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Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II

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Within the vast literature of World War II, one of the most interesting categories includes books about home-front life in the United States. Although this conflict has been called the "good war," Ronald Takaki, professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley and a leading authority on the history of race and culture in the U.S., asserts: "The `Arsenal of Democracy' was not democratic: defense jobs were not open to all regardless of race." Making high-paying jobs in the defense industry available to people of color is, perhaps, the most important theme in this book. According to Takaki, Americans of all races and ethnicities "insisted that America live up to ideals and founding principles" and "stirred a rising wind of diversity's discontent, unfurling a hopeful vision of America as a multicultural democracy." Relying on reminiscences of Americans of color who lived and worked during the war, drawn from a wide variety of printed sources, as well as interviews Takaki conducted, it is quite an achievement!

The racial aspect of the war was summarized by a black draftee who declared: "Just carve on my tombstone, `Here lies a black man killed fighting a yellow man for the protection of a white man.'" Takaki explains that the Army's policy of segregating black soldiers, "symbolized white domination in America." In addition to discrimination in housing and training programs, according to Takaki, "blacks were given "servile work assignments," and "[s]killed blacks found themselves occupationally downgraded." Takaki also writes: "At the beginning of the war, blacks were in especially dire economic straits...The war revived the American economy as an `arsenal of democracy.' But, as it turned out, defense jobs were not democratically distributed; most of them were reserved for whites only. Seventy-five percent of the war industries refused to hire blacks." Although Takaki does not provide the source of that statistic, it is not implausible. Takaki explains: "Confined to the unskilled and the service occupations before the war, African Americans wanted the better and higher paying factory jobs generated by the war." In 1941, civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph organized a march on Washington for July 1. Meeting with President Roosevelt on June 18, Randolph told FDR that 100,000 people would participate. A week later Roosevelt signed an executive order prohibiting "discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or Government." However, Takaki writes that, "as black and white workers followed the defense jobs into the cities, they often clashed violently." For instance: "By 1943, Detroit was a racial tinderbox." On June 20, after a scuffle in a crowded park, "urban warfare" erupted between whites and blacks, and it took 6,000 federal troops to restore order. Five weeks later, according to Takaki, in New York City, where "blacks were still being excluded from many defense industry plants, "Harlem exploded," resulting in six deaths and 500 injuries. During the war, 45,000 Indians, more than 10 percent of the Indian population, served in the U.S. armed forces. Indian workers also were attracted to work in defense industries, but, according to Takaki, they "often received lower wages than that of whites." "Almost 20 percent of all reservation Native Americans in the armed services came from the Navajo Nation in the Southwest." According to Takaki, in 1941, nearly 40 percent on the Navajos' annual per capita income of $128 came from wages, mostly from temporary government employment." "Pushed by poverty, the Navajos were also pulled into the military because they possessed something uniquely valuable to the U.S. military - their tribal language." In May 1942, "the first group of Navajo code talkers was sent to San Diego for training." According to Takaki, the Navajo code talkers "hit every beach from Guadalcanal to Okinawa." Many Mexican Americans worked in agriculture, which was considered a "war industry." The had more difficulty, however, breaking into other fields. A 1942 study of the airplane industry in Southern California reported that "payrolls showed almost no Mexicans employed." Later in the war, Mexican Americans were able to get jobs in steel, armaments, and aircraft, but "they found themselves relegated to the low wage jobs." Their efforts were not always welcomed. On June 3, 1943, "after some fights between young Mexican Americans and servicemen in downtown Los Angeles, hundreds of soldiers and sailors went on a rampage... [chasing] young Mexicans dressed in zoot suits, condemning their victims as draft dodgers." Incidents such as this had great propaganda value to the enemies of the United States. According to Takaki, "the Japanese media gleefully reported the violence as another example of racism in America." According to Takaki, "only 85 Italians were detained as security threats, and a proposed evacuation of `enemy' Italian aliens was ruled out." In contrast: "The 120,000 Japanese on the West Coast were evacuated and imprisoned in concentration camps; 40,000 of them, born in Japan, were classified as `enemy aliens.'" A decade before he became a crusading Chief Justice of the United States, California Attorney General Earl Warren "urged federal authorities to evacuate Japanese from sensitive areas of the West Coast," warning that the Japanese `may well be the Achilles heel of the entire civilian defense effort.'" The Japanese American evacuees were transported to internment camps in Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, California, and Wyoming, mostly in remote desert areas. During the war, nevertheless: "33,000 Japanese Americans...decided to seek equality and justice by serving in the U.S. Armed Forces."

World War II had many dimensions. For every book such as James Bradley's marvelous Flags of Our Fathers, which depicts Americans in war at their very best, there needs to be another such as Ronald Takaki's Double Victory telling a different part of the story. While millions Americans fought against Nazism, Fascism, and Japanese imperialism around the world, millions of others were struggling at home to make the United States fully live up to the ideals and founding of American democracy. Appreciating World War II as a multicultural event is essential to a complete understanding of the American experience in the war.

