The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
War’s legacy is one of unity – but also division still present
Identity and nation in the Second World War
It is something of a truism to state that the Second World War exerted a profound effect on all participating countries; the United States was no exception in this regard, but the American experience of Second World War was also highly singular. Despite the devastation of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the country experienced no domestic invasions comparable to the carnage witnessed in other parts of the world. The US had also undertaken something of a “reluctant march to war”, as film-maker Frank Capra suggested. Although aware of the troubling developments of the 1930s in Europe and Asia, much of the American population had clung to the traditional ethos of isolationism throughout this decade, espousing non-interventionist principles until such a position became untenable. The multi-faceted propaganda campaigns of the Office of War Information left a rich legacy of posters, leaflets and films, many of which concertedly promoted narratives of national unity – of diverse peoples uniting in a common cause. During the First World War the country had frequently effected such unity by suppressing alternative allegiances and identities which were deemed threatening (those of German or “enemy” ethnic background, and members of radical political groups and unskilled workers’ organisations were targeted particularly extensively). Now, however, as historian David Kennedy notes, ethnic diversity was increasingly considered a source of strength – a patriotic American could be Jewish, Irish, Hungarian or Polish in origin. In this respect, the nation built upon the tentative acceptance of multi-culturalism which the diverse artistic projects of the New Deal era had helped to foster. Persecution of those European Americans of “enemy” backgrounds (Germans and Italians), while not unknown, did not manifest as intensely as it had in the earlier conflict. However, conspicuously excluded from such a comprehensive national vision were the Japanese. Propaganda materials depicted Japanese people as sub-human and dangerous in their devious heartlessness; such portrayals helped to justify the humiliating detainment of west-coast Japanese residents (and their American-born
children) in basic and ill-equipped internment camps like Manzanar War Relocation Center. The limitations of inclusive patriotism were also evident in the treatment of African-Americans. Their support for, and involvement in, the war effort was earnestly sought. Historian Lauren Sklaroff has highlighted the propagandistic celebrations of the remarkable career of boxer “GI Joe Louis”, an initiative which helped to include African-Americans in patriotic narratives. Capra’s propaganda films similarly celebrated the vital contribution to the war effort which was being made by African-Americans. Yet such narratives of integration tended to evade the fact that, in both the segregated “Jim Crow” south and the ghettoes of the northern cities, and in both military and civilian life, AfricanAmericans still faced discrimination, intimidation and vicious racism. Sociologist Gunnar Myrdal highlighted the cruel irony inherent in the deployment of African-American soldiers in a battle to secure, for foreigners, democratic rights which they themselves did not enjoy at home. African-Americans were shocked by such intrinsic injustice; membership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People increased tenfold in wartime, and agitation led by Asa Philip Randolph in 1941 resulted in the establishment of the Fair Employment Practices Committee, which outlawed discrimination in Federal organisations involved in work for the war effort. In 1948, the American armed forces were desegregated. Yet elimination of racist practices was not accomplished and, while some African-American workers and soldiers expressed enjoyment of the new opportunities which wartime circumstances brought, for others the conflict was a time of unchanged – or even heightened – hardship and inequity; race riots in Detroit in 1943 killed 34 people, and racial tensions between white servicemen and young MexicanAmericans and AfricanAmericans were also reflected in the “zoot suit” riots which erupted in Los Angeles in the same year. Attitudes did not remain uniformly static, of course. As Richard Polenberg notes, at least some politicians and officials emerged from the harrowing conflict rather less complacent about matters of discrimination and persecution than they had been some 10 years previously; while one must not overstate such a shift in attitudes, it does appear that, when confronted by the horrors of Hitler’s treatment of minorities, more Americans acknowledged the need to address the inequities in their own nation. As the post-war world grew ever more complex, some Americans would have cause to look back nostalgically upon “the good war” of 1941-45 – a conflict in which enemies were easily identifiable and the justification for war straightforward and honourable. Nevertheless, while the war had helped to expose and, perhaps gradually to diminish, certain tensions, inequalities and conflicts within US society, in other cases the divisions persisted, and perhaps even worsened. The consequences of such a complex legacy undoubtedly remain tangible even to this day.