Spent shells rain down over the heads of panicking citizens of Los Angeles. Across the city, antiaircraft batteries open fire in response to a Japanese air raid. Soon, the night sky fills with smoke, obscuring the view of the gunners. People either congregate outside to find out what is going on or cower under shelter, as the blackout plunges the city into confusion. Reports flood in of a downed enemy bomber burning in the city—hardly putting a dent in the hundreds that people are sighting. It is only a day after a Japanese attack on oil facility outside the city and three months after the horrific Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It seems fears of an invasion of the American homeland have materialized. The next day the full destruction of the Battle …show more content…
Incidentally since its creation, Los Angeles has possessed a robust industrial sector due to its oil reserves. As demand for war supplies and machines ramped up, Los Angeles became home to a multitude of new manufacturing plants and docks with the government spending vast sums of money to expand production capabilities. At one point, Los Angeles produced seventeen percent of the country’s war materials. The most crucial product coming from Los Angeles was aircrafts. The enormous number of bombers and fights manufactured in Los Angeles allowed the America to gain a critical edge in air superiority. Under these circumstances, many Americans viewed Los Angeles as the ideal location for the Japanese to attack in order to cripple the American war machine. Accordingly, tension and paranoia were evident in the city and its residents as showcased above in the Battle of Los Angeles. In order to meet the demand for workers, Los Angeles experienced a population boom. Many of these workers were from minority groups. Further, these groups were replacing white males who had left to serve in the war.
In The Folklore of the Freeway: Space, Culture, and Identity in Postwar Los Angeles, Eric Avila discusses the history of the construction of the freeway in Los Angeles and the effects that this transformation had on communities of color. The construction of the freeway further increased the contrast between white space and non whitespace as white people moved toward the suburbs and communities of color were displaced to the inner city metropolitan areas. Avila explains that the impact of the freeways was not only economic, but also physical. The construction entailed immense destruction and displacement among inner-city communities. Boyle Heights, for example, experienced one-tenth of its population being displaced by the freeways. What I found
Before the landings were to begin, the coastal German defenses had to be adequately prepped, and softened by a combination of a massive battering by United States ships, and bombing by the United States Air Force. Between the hours of 0300 and 0500 hours on the morning of June 6, over 1,000 aircraft dropped more than 5,000 tons of bombs on the German coastal defenses. As soon as the preliminary bombing was over, the American and British naval guns opened fire on the Normandy coastline (D' Este 112). A British naval officer described the incredible spectacle he witnessed that day: "Never has any coast suffered what a tortured strip of French coast suffered that morning; both the naval and air bombardments were unparalleled. Along the fifty-mile front the land was rocked by successive explosions as the shells of ships' guns tore holes in fortifications and tons of bombs rained on them from the skies. Through billowing smoke and falling debris defenders crouching in this scene of devastations would soon discern faintly hundreds of ships and assault craft ominously closing the shore.
This paper will compare Gordon W. Prange's book "At Dawn We Slept - The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor" with the film "Tora! Tora! Tora!" directed by Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku, and Toshio Masuda. While the film provides little background to the attack, its focal point is on the Pearl Harbor assault and the inquiry of why it was not prevented, or at least foreseen in adequate time to decrease damage. Prange's book examines the assault on Pearl Harbor from both the Japanese and American viewpoints to gain a global view of the situation and the vast provision undertaken by Japanese intelligence. The film and book present the Japanese side, the American side, the events that lead up to the attack, and the aftermath.
In 1945, the United States was facing severe causalities in the war in the Pacific. Over 12,000 soldiers had already lost their lives, including 7,000 Army and Marine soldiers and 5,000 sailors (32). The United States was eager to end the war against Japan, and to prevent more American causalities (92). An invasion of Japan could result in hundreds of thousands killed, wounded and missing soldiers, and there was still no clear path to an unconditional surrender. President Truman sought advice from his cabinet members over how to approach the war in the Pacific. Although there were alternatives to the use of atomic weapons, the evidence, or lack thereof, shows that the bombs were created for the purpose of use in the war against Japan. Both the political members, such as Henry L. Stimson and James F. Byrnes, and military advisors George C. Marshall and George F. Kennan showed little objection to completely wiping out these Japanese cities with atomic weapons (92-97). The alternatives to this tactic included invading Japanese c...
This sharp decrease in morale amongst the Japanese people after the dropping of the atomic bomb coincided with an increase in Japanese fear of American and Allied power in future battles. For example, according to survivors of the bombing, whenever a lone American plane was seen over a Japanese city, people would “rush into their shelters,” and “They went in and out so much that they did not have time to eat. They were so nervous they could not work.” Prior to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki most Japanese were only scared of American aircraft if there was a large group, but after the dropping of the atomic bomb any individual plane could wreak havoc on Japanese cities, as Elona Gay did to Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945. The use of the atomic bomb was able to spread fear amongst the Japanese people so much that after the droppings of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki many people fled the cities to the countryside fearing more attacks of the same magnitude from the Allied powers.
