Across the empire, backwaters became battle stations. And with the military came federal money, washing indiscriminately over lands long parched by neglect. In Puerto Rico, workers moved from faltering sugar plantations to jobs building and operating military bases. By 1950, the federal government had spent $1.2 billion there. The same thing happened to Hawai‘i, the hub of the Pacific war. After Pearl Harbor, the military arrived en masse, bringing with it an insatiable demand. Unemployment vanished, the number of restaurants in Honolulu tripled, and bank deposits throughout the territory
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