Looking back, for me the most important thing that happened was the unification of essentially all Americans in the defeat of the axis powers. Even school children (which I was at the time) were recruited to gather scrap iron from wherever we could find it, disconnect tin foil from food packaging and cigarette packages and roll it into balls, buy “saving stamps” at school with our pocket money which after accumulating $18.75 would buy a war bond maturing several years later.
Very shortly after Pearl Harbor, every family I knew had someone in the military. There were some that volunteered before Pearl Harbor but after PH the draft quickly inflated the size of the Armed Forces.
It is amazing think of the efforts required to organize and implement the recruitment and drafting of civilians into a trained military force in such a short time. Similarly, it is difficult to imagine the efforts and speed in the construction of the military equipment and supplies industry. It all seemed to appear overnight.
My brother enlisted in the Marines shortly after PH into an officers training program at Hanover that insured his graduation in 43 and an electronics training program which he attended at Harvard and MIT. He and Ann were married after his graduation and after boot camp at Quantico, moved to Boston. After that he went to the Pacific and hopped across many islands. As I recall, he had stops in Midway, Wake, Guan Tinian and Saipan (and maybe others). Luckily, He was not in major battles. His unit was follow-up on captured islands that required communications capabilities and served as the supply channels for our massive migration across the Pacific.