Episode 3 – A Deadly Calling (November 1943 – June 1944)

The American mobilization transformed cities like Mobile, Waterbury, and Sacramento into boom towns. Mobile thrived on its extensive shipyards that employed a lot of African-Americans, but racial segregation hampers the war production effort in the U.S., resulting in ugly riots like in Mobile. But African-Americans, as well as Japanese-Americans, were recruited by the armed forces into combat units and sent into action, though African-American units were still segregated. The American public finally gets to see the bloody sacrifice of their armed forces through pictures published in LIFE: One of these is the dead in the island of Buna. The American offensive in the Central Pacific begins with the Battle of Tarawa. The grueling and costly battles of Anzio and Monte Cassino in the Italian campaign. Eventually, the Allies triumph and Gen. Mark Clark’s forces take Rome.