The 442nd regimental combat team, made up entirely of Japanese Americans, became the most highly decorated military unit of that size in American history and liberated a subcamp of Dachau.

Japanese American men in these camps were not permitted to enlist in the US military until 1943. In February 1942, two months after the attack at Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed an executive order permitting the government to take “every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage.” Citing national security concerns, the US government used that order to relocate more than 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry-at least two-thirds of whom were American citizens-to ten camps across seven states. On the homefront, millions of women entered the workforce-many for the first time-and Americans were forced to adjust to rationing of food and consumer goods.Įven as the United States went to war to defend democracy abroad, the government violated the rights and limited the opportunities of its own minority citizens. During most of 1942, the US Navy fought Japan in the Pacific, while ground troops prepared for battle in North Africa and Europe. Over the next year, the US military doubled in size to four million service members and trained continually to prepare for combat. Every single man, woman, and child is a partner in the most tremendous undertaking of our American history.” On December 7, 1941, Japan launched a surprise aerial assault on the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In January 1944, President Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board, which took significant measures to aid Jews and other victims. The US government confirmed this information in late 1942. Although the United States could have done more to aid the victims of Nazi Germany and its collaborators, large-scale rescue was impossible by the time the United States entered the war. By 1942, the American press carried a number of reports about the ongoing mass murder of Jews.

For almost four years, the American people-soldiers and civilians alike-made considerable sacrifices to defeat Nazism, from serving in the military to supporting the war effort at home. The United States entered World War II in December 1941, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

Call to war 1942