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Ron Takaki
Ph.D., Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California at Berkeley; Author, Double Victory
In writing Double Victory, I wanted a book that would not just tell the traditional story - how white America went to war during World War II. I wanted to make sure that this was more than the story presented to us by Steven Spielberg in Saving Private Ryan. Do you remember seeing any African Americans in that movie? No. Black soldiers were there on the beaches of Normandy, unloading ships and feeding the white combat troops. We were fighting the Nazis with a Jim Crow army. I wish Spielberg had at least given us a glimpse of these black soldiers, of this reality, and for millions of theatergoers to leave the theaters thinking, the Good War contained contradictions, didn't it?
I also wanted to write a book that would be different to the books that are ethnic-specific - on African-Americans or the Nisei soldiers of the 442nd or the Navajo code talkers. I wanted to write a book that would have the stories and the experiences of a diverse American people, fighting for democracy not only abroad, but also at home - fighting for a multiracial democracy. The title of my book, Double Victory, comes out of this struggle itself. Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a young African American in Kansas wrote a letter to an African-American newspaper, The Pittsburgh Courier. This letter was published on January 31, 1942. In this letter, James G. Thompson asked the question: "Why should I fight to defend this country? Why should I put my life on the line for the United States when in this country I am only half an American? I am willing to die for this country, but on one condition only - that this be a war for double victory against fascism abroad and racism here at home."
This term "double victory" was not widely used in different communities, but the idea was there about how we needed to fight for victory at home as well as in Europe and in Asia. One million African Americans served in the U.S. Armed Forces. A million African Americans also served in the war industries; 600,000 of them were women. Roosevelt signed the executive order that integrated the war industries because his cabinet advised him that A. Philip Randolph was going to have a march on Washington. He asked Randolph, "How many Negroes can you get here around the White House?" Randolph said, "100,000, Mr. President." That shook Roosevelt up, because it would have sent the message to Hitler that we were fighting for the Four Freedoms, and yet we were denying freedom from poverty here at home. So Roosevelt signed that executive order.
Many of the black women who found employment in the war industries knew that Roosevelt would not have done this had it not been for that threatened march on Washington. In fact, one black woman said, "It was Hitler that got us out of the kitchens."
Zoot Suits and Saipan
Mexican Americans were victims of the terrible Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles in 1943. They had been viewed and treated as foreigners in a land that had originally been theirs, in California and in the Southwest. Guy Louis Gabaldon, a young Mexican American, lived in East L.A. alongside a large Japanese immigrant community. He befriended two young Japanese boys, Lyle and Lane Nakano, and ended up living with them. He learned how to speak Japanese because Nakanos' parents were immigrants from Japan. World War II came along and the Nakanos were swept into internment camps.
Gabaldon enlisted in the U.S. Marines and fought in the Battle of Saipan. On the first day of battle he killed 33 Japanese soldiers and decided that this would be a killing field - the U.S. Marines would kill all the Japanese on Saipan - but a lot of Marines would be killed also. Galbaldon decided he would cross into enemy territory and capture Japanese soldiers and talk to them in Japanese. He captured six Japanese soldiers the first day and in Japanese told them, "You should surrender because you are cut off from your navy; you're surrounded. We will just come in and kill all of you. If you surrender we will give you medical care, we will give you food, we will not kill you. Go back behind the lines here and tell your fellow Japanese soldiers to surrender and bring more back with you. If you don't come back, I'm going to shoot these three that I have as hostages here." The three went off and came back with six. He sent six more off and they came back with 12. By the end of the day, Galbadon had 700 prisoners. For this he was awarded the Navy Cross.
Galbadon is still alive today, and he is being considered for an upgrade from the Navy Cross to the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Jewish Refugees and Italian Fishermen
This country did almost nothing to admit Jewish refugees. There was a refugee children's bill that never made it out of congressional committee because it did not have Franklin Roosevelt's support. Polls showed that 70 percent of Americans did not want this country to admit Jewish refugees.
So Jews went to war and half a million enlisted in the U.S. Armed Forces. They knew that they were not only fighting against Hitler in Germany but against anti-Semitism here in their own country.
In a story close to home, the U.S. Army declared that 10,000 Italian aliens were enemies and imposed a curfew on them on the West coast, and they ordered Italian aliens to stay away from the waterfronts. Italian fisherman could not take their boats out. This curfew was rescinded in a few months, but nevertheless it showed that Italians weren't quite Americans yet. They too had a war for double victory to be fought.
Navajo Code Talkers
Native peoples were being asked to fight for a government that had dispossessed them - and yet they served, they enlisted. They were recruited by the U.S. Marines on Navajo reservations, because the Navajos had a language the Marines needed. Navajo was then used as a code in the Pacific War to transmit battle information from shore to ship.
The Navajo code talkers hit every beach in the Pacific War. The Japanese army could intercept messages but could not decode the Navajo language. It was proudly hailed by the Marines as the unbreakable code. The irony of the Navajo story is that these Navajos as kids in the boarding schools were being told by their teachers not to speak Navajo, to speak English only.
