1942-1953

  • U. S. interns Japanese

    U. S. interns Japanese
    The internment of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II was the forced relocation and incarceration in concentration camps in the western interior of the country of between 110,000 and 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, most of whom lived on the Pacific coast
  • Italy invaded

    Italy invaded
    The Allied invasion of Italy was the Allied amphibious landing on mainland Italy that took place on 3 September 1943 during the early stages of the Italian Campaign of World War II. The operation was undertaken by General Sir Harold Alexander's 15th Army Group and followed the successful invasion of Sicily.
  • WWII ends

    WWII ends
    the Japanese delegation formally signs the instrument of surrender on board the USS Missouri, marking the official ending of World War II. 2,194 -- Days between the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, through September 2, 1945, when Japan signs the unconditional surrender.
  • FDR dies

    FDR dies
    in 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passes away after four momentous terms in office, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting the Second World War.
  • Bombing of Japan begins

    Bombing of Japan begins
    On August 6, 1945, during World War II (1939-45), an American B-29 bomber dropped the world's first deployed atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion wiped out 90 percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people; tens of thousands more would later die of radiation exposure
  • "Iron Curtain" speech

    "Iron Curtain" speech
    On March 5, 1946, Sir Winston Churchill visited Westminster College as the Green Lecturer and delivered "Sinews of Peace," a message heard round the world that went down in history as the "Iron Curtain Speech." "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron curtain" has descended across the continent.
  • Cold War begins

    Cold War begins
    the Cold War began when the Soviet-backed North Korean People's Army invaded its pro-Western neighbor to the south. Many American officials feared this was the first step in a communist campaign to take over the world and deemed that nonintervention was not an option.
  • Period: to

    Taft-Hartley

    The Labor Management Relations Act of 1947 29 U.S.C. § 141-197, better known as the Taft–Hartley Act, (80 H.R. 3020, Pub.L. 80–101, 61 Stat. 136, enacted June 23, 1947) is a United States federal law that restricts the activities and power of labor unions.
  • NATO

    NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is an international alliance that consists of 29 member states from North America and Europe. It was established at the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4 April 1949.
  • Korean War

    Korean War
    On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south.
  • Dwight Eisenhower elected President

    Dwight Eisenhower elected President
    The 1952 United States presidential election was the 42nd quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 4, 1952. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower won a landslide victory over Democrat Adlai Stevenson, ending a string of Democratic Party wins that stretched back to 1932.
  • Industries agree on guaranteed annual wage

    Guaranteed wage plan, system by which an employer ensures a minimum annual amount of employment or wages (or both) to employees who have been with the employer for a required minimum period of time. The United States has had more experience than other countries with such plans, which are meant to eliminate the adverse effects of fluctuating employment on living standards.