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//Minorities were not treated equal during the World War II era (workforce and military).//
1. Thinking that Japanese-Americans might be spies helping plan the attack, Anti-Japanese sentiment spread and grew into hysteria after the attack on Pearl Harbor. On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, calling for the relocation of the 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent living on the West Coast to detention camps for the remainder of the war. 2. Japanese-Americans had their rights as citizens stripped from them. 3. While President Roosevelt and Milton S. Eisenhower, director of the War Relocation Authority (WRA), wanted to take Japanese Americans out of the detention camps and settle them back into rural areas, governors wanted nothing short of concentration camps where the Japanese Americans would be watched under armed guard. 4. The American armed forces in World War II remained strictly segregated by race. Approximately one million African Americans served in the war and were usually employed as noncombatants. The few black combat units that were created usually had white officers. 5. Jobs were only opened up to minority groups such as African Americans, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Chinese Americans when the supply of the preferred white males was depleted. 6. Many workers often did not welcome minorities in the workforce, protested their presence, and refused to work with them. At times, these protests erupted into violent hate strikes. 7. The earnings of black males averaged only 41 percent of the earnings of white males in 1939. By 1947, they had risen, but only to 54 percent. 8. In June of 1943, there was a protest against the promotion of black welders to the same jobs as whites in Mobile, Alabama. As a result, blacks were attacked by whites with bricks and clubs. 9. In the Navy and coast guard, African Americans were not granted equality in working significant positions, leaving them serving almost exclusively as ship stewards. 10. The Marine Corps only reluctantly accepted African Americans as Marines. In training and deployment, they adopted a rigid policy of segregation, even after bowing to political pressure to accept black Marines.

//Primary Sources//
"Because Negroes only can join the March on Washington Movement, does not indicate that Negroes in the M.O.W.M. may not join an inter-racial golf club or church or Elks Lodge or, debating society or trade union....Now, the question of which I have been discussing involves, for example, the March on Washington Movement's position on the war . We say that the Negro must fight for his democratic rights now for after the war it may be too late. This is our policy on the Negro and the war ." -A. Philip Randolph -This is an excerpt from A. Philip Randolph's, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters', Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement, given on September 26, 1942. In his speech, he called for an all-black organization to demand equal rights for African Americans through a mass demonstration in Washington, D.C. In this excerpt of his speech, he argues that African Americans should have equal rights in inter-racial involvements. While there were African American regiments in the war, they were commanded by white officers. The March on Washington Movement's goal was equality in the defense industry. A. Philip Randolph states in his speech that if they do not act now, during the war, it would be too late.

"I do hereby reaffirm the policy of the United States that there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin, and I do hereby declare that it is the duty of employers and of labor organizations, in furtherance of said policy and of this order, to provide for the full and equitable participation of all workers in defense industries, without discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin." -The above except from Executive Order 8802, also known as the Prohibition of Discrimination in the Defense Industry, was issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on June 25, 1941. It reaffirmed of a policy of full participation in the defense program, regardless of race or ethnicity. Roosevelt ordered for the prohibition of discrimination in the employment of workers in the defense industry and government. Racial discrimination was common in the workforces. Minorities were left under the control of whites and received less pay. The armed forces were strictly segregated by race, as well.

-This photograph of William H. Green, which was taken in 1942, shows him in his successful Chicago radio and electrical repair store. Many African-Americans moved north after facing poor job prospects and civil discrimination in the South. During World War II, minorities were forced to take low-paying, labor-intensive jobs, where there was still discrimination and segregation. If minorities, such as African-Americans were working inter-racially, the environment would be segregated. Minorities did not get equal rights or equal pay in the workforce at home in America. If they were serving in the war, they were also segregated and discriminated against.