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

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.

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.

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.

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

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 -