Rob Watkins
HIST 196-WW2 Extra Credit Assignment
Using historical footage, old newsreels, interviews, still photos, radio broadcasts, and narrative voiceover, this documentary gives an excellent look at the changes that occurred and were forced onto American society in WW2. The Homefront tells the story of the American people during WWII: how they lived, what they thought, and how they were forever changed. Interviews from the wives of soldiers discussed how everything changed almost immediately when war was declared.
One point the film made that ties directly to the MAW 8 reading was the migration of workers from small farms, where they made $ 300 a month, to more populated areas for industrial work. As read in MAW 8 Wartime Migration, the Nevels family relocates from rural Kentucky to industrial opportunities in Detroit, Michigan. Everybody was on the move, heading for the money. When WW2 began, the depression was over. As…show more content… This was depicted very well in the MAW 8 readings and class discussions. We learned how all, even American-born Japanese americans, were evacuated to internment camps similar to prisoner of war camps. In class we discussed how executive order 9066 made it legal to force Japanese into these camps. MAW 8 shows specific examples of people who actually lived in these camps. It displays everything from what the rooms looked like, how the rooms where spaced out, where they slept and many other things. The passage displays how rights were fully taken away from these people, and the little faith held in democracy. It was sort of ironic how, although we were fighting for democracy, all of this was taking place. One interview from the film shows how a fisherman went from running his own fishing business to losing practically everything. He was never reimbursed for anything, and nobody seemed to know what happened to all of the expensive equipment he previously ran his business