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

by Takaki, Ronald

• ISBN13: 9780316831550
• ISBN10: 0316831557
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-06-01
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co

Summary

America's entry into World War II made comrades-in-arms of men and women from every region and every walk of life, united in the battle for freedom and against fascism. It is no small irony, historian Ronald Takaki observes, that the armed struggle for democracy abroad "was accompanied by a disregard for our nation's declaration that 'all men are created equal'" in the form of institutional racism of many kinds, from the segregation of African American units to the imprisonment of Japanese Americans and the refusal to grant asylum to Jewish refugees.In Double Victory, Takaki examines the many contributions of America's minorities to the war effort, celebrating the work of Mexican farm laborers and Anglo women welders, of Navajo code talkers and Filipino foot soldiers, who proclaimed themselves to be "men, not houseboys," of Chinese American combat nurses and Asian Indian gunners. These men and women, Takaki writes, made extraordinary sacrifices in their battle against enemies without and enemies within. Although their efforts were not always appreciated at the time, they helped set in motion the struggle for civil rights that would explode two decades later. Takaki's book is a welcome and much needed entry in the recent literature on the World War II era, and it merits the widest possible audience. --Gregory McNamee

Author Biography

Ronald Takaki, a fellow of the Society of American Historians and a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is an internationally recognized scholar

Table of Contents

Introduction: A Different Memory	3	(5)
A Declaration of War: ``Double Victory''	8	(14)
Breaking News: ``Everybody Was Glued to the Radio''	8	(6)
A Day of ``Infamy'': The Hidden History of Pearl Harbor	14	(5)
Refusing to Live ``Half American''	19	(3)
``Bomb the Color Line'': The War Against Jim Crow	22	(36)
``One of the Strangest Paradoxes'': A Segregated Army Fights for Democracy	23	(15)
A Battle Line on the Home Front: ``Freedom from Want''	38	(12)
No ``Freedom from Fear'' in the Cities: Race Riots	50	(8)
The Original Americans: From Battlefields to Ceremonies	58	(24)
Flashback at Bataan: The Long Walk	58	(1)
``Why Fight the White Man's War?''	59	(5)
A Secret Weapon: An Unbreakable Code	64	(8)
The Indian ``Hero'' of Iwo Jima	72	(6)
Ceremony: War Heroes Return to the Reservation	78	(4)
A Dream of El Norte: Crossing the Tracks	82	(29)
``Americans All'': Soldiers of ``La Raza''	82	(8)
An Army of Workers: The Bracero and Rosa the Riveter	90	(12)
The ``Poison Gas'' of Nazi Doctrine in California	102	(9)
Diversity and Its Discontents: Who Is an American?	111	(26)
How the Chinese Became ``Friends''	111	(9)
Back to Bataan: Filipino Fighters from America	120	(5)
Korean Americans: A War to Free Their Homeland	125	(3)
India: Passage to America	128	(3)
Germans and Italians: ``Just Like Everybody Else''	131	(6)
Remembering Pearl Harbor: From Internment to Hiroshima	137	(43)
Reciting the Gettysburg Address in Plantation Hawaii	137	(7)
``A Tremendous Hole'' in the Constitution: Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066	144	(5)
Internment: ``Huge Dreams'' Destroyed	149	(8)
The Divided Soul of the Nisei Generation	157	(8)
A Mushroom Cloud: The Black Rain of Prejudice	165	(15)
Struggling for a World of ``No Race Prejudice'': Jewish Americans and the Holocaust	180	(36)
``The Horror, the Horror'': What Should We Tell the Children?	180	(2)
``Preferring to Die on My Feet''	182	(3)
Were They Their Brothers' Keepers?: Jews in America	185	(9)
Roosevelt's Rescue-Through-Victory Strategy	194	(12)
Only a Remnant Remained	206	(5)
``Scratches'' on the Door: Remember Us, Please	211	(5)
A Multicultural ``Manifest Destiny'': We Are ``Not a Narrow Tribe''	216	(21)
A Rising Wind: Toward the Civil Rights Revolution	216	(13)
A ``Ceremony'' for America: Remembrance of the War	229	(8)
Notes	237	(34)
Acknowledgments	271	(2)
Index	273