24 The World at War

1937–1945

Physicist Luis Alvarez was in one of the B-29 bomber planes accompanying the Enola Gay when it dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Moments after the blast, Alvarez wrote a letter to his young son, describing the mushroom cloud as “awe-inspiring” and the light flash “many times brighter than the sun.” His front-row seat to history marked a beginning and an end. The two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the end of World War II, the second fantastically destructive war of the twentieth century. Those bombs also inaugurated a new era in America’s global dominance. The war had significant and immediate effects on the United States, even before the nation formally entered the war following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. As with many wars, this global conflict transformed lives, including those of the American soldiers called to fight and those they left behind. The social and political consequences of war on the home front took many forms, from the mobilization of the wartime economy to constraints on economics and civil liberties. For many, World War II fought to preserve liberty and freedom while at the same time it highlighted the persistent shortcomings plaguing American race relations. Alvarez witnessed the end of the war, but could only imagine the battles yet to come.