An Alabama newspaper cartoon showing a Southern Unionist and a carpetbagger being lynched by the KKK donkey during the Reconstruction Era. (1868)

When World War II started, Seattle was full on rolling in the nation's war effort and the federal government suddenly desired tens of thousands of planes a year, and [[Boeing]] was positioned to provide them. Working under fixed-fee contracts, Boeing churned out aircraft and became by far the largest employer in Seattle. During the war, Seattle ranked as one of the top three cities in the nation in contracts per capita, and Washington state ranked as one of the top two in the nation for war contracts per capita.

During the war, the freeways were built to compensate for all this new growth for workers to commute. Most of the "[[Eastside (King County, Washington)|Eastside]]" (east of [[Lake Washington]]) and northern suburbs came into being during the Boeing boom, as did [[Interstate Highway]]s ([[Interstate 5|I-5]] and [[Interstate 90|I-90]]). I-5 neatly cut off Downtown Seattle from [[Capitol Hill, Seattle, Washington|Capitol Hill]] and [[First Hill, Seattle, Washington|First Hill]]. Part of the historic downtown, including the Tony Sorrento Hotel, was left stranded on the "wrong" side of the freeway. [[Freeway Park]] was eventually built over I-5 in 1976, restoring something of a link between Downtown and First Hill.

Japanese-Americans living in the Pacific Northwest were heavily affected by the war; President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] authorized the removal of 110,000 Japanese immigrants and ethnic Japanese citizens from the West Coast to [[Internment of Japanese Americans|internment camps]] inland, relocating 7,000 people from the Seattle area alone. Seattle's Japantown, once the second largest in the nation, was emptied. Local grocers and the Pike Place Market lost the bounty of hundreds of Japanese American truck farms, including the 55 families who had produced Bellevue's famed strawberries.

When the war ended, "the military canceled its bomber orders; Boeing factories shut down and 70,000 people lost their jobs,"<ref name=Boeing_growing /> and initially it appeared that Seattle had little to show for the wartime Boeing boom. However, this period of stagnation soon ended with the rise of the [[jet aircraft]] and Boeing's reincarnation as the world's leading producer of commercial passenger planes.

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