Santa Barbara, California • February 23, 1942 Japanese submarines initiated the first shore bombardments of the war with an attack on the U.S. Navy base at Johnston Island in the Pacific in mid-December 1941, just days after Japanese carrier-based planes had destroyed, in their surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, one‑half of the United States’…
Washington, D.C. • February 19, 1942 Eighty-four years ago on this date in 1942, celebrated today as the Day of Remembrance, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. It authorized the War Department to designate “military areas” in the U.S. and admit, exclude, or remove from these areas anyone whom the department felt to…
Washington, D.C. • December 20, 1940 On this date in 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed William Knudsen to head a 4‑member board (Office of Production Management, or OPM) to plan for national defense and coordinate aid to Great Britain following Germany’s total blockade of that island nation in mid-August (Battle of the Atlantic). A Danish…
Seattle, Washington • November 3, 1944 On this date in 1944 Japan began an explosive balloon campaign against the U.S. and Canada. The date was chosen to commemorate the birthday of former Emperor Meiji (1852–1912). Over the next 5 months the Special Balloon Regiment of the Japanese Army launched some 6,000 to 9,300 (sources vary) hydrogen-filled…
Washington, D.C. • May 14, 1942 Early in 1941 Congresswoman Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts informed Army Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall that she intended to introduce a bill in the U.S. Congress to establish a volunteer women’s Army corps, separate and distinct from the existing Army Nurse Corps. After long debate—and after…
Tulelake, Modoc County, California • April 15, 1942 On this date in 1942, in a remote, underdeveloped reclamation district roughly 35 miles/56 kilometers southeast of Klamath Falls, Oregon, and about 10 miles/16 kilometers from the town of Tulelake (or Newell), the federal government began construction of the Tule Lake Relocation Center for persons of Japanese ancestry forcibly deported from…
Washington, D.C. • September 8, 1939 On this date in 1939, 8 days after Nazi Germany invaded neighboring Poland and triggered World War II in Europe, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a state of “limited national emergency.” The proclamation directed measures “for the purpose of strengthening our [U.S.] national defense within the limits of peacetime authorizations.”…
Washington, D.C. • December 8, 1941 Although the devastating Japanese surprise attack on U.S. military installations at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, came as a shock to most Americans, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration had already begun weighing possible responses to an outbreak of war with Japan, Germany, and Italy—countries treaty-bound in a mutual…
Bridgend, South Wales • March 10, 1945 Twenty-two miles west of the Welch capital, Cardiff, was a British prisoner-of-war camp built to house mainly German but also some Italian prisoners. Capable of accommodating 2,000 inmates, the camp was called Island Farm. On this date in 1945, 67 POWs (one source says as many as 84 POWs) escaped from…
The Darkest Year is acclaimed author William K. Klingaman’s narrative history of the American home front from December 7, 1941 through the end of 1942, a psychological study of the nation under the pressure of total war.
For Americans on the home front, the twelve months following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor comprised the darkest year of World War Two. Despite government attempts to disguise the magnitude of American losses, it was clear that the nation had suffered a nearly unbroken string of military setbacks in the Pacific; by the autumn of 1942, government officials were openly acknowledging the possibility that the United States might lose the war.
Appeals for unity and declarations of support for the war effort in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor made it appear as though the class hostilities and partisan animosities that had beset the United States for decades ― and grown sharper during the Depression ― suddenly disappeared. They did not, and a deeply divided American society splintered further during 1942 as numerous interest groups sought to turn the wartime emergency to their own advantage.
Blunders and repeated displays of incompetence by the Roosevelt administration added to the sense of anxiety and uncertainty that hung over the nation.
The Darkest Year focuses on Americans’ state of mind not only through what they said, but in the day-to-day details of their behavior. Klingaman blends these psychological effects with the changes the war wrought in American society and culture, including shifts in family roles, race relations, economic pursuits, popular entertainment, education, and the arts.