The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, made Americans understand that they were not invincible from foreign and surprise attacks. The attack not only united the people of the U.S, but also pushed the United States into going into war. During world war II Hawaii’s economy prospered like never before, with more and more soldiers coming through the area more homes and shops were needed. After the war, however Hawaii’s economy began to fall due to lack of soldiers, everyone was returning home leaving Hawaii and business owners to vent for themselves.
Battleships that had once stood tall now rested at the bottom of the harbor along with the bodies of thousands of servicemen that had fought fiercely during the attack, 2,403 Americans died and 1,178 were wounded. In a periodical by Audrey Mcavoy titled Pearl Harbor Survivors Gather and Reflect she writes “Adm. Harry Harris, the top U.S. military commander in the Pacific, said the day ‘must forever remain burned into the American consciousness’ ” (Mcavoy 1). The attack came in two waves, the US was not prepared for the first wave when it hit, Jonah Engel Bromwich writes in an article titled How Pearl Harbor Shaped the Modern World “Congressional leaders debated whether to declare war, not only on Japan but also on the Axis powers including Germany and Italy ” (Bromwich 1). The US finally declared war on Japan on December 8 and soon after Germany declared war on the US. Bromwich states “The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise, but Japan and the United States had been edging toward war for decades ”(Bromwich 2). Japan and the US already had rising tension beforehand and Pearl Harbor just set everything off. The war stopped regular commercial shipping and all operations were turned over to the government.
After the attack government officials became concerned with the Japanese Americans living in Hawaii and in response they placed Hawaii under martial law. Intelligence gathered that Japan was recruiting spies and had already secured a spy network there. Americans feared the Japanese living in the US so much that they pushed for the forced removal of them. In an article written by Jason Farago titled Isamu Noguchi’s Efforts to Improve Life in an Internment Camp, he states “The relocation and detention of more than 100,000 Japanese-American citizens and Japanese aliens after the attack on Pearl Harbor is one of the plainest injustices in modern American history” (Farago 1). Japanese Americans were relocated to internment camps, there was concern that Japanese loyalty of Japan outweighed the Japanese loyalty of the US. In the book Prisoners without Trial by Roger Daniels, he states “ The government called these camps relocation centers. Surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by armed soldiers, families lived in poorly built, overcrowded barracks. The barracks themselves had no running water and little heat. There was almost no privacy, and everyone had to use public bathrooms” (Daniels 117). The United States saw all people of Japanese descent as a threat. Despite the lack of evidence, President Roosevelt “signed an executive order in February 1942 ordering the relocation of all Americans of Japanese ancestry to concentration in the interior of the United States.” (Rogers 113). Roosevelt’s actions were one hundred percent supported and went unquestioned. Roger makes the point that “[Japan’s] victories led to U.S. paranoia, and many people thought their Japanese neighbors could be spies. These victories, combined with racism, created a war hysteria. People were afraid, and they thought that the only way that America could be safe was to put the Japanese Americans in camps ” (Rogers 227). Japanese internment camps in America humiliated and degraded innocent Japanese Americans simply based on race, even though 70 percent of the Japanese Americans in them were American citizens.
In 1944, a couple years after signing the execution order Franklin D. Roosevelt finally rescinded it and the last internment camp was closed by the end of 1945. In 1968 the government finally began reparations to the Japanese Americans for the property they had lost. In 1988 Congress paid $20,000 to each surviving internee, an outcome of 1.2 billion dollars. The United States was still recovering from the impact of the Great Depression, with the unemployment rate at 25 percent, the war created jobs, factories were needed to produce goods to support the war and the unemployment rate went to 10 percent almost overnight.
Hawaii at this time was not yet a state, but just a US territory, they had already been hit hard by the Great Depression and the economy was still recovering. With pineapple and sugar being one of Hawaii’s main exports, plantations brought immigrant workers from all over the world, but once the depression hit plantations couldn’t afford to pay them leaving a large number of workers without a job and since Hawaii was under martial law, wages were frozen. After Pearl Harbor, many workers decided to enlist causing a rapid shift in production expectations and quickly brought about the need to bring women into the workforce. Because so many men were drafted into the army, women were employed to do work that was previously only done by men, like welding and producing armaments.
During this time Hawaii’s economy grew tremendously because so many military members were entering Hawaii more homes, restaurants, and stores were needed to keep up with the new increasing demand. The US military completely changed Hawaii from 1941 to 1945 and after. The Marines, the Navy, and Army turned the sugar plantations into training areas and housing sites, extended roads, highways, and bombed the smaller offshore islands.
After the war ended in 1945 many military members returned back home to their families creating new difficulties for Hawaii’s economy, fewer new homes were being built and there were not as many people going out to shop or eat. Even after going through all this, the people of Hawaii came together came together and rebuilt their economy. In 1946 Tourism became a huge part of rebuilding the economy. The people of Hawaii created many campaigns to get people to visit the beautiful island, and over the next few years it paid off. Pearl Harbor became one of the island’s biggest attractions bringing thousands of people from the US and around the world to pay their respects to all the people that had lost their lives.
Overall The Hawaiian economy went through many changes over the course of the war, but because the people of Hawaii came together during their hardest times, their beautiful islands recovered and its economy prospered.
Originally published 15.10.2019