The Washington, D.C., Evening Star reported Monday, Jan. 1, 1940, that “merry crowds” had gathered in the nation’s capital to greet the new year. They were in good spirits.

“The bells, horns, whistles and shouts which announced 1940 lacked their usual dismal accompaniment of automobile crashes, fist fights, riots and arrests for intoxication,” the reporter explained in a delightful account of the evening’s festivities. “Many long kisses were exchanged at midnight to the amusement, chagrin and envy of the spectators.”

New Year’s Eve kisses were perhaps for practical purposes as well as romance, considering the overnight temperature in D.C. had dropped to a chilly 17 degrees. But “the merrymakers came out equipped for the cold” in “furs [and] heavy coats,” according to the Star. Luckily, they had been “warned by the Weather Bureau.”

But while crowds made merry on the streets of America, much of the world was at war — and it would not be long until many Americans would join the fight in Europe, North Africa and the Pacific.

World War II would redefine every element of American life, from fashion and culture to industry and innovation. This generation, Tom Brokaw famously declared, would be “the greatest.”

In an unexpected early-morning raid on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, 353 Japanese aircraft attacked the U.S. Navy at its Pearl Harbor base. In less than two hours, those bombers had killed about 2,400 American servicemen and civilians, and damaged or destroyed 188 aircraft and 19 ships — including all eight battleships in port.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it “a day that will live in infamy.”

“No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory,” the third-term president told a joint session of Congress the following day.

About 16 million Americans would serve in uniform throughout the second world war, “mostly boys in their late teens or early 20s,” according to the National Park Service. Nearly 40% of U.S. servicemen — and 100% of U.S. servicewomen — were volunteers, according to The National World War II Museum.

The nation faced dizzying death tolls over the next four years — as many as 420,000 in total, including military personnel and civilians, according to the National World War II Museum. Among the deadliest battles was the Battle of Normandy— “D-Day” — on June 6, 1944, when 2,501 U.S. soldiers were killed and more than 5,000 were wounded.

A year before Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had called for the U.S. to serve as an “arsenal of democracy.”

Now, U.S. factories that had once produced automobiles, radios and other consumer goods were building airplanes, ships, munitions and wartime electronics. Factories that once produced evening gowns, handbags and business shoes now saw uniforms, helmets, boots and parachutes flying off the conveyor belt.

The federal government urged patriotic citizens to do their part by purchasing war bonds, rationing food and gasoline, and stepping into industrial positions vacated by departing soldiers. Government photographers like Alfred T. Palmer created striking visuals that encouraged and celebrated their contributions and America’s wartime production.

Amid mounting fears following the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt authorized the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast by declaring the entire region a “military area.”

Families surrendered personal possessions, land, businesses, homes and jobs — sometimes with as little as 48-hour notice — in addition to their freedom.

About 120,000 people, about two-thirds of whom were American citizens, were evacuated to “relocation centers” — more precisely, to remote camps in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. Evacuees were housed in “tar-papered, army-style barracks” with up to five families per unit, in camps that were circled by barbed wire and supervised by armed guards.

The program highlighted the tension between national security and civil liberties. Several cases challenging the order made their way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a unanimous 1944 decision, the court ruled that the government could not detain a loyal citizen without cause, leading to the closure of the camps. Individuals could finally return to what was left of their lives on the West Coast — or start over somewhere else.

“VICTORY!” the Key West Citizen and other newspapers boldly proclaimed May 8, 1945, after Germany’s unconditional surrender on what would be known as “V-E Day,” for “victory in Europe.”

But celebrations were tempered as Allied forces continued to liberate notorious Nazi concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Dachau and Bergen-Belson, sites that revealed the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust.

Three months later, Americans took to the streets again, on Aug. 14, to celebrate the surrender of Japan, or “V-J Day.” German-born photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt famously captured the nation’s exhilaration for Life magazine with his iconic snapshot of a Navy sailor kissing a woman in uniform — a total stranger, as it turns out.

The end of the war in the Pacific carried its own aspects of tragedy. The Japanese surrender had been motivated when atomic bombs were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima, on Aug. 6, 1945, and Nagasaki, on Aug. 9, 1945. As many as 240,000 people, mostly civilians, had been killed.

“ROOSEVELT IS DEAD,” the Henderson, N.C., Daily Dispatch announced in a special edition on April 12, 1945. The fourth-term, 63-year-old president had died of a cerebral hemorrhage at Warm Springs, Georgia.

The eyes of the world were now on his vice president, Missourian Harry S. Truman.

“Truman awoke today in a five-room, $120 a month apartment, with one bath,” Associated Press reporter Tom Reedy wrote on April 13. But the third-floor accommodation, “approximately 47 blocks from the White House,” was no longer “the quiet, ordinary apartment of yesterday,” he wrote.

Truman, the unpretentious former haberdasher and judge, had spent evenings eating dinner at home and playing piano duets with his daughter, Margaret. Now, he would take the reins of a nation at war.

Few knew what to expect of their new, 60-year-old leader, who would make consequential decisions for the nation and the world.

