Daily Life on the Homefront
America’s entry into World War II ended the Great Depression. Lange focused on two government projects that showed different sides of the war effort. Men and women of all races worked together in California shipyards. At the same time, racist policies targeted Japanese Americans for removal and imprisonment. For both projects, Lange set out to make truthful images of the effects of the war on the home front.
These were defense years, war years, shipyard years. There was overtime, and swing shifts, and graveyard shifts, and everyone in the family worked. And the migratory workers settled down and slept under a roof and the Negroes kept coming in droves, leaving the cotton fields of the South, and everyone was welcome.