Chicanos and Chicanas are often stereotyped by people based on crude and unfair assumptions but at the same time, these stereotypes are often based on the truth. Movie directors are no exception as they attempt to understand and give representation to entire Chicano/a and Latino/a culture in society. The trailer of the film, La Mission, Che seems to be happy with his life until he realizes his son, Jes, is gay. Che then finds himself in a struggle to accept the homosexuality of his son while at the same time, Jes is struggling to find his own identity and to fit into society. The trailer has distinct ways in how it represents and shows the intersection and issues of gender and sexuality, race and ethics, as well as class. The trailer represents
Los Angeles was the place to find work if laboring was all you knew. Not speaking a word of English, but able to labor in the fields of California's various crops, Mexican immigrants flocked to Los Angeles. Los Angeles quickly became a Mecca for Mexicans wishing to partake of the American dream establishing themselves and creating families. The American dream, however, became just a dream as harsh unequal assessments by white Americans placed Mexican-Americans at the bottom of the social, economic, and political ladders. Whites believed that Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans had no place in their society: a place shared by many minorities (Del Castillo 7). Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans in Los Angeles were at a great disadvantage despite their great numbers. No representation existed for the minorities.
L.A Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997) is a neo-noir film about a shooting at an all night diner and the three Las Angeles policeman who investigate in their own unique ways. It is based on the book by James Ellroy and after a very well adapted screenplay, won nine academy awards. It starred actors with big names like Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce and Danny Devito, which made it a very high earning film.
On December 7th 1941, Japanese Planes and submarines attacked the United States Naval base at Pearl Harbor. This event singlehandedly brought the U.S from its then neutral stance in World War Two to a fighting member of the “Allied Powers.” Pearl Harbor was the first of a long series of confrontations between the U.S and the Japanese in an effort to gain control of the Pacific. Unlike the “War in Europe” the Pacific strategy was dominated by naval and aerial battles, with the occasional land-based “Island Hopping” Campaign. As such, one of the most important factors in the war in the pacific was Fleet Size, the more ships a country could send to war, the better. Pearl Harbor was the Japanese’s way of trying to deal with the massive U.S Pacific fleet. However, Pearl Harbor was not the turning point of the war. After December 7th the United States began work on numerous technological developments which would ultimately help them in one of the most important battles of WWII, the largest naval confrontation of the war, The Battle of Midway. The battle, which took place from June 4th to June 7th , 1942 is widely considered the turning point of the Pacific Theater (James & Wells). Through the Post-Pearl Harbor desire for “Revenge” and various technological advantages including code breaking and radar, the U.S were able to outsmart the Japanese at Midway and ultimately win the battle, eventually leading to a victory in the Pacific.
Gold Rush 1849 was the reason for such a frenzy. It caused people to migrate to California from near and far too dig for gold from the river. According to the film, The Chinese Exclusion Act Explained: US History Review, “This attracted Chinese entrepreneurs to try to make it rich”. The Chinese was one of the cultures that was one of the cultures that left their home to find a better life for their families. However, after being greeted in the United States, they were discriminated against them since they were feared by the Europeans. Racism towards the Chinese immigrant caused a lot of hardship on them in the Western civilization, enabling them to enter or exit without returning to the States.
On December 7,1941 Japan raided the airbases across the islands of Pearl Harbour. The “sneak attack” targeted the United States Navy. It left 2400 army personnel dead and over a thousand Americans wounded. U.S. Navy termed it as “one of the great defining moments in history”1 President Roosevelt called it as “A Day of Infamy”. 2 As this attack shook the nation and the Japanese Americans became the immediate ‘focal point’. At that moment approximately 112,000 Persons of Japanese descent resided in coastal areas of Oregon, Washington and also in California and Arizona.3
The American soldiers had begun using the method of island hopping, because the bomb was not available. The idea of dropping a bomb was that the war itself could possibly end at its earliest points. The dropping of the atomic bomb could also justify the money spent on the Manhattan Project (Donohue 1). With a quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt “This will be a day that will live in infamy”, Pearl Harbor was a tragic day for Americans. The United States had lost many soldiers, which they had claimed that they would eventually get revenge.
They also feared that the Japanese would sabotage the factories in the United States. They were also concerned about the safety of California's water systems, which they considered to be vulnerable.
It’s a beautiful sunny morning, on a tropical island that everyone would love to take a vacation at. It’s approximately 6:00 am, December 7, 1941, when a first group of 181 kamikaze planes attacked; targeting key naval bases stationed at Hawaii; a sustained crippling of U.S. naval forces for about 6 months. The death toll was 2,500. Out of the 9 battleships, 8 were heavily damaged by the assault on Pearl Harbor and out of the 8, three were unrepairable, USS Arizona, USS Oklahoma, and the USS Utah. 160 aircrafts were put out of commission, and nearly 130 were heavily damaged. This was the first incident in which there was an act of war, committed on U.S. soil, outside of the American Revolution and the Civil War. The world was at war, and the U.S. remained neutral until now. Before the attack, the U.S. was in great debate whether to enter the war or to stay out of it. The act of war forced the U.S. into the War and triggered a controversial debate in whether to retaliate against Japan with the use of nuclear arms.
First of all, the main reason of economic immigration to Los Angeles is employment. A lot of immigrants in California come from Latin America and Asia. “The vast majority of immigrants were born in Latin America (53%) and Asia (37%). California has sizeable populations of immigrants from dozens of countries; Mexico (4.3 million), the Philippines (812,000), and China (760,700) are the leading countries of origin.” (Hans Johnson and Marisol Cuellar Mejia) It is connect with the fact that salaries in the USA bigger than in the Latin America and Asia. For example: in the USA salaries of porters, dishwashers, cleaners and professions that do not require special education equal to 6-8$ an hour, but in China salaries approximately...