The 1940s
On Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, a naval base in the Hawaiian Islands. Over 2400 Americans were killed and 1200 injured in the surprise attack by over 300 bombers.
The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt went before Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Japan and its allies. In one of the most famous lines ever said by a U.S. president, he began: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
In California, government rounded up Japanese-Americans and sent them to internment camps for the duration of the war.
In China, the continuing Civil War between the Mao se Tung-led Communists and ChaingKai-shek (Jiang Jieshi)-led Nationalists is put on hold as they both fight the invading Japanese. By 1949, the Communists take over China and the Nationalists flee to Taiwan.
The war effort dominated life in the U.S. until the Germans surrendered on May 8, 1945. About 16 million Americans served in World War II. Over 200,000 died. It affected every family in the country. Many products were rationed and women, for the first time, went to work in factories.
Most of the famous athletes of the era enlisted in the military following Pearl Harbor, including baseball stars Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio and Bob Feller.
The most important battle of the war was on D-Day, June 7, 1944, when American and British troops invaded the shores of northern France in an assault on the German troops that ended the next year in Berlin, where Hitler killed himself in his underground bunker.
Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton and Douglas MacArthur were the important generals of WWII.
On April 12, 1945, Roosevelt died and Harry Truman became president. Four months later, Truman approved the dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, instantly killing about 200,000 people and forcing Japan to surrender.
At the end of the war, Allied troops discover the death camps in Germany and Poland and the extent of the Holocaust is reveals. About 6 million Jews and other minorities groups were killed by the Nazis. In 1948, the country of Israel was created for the Jewish people.
Most famous newspaper headline of all time, Chicago Tribune prints in November 1948: “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Actually, Truman was elected and led the nation in what became known as “The Cold War” between the U.S. and Soviet Union. After the war, the Soviets took control, with U.S. approval, of much of Eastern Europe and a divided German.
Soon after the war ended, commercial television began. “Texaco Star Theater” starring standup comedian Milton Berle was the most popular show of early TV. Frozen dinners, soon to be known as TV dinners, were invented to accommodate TV-watching families.
One of the era’s best known entertainers was Bob Hope, comedian on radio and in movies, who traveled to the front lines of the war to entertain troops. He continued to entertain troops in every U.S. war until his death in 2003.
Among the most important movies of the 1940s were “Casablanca” starring Humphrey Bogart, “The Grapes of Wrath” starring Henry Fonda, “It’s a Wonderful Life” starring James Stewart and “Citizen Kane” starring Orson Welles, which most film critics still consider the greatest American film.
Among the popular books of the time were Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls,”
Albert Camus’ “The Stranger,”George Orwell’s “1984,”Norman Mailer’s “The Naked and the Dead” and Richard Wright’s “Native Son” (the first important novel by an African-American writer). The theaters on Broadway were filled with landmark dramas, including “The Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller and “A Streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams.
Singers Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Ella Fitzgerald and other Big Band singers continued to produce the popular music of the time. In the clubs of New York, a new form of jazz started called “be-bop”—small group improvisational jazz—led by saxophonist Charlie Parker and trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie.
In what became a turning point in the desegregation of America, Jackie Robinson, who had played sports at UCLA, joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947 to become the first black man to play major league baseball.
In 1949, the National Basketball Association was formed.
Minimum wage during the 1940s was 43 cents an hour.