World War II and Progress
World War II brought relief to Tennessee by employing ten percent of the state’s populace (308,199 men and women) in the armed services. Most of those who remained on farms and in cities worked on war-related production, since Tennessee received war orders amounting to $1.25 billion.
Tennessee military personnel served with distinction from Pearl Harbor to the final, bloody assaults at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and 7,000 died in combat during the war. In 1942–43, Middle Tennessee residents played host to 28 Army divisions that swarmed over the countryside on maneuvers preparing for the D-Day invasion.
Tennesseans participated in all phases of the war—from combat to civilian administration to military research. Cordell Hull served twelve years as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Secretary of State and became one of the chief architects of the United Nations, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Read more about this topic: History Of Tennessee
Famous quotes containing the words world, war and/or progress:
“After the planet becomes theirs, many millions of years will have to pass before a beetle particularly loved by God, at the end of its calculations will find written on a sheet of paper in letters of fire that energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the square of the velocity of light. The new kings of the world will live tranquilly for a long time, confining themselves to devouring each other and being parasites among each other on a cottage industry scale.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)
“Newspaperman: That was a magnificent work. There were these mass columns of Apaches in their war paint and feather bonnets. And here was Thursday leading his men in that heroic charge.
Capt. York: Correct in every detail.
Newspaperman: He’s become almost a legend already. He’s the hero of every schoolboy in America.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“Innocence is lovely in the child, because in harmony with its nature; but our path in life is not backward but onward, and virtue can never be the offspring of mere innocence. If we are to progress in the knowledge of good, we must also progress in the knowledge of evil. Every experience of evil brings its own temptation and according to the degree in which the evil is recognized and the temptations resisted, will be the value of the character into which the individual will develop.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)