The home front is a collective term that covers civilian activities in a country at war. Both World War I and II were totally destructive, and homeland production became more indispensable to the Axis powers and Allies. Armed forces were at the front line fighting while citizens at home worked to produce supplies and materials for the soldiers (Roediger et al., 2019). The impact of the war was visible in the civilian activities of Germany, Japan, and the United States. This essay compares the conditions on the home front of Japan and Germany with that of the United States.
The home front of Germany and Japan during WWII was not heavily invested in the mobilization of manpower as the war was happening on their territories. Germans remained quiet at the start of the conflict because they feared disaster. Total mobilization of the economy came in late, and the number of women working in domestic service, agriculture, industry, and business increased only slightly during the fight (Roediger et al., 2019). Likewise, the Japanese society kept their women at home as they believed that females maintained the cohesion of the family system. Although the country was highly mobilized from the beginning, the government was reluctant to mobilize women for war. Chinese and Korean workers were recruited to fill the labor gaps instead of utilizing Japanese women.
Contrarily, the home front of the U.S was different from that of Germany and Japan as America was not fighting on its territory. New factories were created, and boomtowns grew around them; many people came to work in these industries (Roediger et al., 2019). About sixteen million men and women were recruited into the military, and over a million Black Americans came from the rural South to look for jobs. As a result, there were increased racial tensions, and riots erupted as Whites reacted to the Black residents. Japanese Americans were forced to reside in camps surrounded by barbed wire and take loyalty oaths to the U.S. However, Italian and Germans were not put in camps, a policy that demonstrated racism in America.
To conclude, Germany and Japan involved their territories in WWI and WWII, leading to many people losing their lives in attacks and bombing raids. Governments were involved in manpower allocation, rationing, and evacuation as a result of air raids, home defense, and response to enemy power occupation. As a result, people feared disasters, and women were not heavily involved in war efforts. On the contrary, in America, people, including women, willingly took part in working at factories that manufactured war weapons and, consequently, communities and boomtowns grew.
Reference
Roediger, H., Abel, M., Umanath, S., Shaffer, R. A., Fairfield, B., Takahashi, M., & Wertsch, J. V. (2019). Competing national memories of World War II. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(34), 16678-16686. Web.