Although most Americans think of World War II as a two-front war--the Pacific theater and the European front--historian Ronald Takaki reminds us that there was a third, more insidious campaign--the struggle at home against "ugly prejudices" and violent oppression of ethnic minorities. While the Roosevelt administration touted the "Four Freedoms" for which Americans were fighting, those freedoms (freedom of speech and religion and freedom from want and fear) were still not fully extended to citizens, residents, and refugees.

In successive chapters, Takaki focuses on the abuses and injustices resulting from the exclusion of minority workers from defense industries, the Jim Crow statutes that segregated African Americans at home and in the army, the unemployment and poverty that greeted returning Native Americans veterans, the hostility towards Mexican Americans for the "zoot suits" worn by their youth, the laws prohibiting longtime Asian laborers from becoming citizens because they were not "white," the forced internment of Japanese Americans, the callousness that turned away Jewish refugees from our ports. He then examines the controversy surrounding the motivations for using the atomic bomb against civilian population centers.

Yet the author also reveals the many advances that the war delivered to ethnic groups. Minority communities contributed tens of thousands of soldiers who fought valiantly on the battlefront and earned the respect and friendship of their white compatriots. The shortage of domestic workers forced reluctant industries to hire non-white workers. A. Philip Randolph and his colleagues launched the civil rights movement by organizing a march on Washington, which was cancelled after Roosevelt signed executive order 8802, abolishing discrimination in government and defense jobs. (The order was largely symbolic, since it was hardly enforced, but in retrospect it was clearly a major first step.) And the sanguine final chapter demonstrates that, although the struggle for civil rights suffered setbacks during the next two decades, there really was no turning back.

Focusing one's attention on the domestic issues of the time, of course, does not minimize the contribution of our armed forces abroad; if anything, such a discussion emphasizes that the fight against prejudice was equally important: both because non-white citizens were serving our country and because our enemies used examples of American intolerance as propaganda against the U.S.--and because it was morally necessary. Although written by an academic, this concise book is both fascinating and approachable; it should be read by all Americans who care about freedom. It's a reminder of why we fought what Studs Terkel called "the Good War": the "double victory" of increasing liberty not only for Europeans and Asians but for every American as well.

As one who holds a Ph.D. in American History, I often pick up books (like this one) to deepen and broaden my understanding of the past. Takaki's recent work does not disappoint in either respect.

Double Victory takes an interesting look, in most cases, at the "forgotten" history of World War II. An eminenent historian of munticulturalism in American life, Takaki assembles the past in a manner that the general reader will find pleasing. The professional, however, will be disappointed that the notes appear at the end of the book and thus finds himself flipping back and forth to discover the source of the author's information. Much of the text is, indeed, "assembled" because it has appeared in print elsewhere. A small percentage of the author's work is based upon new research. This is unfortunate, but Takaki provides an important service by pulling previously published interviews, letters, biographical and autobiographical accounts of wartime experiences, and information contained in journal articles into one slim volume.

Takaki's style is clean, straightforward, informative, and engaging. Double Victory is not a "page turner," but it holds the reader's interest and leaves him with a more complete perspective of a crucial time in American life.

The story u dont here from Brokaw. Takaki, a third generation American of Japanese heritage and Berkeley prof, teaches that no one ever made a film about the race riots that occurred during WWII, you never hear about the Mexican Americans who harvested crops to supply the troops. You never hear speeches about the Jim Crow rules, the Navajo, black, Korean, Filipino, Indian, German, Japanese, and other Americans during the great War. This book fills in the gaps, with stories about Korean Americans who fought (one fifth of Los Angeles' Korean population joined the California National Guard) in the Tiger Brigade/Manghokun, the Sikhs and Hindus duing WWII, the 550,000 Jewish Americans who joined the US Armed Forces and earned 26,000 Purple hearts (out of 4.5 Million american Jews, they were proportionately more than any other group), the African Americans who liberated Buchenwald, and the Nisei Japanese American soldiers who liberated Dachau, and more

I've liked previous Takaki books such as From A Different Shore, A Different Mirror and Iron Cages. Double Victory continues in that tradition. Takaki focuses on different ethnic groups and how they reacted to American involvement in WWII. It deals with the desire of minorities to be treated as equals with them seeing WWII as a chance to prove their loyality to America through war. Takaki deals with African-Americans, Native Americans, Chicanos, Asian Americans and Jewish Americans. Takaki deals with what these groups hoped to deal with their invovlement in WWII. Takaki also deals with the the treatment of Japanese Americans from being labeled as enemies and being interned. Takaki focuses on racial discrimination in the war effort from military factories to military service showing how their racial barriers were overocome. Takaki ends by showing how the gains made during WWII by minorities continued in the post WWII years helping to launch the civil right movement.

This is an extremely important and well-written book about what WWII meant for minority Americans.

The war was a double-tragedy for most of them - shedding blood abroad and fighting vehement racism at home. Stories of Jewish-Americans unable to welcome refugees fleeing Nazism in Europe and Japanese-Americans shipped to Western US concentration camps are particularly gripping.

