Ep. 78 – Divisions: A New History of Racism and Resistance in America’s World War II Military, A Conversation with Tom Guglielmo

Peniel: [00:00:00] Welcome to race and democracy, a podcast on the intersection between race democracy, public policy, social justice, and citizenship.
Okay. On today’s episode, I am speaking with my friend. Uh, Thomas a Guglielmo who is professor and chair of the department of American studies at George Washington university. He’s the author of white on. Uh, Italians, race, color, and power in Chicago, 1890 to 1940, which one? The Frederick Jackson Turner award of the organization of American historians and his latest book, which just came out is called divisions, a new history of racism and resistance in America’s world war II, military.
Uh, so Tom, welcome to race and democracy.
Tom: Thanks so much for Neil [00:01:00] really, really appreciate being here.
Peniel: Now, this is an extraordinary book. This is the best book on, um, race and the history of world war II that I’ve ever read. And so we’ll start by saying that. What inspired you to. Write this book. How long have you been working on it and what inspired the great cover by Charles White from 1944, very famous African-American, um, iconic painter called soldier, um, which I don’t really think I had seen as well.
This is really extraordinary.
Tom: Thanks. Well, first, thanks so much for the high praise about the book. It means so much to me, especially coming from you. Peniel I’ve got a lot of respect for, um, all the work that you’ve been doing over the years. Um, so, so I’ll start with the painting. Yeah, I just, the Charles White painting is just spectacular.
I know this is a podcast, so people will be able to actually see it. But I, [00:02:00] I, uh, I urge people to, you know, to, to take a look at the cover or to just Google Charles White soldier. Um, you know, I was at a small symposium on race in the military, in Paris, in, uh, 2018, I guess. You know, on the program for this small symposium, they, uh, had this image of Charles White’s painting, which I had never seen before, you know, and I’d been working on by that point, I’d been working on this book for a good decade and felt like I had seen most of the really good images of, of black soldiers, for example.
And, um, but this was new and. You know, I just, uh, it was, it was, um, yeah, it’s just such a, kind of a moving powerful representation of just the mix of emotions that military service, um, uh, evoked in, in, in [00:03:00] black people. Um, So anyway, that’s, that’s why it’s on the cover. Um, the inspiration for the book, you know, uh, as you know, I’ve been working on it for a really long time.
You know, I, my first book was about Italian immigrants in Chicago, and I spent some time in the national archives. This is now 20 years ago. I’m working on that book. And at that time I just came across piles and piles of incredibly rare. Primary source materials on ordinary people and racism during the war.
And I just thought, wow, this is just such amazing, uh, source material. It would make an amazing book. Um, and I also knew of course, that we’re we’re too, is this is a watershed moment in us history and, and there’s been lots written on race in the war, but there were no. Nice syntheses about, about that story.
And so I thought, well, maybe I could [00:04:00] do that. Um, and so I started working on it in 2005. I was on sabbatical 2005 to 2006. Um, started writing in 2008, 2009, when you and I were. On leave together in Boston. Um, and yeah, it just took way more time than I ever expected. And, and, and, and it morphed, you know, so initially it started as this grand synthesis of race in the war, and that ended up just being too much for me to handle.
Um, and so. Uh, I had started drafting chapters just by chance on the military. They were supposed to be just to have eight chapters on the military, but those two chapters became 4, 6, 8, you know, nine chapters. And so, uh, I realized, I don’t know, about five or six years ago that it made sense to focus on the military in particular, because there’s just so much.
Um, and, uh, and so that’s kind of the backstory, well,
Peniel: let’s start with the beginning [00:05:00] because, um, you know, in your introduction you talk about, um, both the wealth of resources and archival material that you look through over a hundred different archives, but you taught you say the terms division line boundary divide, um, and so forth, all of which are used interchangeably refer to.
Uh, individual collective or institutional conscious or unconscious implicit or explicit formal, or informal symbolic, physical, effective, or behavioral that distinguished some persons from other persons and in the process unite some persons with other persons. So this idea of, um, divisions, which is really throughout, and you see these at times racial divisions, but you see all kinds of divisions.
Um, and there are some divisions within the U S military over how to treat, not just. Black Americans, but, [00:06:00] uh, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Mexican Americans, Puerto Rican’s, um, indigenous Americans. It’s so fascinating and I’d never read such an in-depth account. Um, but let’s start at the beginning.
