national security.

Sets with similar terms

Why did the US government urge civilians to plant victory gardens during the Second World war?

Why did the government encourage the planting of victory gardens quizlet?

What was the purpose behind the call for victory gardens during World War II quizlet?

How did civilians help the US government pay for the war effort?