Kudos for Ron Takaki for the great work -

This book is, in my opinion, a must have for any history teacher. I often use excerpts in my classroom to help make the WWII time period more "human" to my students. The students seem to enjoy the break from international affairs during their study of the war and to get a more personal look at the situations on the homefront. Takaki excells in regard. His writing concerning blacks in the military and their equality struggles at home is a profound and eye-opening part of the book.

What do you do when you are called on to give your life to defend a county that doesn't recognize your rights as a human being? That is the question that filled the mind of hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities in the US during WWII. Back. Filipino. Mexican. Japanese. Indian (both kinds). All were denied the full rights of citizenship from a county that didn't allow for immigration based on racial lines, and stated that applicants for naturalized citizenship must be "white."

In choosing to fight for the US, ethnic minorities were hoping to achieve a "double victory;" one victory against the Axis powers, and another against prejudice and injustice at home. They hoped that by volunteering to fight and die for the US, by struggling alongside white people, that they would finally be recognized as full-fledged human beings and that their blood sacrifice would buy them the rights they so desperately deserved.

Ronald Takaki's "Double Victory: A Multi-Cultural History of America in World War II" is a deeply-affecting book, that tells the stories of the many people fighting for this double victory. In each chapter, Takaki tells the story of a different group, starting with black men and women, then Native American Indians, then Mexicans and Latinos, then the Chinese and Filipino, then the Japanese, and then the Jews. Each chapter is filled with personal stories and interviews, about the particular hardships and prejudices affecting each group, and the similar reactions.

There are so many specific images and stories in "Double Victory" that will stick with me. The Japanese American child, born and raised in the US and speaking only English, who had to start each day of school reciting the Pledge of Allegiance while behind the barbed wire fence of a concentration camp. The Japanese American man who fought in the US army during WWI entering the concentration camp in his full military uniform with honors as a silent protest. The black veteran returning from the war, wounded, and being told he had to sit in the back of the bus. The black soldiers who were told during training to be careful not to stray off base, because there were lynchings going on by people who resented seeing black men in US army uniforms.

I was born long after these events, and it is difficult to understand the thought processes of the time. In times of war and desperate need, I can't imagine turning away an offered hand just because it is the wrong color. But that is exactly what happened. I can't imagine the US legally discriminating and handing out citizenship on the basis of color, but that is what happened too.

And other countries noticed. Propaganda from Germany and Japan was full of examples of the US's racial policies, showing how the hypocrisy of "freedom" only applied to those of the correct color. The Alien Land Law act. The Chinese Exclusion act. The Zoot Suit Riot. All of these were wrapped presents to Adolph Hitler and General Tojo. Our promise of democracy was revealed to be the sham it was.

I have read Ronald Takaki's Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb so I am familiar with his take on the racist nature of the war against Japan, and why it differed from the war against Germany. Takaki is a persuasive and interesting writer, who sheds light on some forgotten or purposefully buried corners of US history.

By all but the strictest definitions, I am a white guy. But my grandmother was a Cherokee Indian, my wife is Japanese, and my best friend is black. After reading "Double Victory," I realize how much I owe to those people who came before me who fought for their rights, and for the rights of their children's children, and who built the future that I know live in. This book put many things in perspective, and let me appreciate how far we have come. And how far we have to go before the true double victory will be achieved.

I was required to read Double Victory for an American History course during college. Recently I went back and re-read it, and I feel as if I am all the better for it. I have always been very interested in WWII books, especially those detailing events that transpired in the Nazi extermination camps. This book provides a great background of what was going home in the good old U.S. of A. while our soldiers were fighting for freedom and equality in Europe.

The main idea of Double Victory is the simultaneous battles that were being fought by American forces and society at the same time. Our military had been sent to Europe in large part to liberate the Jewish people from the Nazi concentration camps as well as the rest of Europe that was under German and Italian occupation. On the other hand, our minority citizens were fighting discrimination in our own land. Abroad, we used propaganda showing everyone that we were the "melting pot" of the world; however, reality was much different at home. In cities in the South, blacks were getting lynched and segregated. In the Southwest, Mexican-Americans were being portrayed as dumb and violent. Meanwhile, Japanese-Americans were being sent to concentration camps of our own without due legal process.

Takaki dedicates a section for each minority group in the country during WWII. For example, he details the plight of Mexican-Americans, Blacks, Japanese-Americans and even Italians to a lesser extent. We see the strategies that the government employed to portray the proper image abroad. Also, the author goes to great lengths to highlight how the pressures of the war led to changes in America. For example, it was not beneficial for the United States to be facing race riots in its own cities while they were trying to convince the Japanese to surrender by telling them that they would be treated fairly. The Japanese could then assume that they would be treated as the minority groups in the USA, thus essentially becoming second-rate citizens in their own countries if they allowed America to win.

Also, WWII provided great opportunities for minorities and women alike. One example of this is how women, especially minority women, left homes were they were often maids to work as WASPs or at times to work in the defense industries and factories.

All in all, Takaki will provide you with a very deep understanding of what WWII did to change the "face" of America. I would highly recommend this book to all readers so that they may bear witness to how America achieved a Double Victory during WWII.