Aircraft Carriers: Newly designed aircraft carriers were equipped with greater range and a heavier striking power. Some older ships were newly crafted to be up to date

Medicine: penicillin was created during WWII to fight bacteria.

FDR did all he to convince the American people that the US had to play an active role in World affairs.  He felt it was critical the US continue to strive for peace and prosperity after the war was over. FDR sought to work with our friends and allies to build the necessary institutions to reorder the world's economic system and facilitate great power Cooperation in the postwar world.

FDR Said: "Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them... To that high concept there can be no end save victory." 

Conspiracy theorists hold that FDR’s calm was the result of foreknowledge. He knew Pearl Harbor was coming and let it happen, they say. Or he tricked the Japanese into the attack, as a means to draw the US into the larger world conflict But there was no document or credible witness discovered that prove either claim.

A U.S. Army general best known for leading the famous “Doolittle Raid” in 1942, in which B-25 bombers were launched from an aircraft carrier to bomb Japan and then crash-landed in China.

Curtis LeMay

The commander of the U.S. Air Force’s 21st Bomber Command in the Pacific theater during World War II. LeMay is best known for developing the U.S. strategy of using massive incendiary bomb attacks on Japanese cities in order to break the Japanese will near the end of the war.

Doughlas McArthur

Douglas MacArthur was an American five-star general and Field Marshal of the Philippine Army. He was Chief of Staff of the United States Army during the 1930s and played a prominent role in the Pacific theater during World War II by leading the Island Hopping Campaign.

The Bataan Death March inspired MacArthur for his Island Hopping Campaign

Dwight D. Eisenhower

A U.S. Army general who held the position of supreme Allied commander in Europe, among many others. Eisenhower was perhaps best known for his work in planning Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Europe. After the war, he was a very popular figure in the United States and was elected to two terms as U.S. president, taking office in 1953.

General Patten

George Smith Patton, Jr. (November 11, 1885 – December 21, 1945) was a United States Army general, who commanded the Seventh United States Army in the Mediterranean and European Theaters of World War II, but is best known for his leadership of the Third United States Army in France and Germany following the Allied invasion of NORMANDY.

-By 1945, more than 250,000 women had joined the Women's Army Corps (WAC), the Army Nurses Corps, Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES), the Navy Nurses Corps, the Marines, and the Coast Guard. Most women who joined the armed services either filled traditional women's roles, such as nursing, or replaced men in non-combat jobs.

-Women also substituted for men on the home front.

-WAC: Women’s Army Corps

-WAVES: Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Services

-WOW: Women’s Ordnance Worker - worked especially in manufacturing of weapons

-Rosie the Riveter: star of a government campaign aimed at recruiting female workers for the munitions industry

During WWII, they served in a segregated US military that worked in transport and armored units in Europe. They performed well in battle. Participation did not gain them any civil rights. African Americans on the home front worked in filling industrial jobs that had been left by whites that had been drafted, and played an important part in the production for the war.

-Tuskegee Airmen squadron= name of a group of African-American military pilots (fighter and bombers) who fought in World War II. The Army accepted black enlistees but created separate black infantry regiments and assigned white commanders to them. The Army Air Corps' black fighter wing was completely separate, training at an all black university at Tuskegee, Alabama. The Navy segregated Negro units and gave them the most minor jobs on ships. In war, segregation broke down as early as Pearl Harbor, when a negro seaman rushed to the deck and started firing a machinegun until all of the ammunition was out and then abandoned ship. The Navy later gave him a medal. The Tuskegee Airmen were assigned to North Africa and later to Italy. They flew 200 bomber escort missions over southern Europe without allowing a single bomber to be shot down by enemy fighters. Their longest mission took them over Berlin where they encountered at least eight of the new, fast jet fighters. They shot down two and damaged the other five. The unit received two Presidential citations, and individual flyers received 150 medals.

Decision of President Truman: - He desegregated the army.

-On July 26, Truman followed up by signing Executive Order 9981, establishing the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services. It was coupled with Executive Order 9980, creating a Fair Employment Board charged with eliminating racial bias in federal employment.

-It took the army many years after that to follow the executive order and for the army to be fully desegregated.

- South tried to oppose, but failed. Not really any opposition in the North

WWII Cause of Civil Rights Movement

-It was a direct cause of the Civil Rights Movement. In WWII, African Americans were given new jobs and opportunities since so many other men had gone off to war. Also some black men went off to fight in the war for America, and would have expected more equal outlook of color upon return. After the war when men returned those jobs were given back to white men

Tuskegee Airmen

initiated by an exchange of diplomatic notes between the United States and Mexico in August 1942, for the importation of temporary contract laborers from Mexico to the United States. Roosevelt met with the Mexican president Manuel Camacho to discuss Mexico as part of the Allies in WWII and the bracero program.