In addition to decisions to use atomic weapons at the close of the war, he supported the creation of the United Nations in 1945 and appointed former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt as a U.N. delegate in 1946. In 1948, he implemented the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe and recognized the state of Israel.

Truman pursued a liberal domestic policy. Asserting that every American has a right to expect a “fair deal” from the government, he proposed a series of economic and social reforms. In 1947, he became the first president to address the NAACP and desegregated the armed forces in 1948.

The USO (United Service Organizations, Inc.) calls him a “One-Man Morale Machine.”

A star of vaudeville, radio, television and feature films, Bob Hope performed his first USO variety show in 1941. Over the next four years, he would entertain troops at hundreds of military bases and combat zones in Italy and North Africa, Hawaii and the South Pacific — including 150 shows in just two summer months in 1944 — according to the Library of Congress.

Hope was one of thousands of comedians, vocalists, dancers and others performing for the USO. The organization says its World War II camp show operations provided entertainment and a taste of home in 700 shows per day to more than 130 million service member attendees.

For Hope himself, the tours would continue for nearly 50 years through Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East. He made his last tour in 1990 to entertain troops in the Persian Gulf War.

With the onset of World War II, women took on critical roles in both military and civilian capacities.

Approximately 350,000 women volunteered for military service, working as nurses, communication specialists, truck drivers, scientific and intelligence researchers, and more. “WACs” served in the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps. “WAVES,” or Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, were members of the Navy. “WASPs,” or Women’s Airforce Service Pilots, were the first women to fly American military aircraft, according to the Department of Defense.

On the homefront, more women filled crucial roles in business, agriculture and manufacturing, especially in the aircraft and munitions industries. By end of the war, more than 19 million women were in the workforce, including nearly one out of every four married women, according to the National Archives. Still more took on volunteer roles in community, veteran and aid organizations.

To match these changing roles, women made fashion choices that were practical and conservative. They wore shorter hemlines to save fabric. They turned to cotton and new synthetic fibers as wool was used for military uniforms and silk for parachutes. Many also ditched nylon stockings — another precious resource.

As more women found themselves climbing on aircraft and operating heavy machinery, the dominant women’s fashion trend of the 1940s quickly emerged: pants. Movie stars like Katharine Hepburn and Lauren Bacall — even glamorous Gone with the Wind star Vivien Leigh — showed pants could be fashionable as well as practical.

“If Jackie Robinson felt his nerves jumping or was even conscious that he was about to take part in a momentous baseball event,” an Associated Press reporter reflected on April 16, 1947, “he kept his feelings remarkably well concealed.”

At 28, Robinson, the African American son of Georgia sharecroppers — and a four-sport letterman from UCLA — had made his major league debut at Ebbets Field on April 15, as a new first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The right-handed slugger had been recruited from the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues by the Dodgers’ general manager, Branch Rickey, with the express purpose of integrating the major leagues. Rickey knew Robinson would be able to withstand the inevitable opposition that would come his way.

The gamble worked, and Robinson was named the MLB’s first Rookie of the Year, in 1947. Over the course of a 10-year career, the six-time All-Star would carry a .313 batting average and hit 141 home runs and 761 RBIs.

The “Master of Suspense,” British director Alfred Hitchcock, found success on this side of the Atlantic with the first of his 13 films of the decade, Rebecca, in 1940. The psychological thriller starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine won an Academy Award for cinematography and, incredibly, Hitchcock’s only Oscar ever for best picture.

Two years later, Radio City Music Hall, at 50th Street and 6th Avenue in New York, was one of the grand theaters to premiere “Walt Disney’s ‘Bambi’ in Technicolor” when it opened in August 1942. The animated feature would be the decade’s highest-grossing film.

While Hitchcock and Disney's work may seem to represent opposite ends of the cinematic spectrum, both delved into deeper themes of the wartime world: separation, loss and the darker facets of human nature.

In an interesting historical note, both men produced a documentary film for the war effort: Disney’s animated 1943 Victory Through Air Power and Hitchcock’s 1944 The Fighting Generation.

Though the U.S. didn’t suffer the physical destruction of Europe and other front-line battle zones, postwar 1940s American society faced a daunting task of rebuilding and seeking a return to normalcy.

Finally, the constraints of wartime austerity could be lifted. Domestic industries, transitioning to peacetime production, were producing new models of cars, consumer goods and fashion.

The war era had brought dramatic advancements that changed American life, including new medicine and surgical techniques, as well as versatile innovations such as radar, plastics, duct tape and even batteries.

And, at MIT, a 100-ton contraption encompassing 2,000 electronic tubes, 150 electric motors and 200 miles of wire had been developed: the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC) — or simply, the computer.

Meanwhile, veterans, who had done more and sacrificed more than ever expected, went back to work or, supported by the G.I. Bill, headed to colleges or trade schools and purchased homes. Many tucked their memories and wartime trauma away as the U.S. embraced its future as a superpower on the global stage.

Katrina Jesick Quinn is a faculty member at Slippery Rock University. She is an editor of “From the Arctic to the Orient: Adventure Journalism in the Gilded Age” (McFarland) and “The Civil War Soldier and the Press” (Routledge).