The Century America's Time: Homefront

1. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  Why did Japan bomb Pearl 
Harbor? 
2. How did the American people react to the bombing of Pearl Harbor? 
3. What is a citizen soldier?  Why does the United States have a particular history of 
citizen soldiers? 
4. Discuss the transition from a peacetime economy to wartime economy that occurred 
in the United States during World War II. 
5. Women workers increased dramatically during the war.  Why was there resistance at 
first to women working in war plants? 
6. Why were women accepted in the defense industries after some initial reservations 
and resistance? 
7. World War II was not fought on American soil.  Nevertheless, the impact of the war 
was tremendous. How did World War II alter the American homefront? 
8. How did the United States use propaganda to unify the American people behind the 
war effort? 
9. Why were Japanese-Americans banished to internment camps? Why weren’t 
German-Americans or Italian-Americans interned? Why is this one of the greatest 
civil rights violations in American history? 
10. Discuss the impact of D-Day on the course of the war.
11. Discuss the impact of FDR’s death.