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How WWII Affected America's Minorities
DOUBLE VICTORY, A Multicultural History of America in World War II, by Ronald Takaki
By MICHAEL HARRIS, Special to The Times
The timing is right for a history like this. The World War II
generation is dying out, and America has reacted with a wave of patriotic
nostalgia. Books such as Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation" and
movies such as "Saving Private Ryan" are celebrating the "good war"
against the Axis and the virtues that won it as they haven't been
celebrated in decades. This is natural, even laudable, but it runs the
risk of re-sanctifying and re-whitewashing what, as UC Berkeley ethnic
studies professor Ronald Takaki reminds us, was a very complex
experience.
Takaki's survey of the war's impact on Americans of African, Japanese,
Mexican, Chinese, Jewish, Korean, Indian, German, Italian and Native
origin reaches two conclusions. The first is that the battle against Nazi
racism exposed America's own prejudices as peacetime never could. The
ironies were glaring: Why should minorities fight a "white man's war" in
segregated armed forces on behalf of a country that denied them equal
rights and, in some cases, citizenship? That they fought anyway--with
conspicuous gallantry--put the country in their moral debt.
The second is that World War II gave many minority Americans--and
women of all races--an economic and psychological boost. The needs of
defense industries, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's desire to
counter Axis propaganda, opened skilled, high-paying jobs to people who
had never had a chance at them before. Minority workers and soldiers made
unprecedented contact with other minorities as well as with whites.
Feelings of self-confidence and belonging, once enjoyed, were not easily
relinquished. In short, Takaki says, the war jump-started the civil
rights movement.
Takaki takes his title from a letter to the Pittsburgh Courier written
in 1942 by James G. Thompson, an African American cafeteria worker who
later served in the Army. Referring to the popular "V for victory" sign,
Thompson said: "Let we colored Americans adopt the double VV for a double
victory. The first V for victory over our enemies from without, the
second V for victory over our enemies from within--those who perpetrate
these ugly prejudices."
"Double Victory" reconsiders some of the war's most troubling
questions. Why did the United States intern 120,000 Japanese Americans
when there was no evidence of their disloyalty, yet largely leave German
and Italian Americans alone? Why were immigration quotas on Jews from
Europe upheld and shiploads of refugees from the Nazis turned away? Why
didn't the Allies bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz and otherwise disrupt
the death-camp system once its existence was confirmed? Where logic
fails, Takaki argues, the only explanation is racism.
Still, the picture Takaki gives us isn't uniformly bleak. Nothing
about the war was simple, he asserts. Korean Americans reacted to news of
Pearl Harbor with joy--war with Japan meant eventual independence for
their homeland--even though bigots often mistook them for Japanese.
Long-oppressed Chinese Californians suddenly became "friends" because
China was fighting Japan. Mexican Americans suffered the "Zoot Suit
Riots" in Los Angeles in 1943, but gained respect because of their high
casualty rate in the war.
Indeed, "Double Victory" would make a good high school textbook. It's
brief and clear. It tells familiar stories--the Navajo code talkers, the
Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team--in less detail than
specialists would want, but it puts all the stories into one set of
covers and in a revealing context. Some of Takaki's conclusions will be
disputed--particularly his assertion that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
was unnecessary--but his portraits of Roosevelt, having to be prodded
into doing the right but politically risky thing and then doing it
halfheartedly, and of President Harry S. Truman, his "buck-stops-here"
facade hiding his genuine horror over the A-bombing, are convincingly
nuanced.
Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times
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