The program was initially prompted by a demand for manual labor during World War II and began with the U.S. government bringing in a few hundred experienced Mexican agricultural laborers to harvest sugar beets in the Stockton, California area. The program soon spread to cover most of the United States and provided workers for the agricultural labor market (with the notable exception being Texas, which initially opted out of the program in preference to an "open border" policy, and was denied braceros by the Mexican government until 1947 due to perceived mistreatment of Mexican laborers).

By 1945, the quota for the agricultural program was more than 75,000 braceros working in the U.S. railroad system and 50,000 braceros working in U.S. agriculture at any one time. Congress voted the program out of existence in 1964, under mounting criticism for exploiting Mexican workers and depriving American workers of jobs. One of the factors spurring action by Congress was a September 1963 bus accident near Chualar in the Salinas Valley, killing 32 people, mostly braceros, and injuring 25. It was the worst road accident in U.S. history. The bus was an illegally converted flatbed truck, which was typical of the unsafe conditions braceros had to endure.

- Zoot Suit Riots

The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of riots in 1943 during World War II that broke out in Los Angeles, California, between Anglo American sailors and Marines stationed in the city, and Latino youths, who were recognizable by the zoot suits they favored. Mexican Americans and European-American military personnel were the main parties in the riots, and some African American and Filipino/Filipino American youths were involved as well. The Zoot Suit Riots were in part the effect of the infamous Sleepy Lagoon murder trial, which followed the death of a young Latino man in a barrio near Los Angeles. The incident triggered similar attacks against Latinos in Beaumont, Chicago, San Diego, Oakland, Detroit, Evansville, Philadelphia, and New York City.

-Soon after President Truman took office, he appointed several experts to study the Palestinian issue. In the summer of 1946, Truman established a special cabinet committee who entered into negotiations with a British committee to discuss the future of Palestine. 

-In May 1946, Truman announced his approval of a recommendation to admit 100,000 displaced persons into Palestine and in October publicly declared his support for the creation of a Jewish state. 

-Throughout 1947, the United Nations Special Commission on Palestine examined the Palestinian question and recommended the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. 

-On November 29, 1947 the United Nations adopted Resolution 181 (also known as the Partition Resolution) that would divide Great Britain’s former Palestinian mandate into Jewish and Arab states in May 1948 when the British mandate was scheduled to end.

-Under the resolution, the area of religious significance surrounding Jerusalem would remain a corpus separatum under international control administered by the United Nations, resulting in the creation of Israel.

-Israelis and Palestinians have failed to reach a final peace agreement. The remaining key issues are: mutual recognition, borders, security, water rights, control of Jerusalem, Israeli settlements, Palestinian freedom of movement, and resolving Palestinian claims of a right of return for their refugees.

The Atlantic Charter was a pivotal policy statement issued in August 14, 1941 that, early in World War II, defined the Allied goals for the post-war world. It was drafted by the leaders of the United Kingdom and the United States, and later agreed to by all the Allies of World War II. The Charter stated the ideal goals of the war: no territorial aggrandizement; no territorial changes made against the wishes of the people; restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; reduction of trade restrictions; global cooperation to secure better economic and social conditions for all; freedom from fear and want; freedom of the seas; and abandonment of the use of force, as well as disarmament of aggressor nations. In the Declaration by United Nations of 1 January 1942, the Allies pledged adherence to this charter's principles.

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was a multilateral agreement regulating international trade that was made as a result of the Atlantic Charter. According to its preamble, its purpose was the "substantial reduction of tariffs and other trade barriers and the elimination of preferences, on a reciprocal and mutually advantageous basis." It was negotiated during the United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment and was the outcome of the failure of negotiating governments to create the International Trade Organization (ITO).

After World War II, the successful Allied governments established the first international criminal courts to prosecute high-level political officials and military authorities for war crimes and other wartime barbarisms. The four major Allied powers—France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—set up the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, to prosecute and punish “the major war criminals of the European Axis.” The IMT presided over a combined trial of senior Nazi political and military leaders, as well as several Nazi organizations. The lesser-known International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) was created in Tokyo, Japan, pursuant to a 1946 proclamation by U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers in occupied Japan. The IMTFE presided over a series of trials of senior Japanese political and military leaders pursuant to its authority “to try and punish Far Eastern war criminals.” Some Tokyo War Crimes that were committed were Attacks on Pearl Harbor, Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, mass killings, chemical weapons, human experimentation, cannibalism, forced labor and comfort women.

Discuss the Formation of the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions.

The Geneva Conventions are a series of treaties on the treatment of civilians, prisoners of war (POWs) and soldiers who are otherwise rendered hors de combat, or incapable of fighting. The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization established 24 October 1945, to promote international co-operation. A replacement for the ineffective League of Nations, the organization was created following the Second World War to prevent another such conflict.