The Most Highly Decorated Unit
Many know the story of the 442nd. Japanese Americans enlisted in the U.S. Army in internment camps. They went to war not only to free people in Europe but also to free their own families from internment camps in the U.S. The 442nd was the most highly decorated military unit in the history of the U.S. Armed Forces. They paid a tremendous price in terms of lives and limbs to tell their country that they should never have violated their constitutional rights. They should never have interned the families. I think, however, we should note that this government did apologize in 1988 and did offer reparations to these Japanese Americans who were interned by their government.
A Peace Anniversary
This is the 50th anniversary of the signing of the peace treaty between Japan and the United States. Most Americans don't really know how the Pacific war came to an end. We know it ended with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki. What most of us don't know is how our military did not support the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Our Joint Chiefs of Staff, after the victory in Okinawa, concluded that Japan had lost the war. Japan was completely isolated; its army in China was cut off. Our Navy had a complete blockade of Japan; our Air Force was bombing Japanese cities at will; there was no defense in Japan. Japan was running out of gasoline.
We also intercepted messages sent from Tokyo to Moscow, which said that Japan was ready to surrender. They asked the Russians to negotiate a surrender, especially before Russia declared war on Japan, scheduled for August 8th. There was just one non-negotiable condition: let Japan keep its emperor. The Joint Chiefs of Staff advised Truman when he went to Potsdam to allow Japan to have a conditional surrender.
Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, went to write into the Potsdam Declaration a provision that would have allowed Japan to keep the emperor. On his way he met with Dwight D. Eisenhower. Eisenhower knew about the Manhattan Project and said that we should never use that bomb against Japan. He called it "that awful weapon." He said that Japan had lost this war, and there would be no military necessity to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. General Douglas MacArthur, meanwhile, was preparing for the occupation of Japan, because he knew that as soon as Russia declared war on Japan, Japan would fold.
The troops thought they were going to have to invade. Then they thought that the atomic bomb saved their lives. This, of course, is what Truman said, but he said it in 1955, ten years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and he said it in his diary, where he wrote, "I made that decision, it avoided an invasion and I saved half a million American lives."
Historians look at that now and ask where he got that half a million figure. Our government has declassified the top-secret documents of our military. I've looked at minutes of our cabinet, where there was presented the plan of the joint planning committee for the invasion by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They estimated 40,000 deaths, not half a million. Truman read that report, and he ordered an invasion to take place. That was in June 1945.
Stimson, who was at that Cabinet meeting, went to Potsdam and wrote into the draft of the Potsdam Declaration a provision that would allow Japan to surrender. Winston Churchill asked Truman to let Japan surrender on a conditional basis, saying that it wasn't worth an invasion and the killing of so many American and British lives. But Truman refused.
Even after Nagisaki was vaporized, Japan still refused to surrender, except on one condition: allow Japan to keep the emperor. At that point, Truman told Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace, "I'm going stop the order for the dropping of a third atomic bomb. The thought of killing another hundred thousand more women and children is too terrible to me." So Truman knew that these bombs were targeting civilians. In the end, Truman accepted the conditional surrender in Japan, and that's why Japan today still has an emperor. That's how the war ended.
Stimson wrote the following entry in his diary (which is still unpublished, but you can find it in the Yale University archives) on August 10, the day after Nagasaki: "There has been a good deal of uninformed agitation against the emperor in the country, mostly by people who know no more about Japan than has been given to them by Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado. I found out today that curiously enough it had gotten deeply embedded in the minds of influential people in the State Department."
Stimson knew that the deletion of that provision was made not only by Truman but also by Secretary of State James Burns. Burns, we now know, wanted the war to continue so that we could test that atomic weapon against Japan. He wanted to send a message to Stalin. This was the first shot of the opening of the Cold War and what would become the nuclear arms race.
Stimson was governor of the Philippines and had made several trips to Japan. He knew about Japanese culture and the Japanese people. He told Truman, "The Japanese people are not a nation of fanatics. They are not going to die for the emperor. Let's let them surrender and we can end this war now."
What are we fighting for?
I love to write history not only from the top down, but also from the bottom up. A letter written by a group of wounded American soldiers sharing a hospital ward in Europe was published in a Detroit newspaper in 1943 - the year terrible race riots exploded across the country, the most devastating in Detroit. These wounded soldiers, reading in their newspapers about this, wrote to the editor: "Why are these race riots going on there in Detroit and in other cities in this land, supposedly that land of freedom, equality and brotherhood? The riots make us fighters think: what are we fighting for? For the principles that gave birth to the United States of America. In this hospital ward we eat, laugh and sleep uncomplaining together." And then they signed their names - Jim Stanley, Negro; Joe Wakamatsu, Japanese; Eng Yu, Chinese; John Brennan, Irish; Paul Colosi, Italian; Don Holzheimer, German; Joe Wojiechowski, Polish; and Mike Cohen, Jewish.
These soldiers in their letter were saying that this is a war for double victory, victory against fascism in Europe but victory also against racial inequality here in the United States of America. What are we fighting for? When we look at this history of World War II, we realize that it is a complicated history and one that needs to be told widely. It's a history that reaffirms what this country stands for and how this country had not lived up to its ideals or principles.
