When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor 75 years ago today, they probably didn't plan on one reaction from the American public. According to the Children's Bureau, the increase in the birth rate in 1942 was the largest since they began to keep records in 1915. Nine months after Pearl Harbor, in September of 1942, the rate jumped from 18.7 births per 1000 citizens to a wartime high of 23.3, and it stayed high. According to J. C. Capt, then Director of the Census, "the 1943 birth rate was the greatest in US history."
Those bombs that sank the Arizona were also responsible for the "Baby Boom." Patriotic American moms pumped out 300,000 more babies in 1942 alone (2,808,996) than they had in 1941. By 1943, the total increase in new births surpassed the number of American lives lost in all of WWII.
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