Chapter 35 Terms and Definitions
- War Production Board
The federal agency that coordinated the conversion of civilian factories to military production during World War II.
- Office of Price Administration
The wartime agency that imposed rationing on goods like gasoline, sugar, meat, and rubber to conserve resources for the war effort.
- Executive Order 8802
Roosevelt's 1941 order banning discrimination in defense industries, issued under pressure from A. Philip Randolph's threatened march on Washington.
- A. Philip Randolph
Civil rights and labor leader whose threat of a mass march on Washington pressured FDR into issuing Executive Order 8802.
- Executive Order 9066
Roosevelt's February 1942 order authorizing the forced removal and internment of roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans.
- Korematsu v. United States
The 1944 Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of Japanese American internment as a wartime necessity.
- Rosie the Riveter
The iconic figure symbolizing the roughly six million American women who entered the wartime industrial workforce.
- Battle of Midway
The June 1942 naval battle in which the U.S. sank four Japanese aircraft carriers, decisively shifting Pacific naval superiority to America.
- Island hopping
The U.S. military strategy of seizing key strategic Pacific islands while bypassing heavily fortified ones.
- D-Day
June 6, 1944 — the day Allied forces launched the largest amphibious invasion in history on the beaches of Normandy, France.
- Battle of the Bulge
Germany's last major offensive of the war, launched in the Ardennes in December 1944 and repelled by Allied forces.
- Yalta Conference
The February 1945 meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin that planned the postwar occupation of Germany and the United Nations.
- Manhattan Project
The top-secret U.S. program that developed the atomic bomb, first used against Japan in August 1945.
- V-E Day
May 8, 1945 — the day Germany surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II in Europe.
- V-J Day
August 14, 1945 (formalized September 2) — the day Japan surrendered, ending World War II.