Audio Transcript Auto-generated
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the real american homefront. The tensions and fears that shaped for time America.
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I'm really excited to talk about this project because
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I learned a lot more than I expected doing it. And I had a lot of fun doing the research.
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Um, when I first chose the home front to be my topic,
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I wasn't really sure where I would go,
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but when I read the chapters on World War One and World War Two in the textbook,
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I was amazed and appalled at the amount of information that I was unaware of.
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I feel like
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these subjects that I touch on are things that um, they're not in movies,
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They're not in books that I have seen anyways.
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And I think that the
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americans are really uneducated on things that went on
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during
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the wars on the home front
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that are kind of beneath the surface.
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I'd like to start with a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt,
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she said pit race against race, religion against religion,
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prejudice against prejudice,
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divide and conquer. We must not let that happen here.
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Ironically,
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these sentiments that
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Mrs Roosevelt was
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condemning in this speech were kind of
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what did characterize the home fronts both in the world One and World War Two.
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Um, it's very sad to read about, but it was the truth.
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Um, like most americans, I kind of associated the home front with
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Rosie the Riveter and women just like stepping into men's roles to fill in the void
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of men who went to war or the immigrants who stopped coming to the States.
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I didn't realize that there were a lot of other
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roles being played during this time.
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And I was really intrigued when I started reading about it.
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I don't want to take away from the role of women though because without them,
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the war probably would not have been one
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in the way that it was
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um, with that though,
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came a lot of neglect for the Children because women were now working full time jobs.
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It's led to just a scary time for Children to be growing up in
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a role that is a little lesser known than
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women is the african americans.
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They kind of let a migration from the south
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up into
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the northern city city so they could work in factories.
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Of course this led to a lot of unrest and
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Unfortunately some riots and deaths.
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Um, we can see how that later led to the social reform movements of the 60's
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german americans as well as italian americans
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are minority groups that were
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um,
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not spoken about as much I think because
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they didn't speak out like african americans did.
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They were also persecuted and sometimes just on
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the basis of speaking their native language.
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I have some,
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the facts here. I don't have time to read, but it was
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sad to read about these groups.
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I think
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a little better known
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Ban on Germans and Italians were the Japanese and how they were treated during
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over two.
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Um, so many were sent to internment camps
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and this was really
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not
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comparable to
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um,
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Nazi, concentration camps, but it was still unjust and
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very sad to read about
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here. It says that
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um kind of ironically that
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Um the only thing that Japanese lost was their freedom.
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And although the United States did apologize for
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what happened to the Japanese people in 1988,
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it's largely unjustified and
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it would be unfair to not acknowledge that it's hard
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to make the right decision in a time of crisis,
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but it's still very sad to read about how these people were
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here.
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I have um some facts about what these tensions
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led to and in the following years with um
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some of the fear towards
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fascists and um
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mostly affiliated with the Germans and time's
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kind of shifted to
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um the Cold War and discrimination against just socialists in general.
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Ah
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and I have quite a few thoughts here
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to end with.
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Um
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I think that it goes without saying that
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these
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topics are things that just aren't
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spoken about enough and americans are really uneducated on
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what happened beneath the surface during both wars. And
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I was really thankful to learn about it and have the opportunity to just
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be a little more thankful for the time that I was born in.
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And