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

Abstract

In this passionate and kaleidoscopic survey of the struggles of nine ethnic American cultures during World War II, Ronald Takaki marshals a variety of evocative materials to demonstrate that America's greatest generation lived very undemocratic lives. Full chapters treat the experiences of African Americans, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, Japanese Americans (most fully), and Jewish Americans; one summary chapter encapsulates the experiences of Americans with Chinese, Filipino, Korean, and Indian roots, while German and Italian American experiences are skimmed for purposes of comparison. The book, a beautifully crafted collection of fragments of previously published oral histories and memoirs, is best suited to undergraduate readers, for it offers no new findings and only outlines a general analysis. The work briefly describes the historical circumstances of each group's limited incorporation into the American political economy, followed by a thematically organized review of that group's participation in the war and wartime society and politics. Takaki suggests that all of these non-“white” or non-Christian ethnic groups recognized and fought a fundamental contradiction—noted at the time by Gunnar Myrdal—between democratic national war aims and the racist behavior of officials and citizens alike. Particularly compelling are the numerous anecdotes in which one group draws truly multicultural lessons from another's experience. As one Spanish-language editor put it in 1945, the atomic bombing of Japan, “the events of the internment of Japanese Americans, and the zoot suit riots share a common pattern of racism that we are all subject to.” The war in turn enabled many of these unknown heroes to pursue a new and forceful line of resistance: “We have earned our credentials as American citizens. We paid our dues &we were not about to take any crap.”