POSTWAR REBUILDING When John Gardner left the Marine Corps in 1945, he was part of a massive military demobilization and adjustment throughout American society after World War II. By 1947, the number of American men and women in uniform dropped from 12 million to about 1.5 million. With so many people coming back into the workforce, people feared massive unemployment or another economic depression. But with the continental United States spared from bombing and bloodshed, the country was in a unique position to grow. War-time manufacturers re-tooled themselves and began to make consumer goods. Through the GI Bill, returning servicemen were able to get low-interest loans and subsidies to go to back to college and buy a new home. The postwar era was marked by people wanting, after years of depression and war, to return to normalcy. Young people, whose lives in particular were disrupted by war, wanted to get on with their lives, get married, and have children. America was undergoing a "baby boom," with high birth rates and comparatively low divorce rates. New construction methods, new highways, and mortgage subsidies for GI's opened up the suburbs for young families seeking peace and quiet. But the postwar era could not be a simple return to the ways things were (or were thought to have been). On the home front, labor shortages during the war brought thousands of women into the workforce -- even into skilled, blue-collar jobs. At the same time, under intense pressure, President Franklin Roosevelt prohibited racial discrimination by defense contractors, opening up new jobs for African-Americans. In fact, by the end of 1944, nearly 2 million African-Americans were at work in defense industries. Thousands of African-Americans joined the entire nation in fighting for freedom and equality abroad, but could not enjoy full rights throughout the United States, setting the stage for a call for equal rights. Abroad, World War II brought an end to American isolationism. In the spring of 1945, the US joined delegates from 50 nations in signing the charter for a permanent United Nations, a year before the International Monetary Fund and World Bank were established to promote economic cooperation among nations. But the biggest challenge facing the United States in the postwar world was the souring of relations with the Soviet Union as a result of that country's domination of Eastern Europe and support of communist insurgencies around the world. As part of the effort to contain the Soviet spread and to revive the economies of Western Europe, the United States launched the European Recovery Program (usually known as the Marshall Plan,) which poured $13 billion of aid into the region. In addition, the US adopted a policy of "containment," shoring up non-communist areas in danger of encroachment. Thus, when the Soviet Union blockaded all surface routes into Berlin, the US and Britain launched the Berlin Airlift, supplying the western sectors of the city by air. However, this policy did not work as well in Asia, as in 1949, China fell to the communists. These immediate postwar years were ones of change for families, for the nation, and the world. New ideas were needed to meet new times.