Um, when we think about the second world war, you really open when you in your, you talk about the Jim Crow, boomerang, why were, why weren’t African-Americans black Americans drafted? Um, at their demographic rate, you estimate that there’s probably a half a million more blacks who could have been drafted in the war, but who were rejected.
And this really had huge political consequences and economic consequences, because as you show in this book, the war for soldiers who survived. Um, but even for those who didn’t, the war provided these benefits, the war gave people more, offered more literacy. Uh, people were coming still coming [00:07:00] out of the depression, gave people, food, uh, clothes, um, all kinds of benefits that many millions of Americans actually needed in that context.
And as we know, after the end of the war, uh, with the GI bill. The infantry bill. So many of the soldiers got access to education to home loans. Uh, it really sort of set up the future of the, the American middle-class black people disproportionately not having access. Why weren’t they drafted in the numbers that they should have been, or, or really accepted into the military, even at times when they try to just.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah. This is a, this is a really important story. So yeah, I estimate so at the very beginning of the war, the war department, which oversees the army and the army air force, um, you know, they make a promise to the American people, a public promise that that African-Americans would serve in the proportion.
It [00:08:00] proportionally that they, their, their percentage of. Um, um, service personnel would match their percentage of people in the U S population. And ultimately that never happened. And as you say, I argue that had African-American served proportionally an additional half, a million, half a million. Uh, African-Americans would have served in the military.
Um, uh, why did that happen? That happened primarily because military leadership and it was military leadership. It wasn’t folks in the draft, uh, in the selective service, um, they were more than happy to. To draft proportional numbers of African-Americans. Um, but the military was determined to restrict the number of African-Americans who entered the military and they did so for two reasons, primarily one, they had, um, you know, these racist views about African-Americans abilities as service personnel.
And so they believe deeply, um, kind of across the board that fewer African-Americans [00:09:00] in the military men, a stronger. But the other thing that they believe deeply was that, um, was that, uh, segregation required limited black enlistment. That is, they feared that. Uh, African-Americans were allowed to join the military and unlimited numbers.
It would kind of, uh, put too much stress on kind of existing black units and on the need to create larger numbers of black units. And therefore it would lead inevitably to integration and at the beginning of the war, especially, um, that was just a completely unthinkable. For military leadership among other people.
And so for those two reasons, there was this systematic sustained effort that I lay out in that first chapter really complex ever changing strategy to. Large numbers of African-Americans proportional numbers of African-Americans out of the military and that [00:10:00] effort was ultimately successful. Um, and as you say, you know, this had huge consequences down the road, you know, we’ve, we, we, there’s a lot of scholarship on how African-Americans, as you say, did not have equal access to.
You know, um, to all of these amazing government programs during the war, uh, sorry. During the thirties and forties and fifties and sixties, and that kind of middle part of the 20th century, when the middle-class. Of the United States was kind of expanded in an unprecedented way. Um, we have a lot of info, a lot of great scholarship on how African-Americans were restricted, but this is a kind of a piece of the story that people haven’t actually seen, I think, and that is restriction from military service during world war II also meant restriction from the welfare state in the post-war years.
And it deeply shaped the opportunities in life. Chances of African-Americans in the post-war years. And,
Peniel: you know, you, [00:11:00] you very early on, um, by chapter two and listing and excluding an enemy race, look at panoramic glee, how different people of color were treated. I’ve I’ve never, um, Really read in, in as much depth, depth as divisions, uh, the treatment of, um, really all, uh, non-black people.
But you know, you do a great job looking at how Japanese Americans are treated. And can, can you discuss that? Like how, how are Japanese Americans treated, um, during the second world war and how does the military, especially when we think of. Japanese internment and this violation of really human rights and citizenship, that is still a stain on, on the nation.
Um, how, how are they doing?
Tom: Well, there, it’s a big, complicated question. So much of the book deals in parts with that, but I’ll start with this [00:12:00] question about access to the military itself. Um, because that’s, what’s focused in that that’s the focus of that second chapter. So, you know, the first chapter looks at the ways in which blacks were, were systematically restricted, um, in very large numbers from military service during the war.
Uh, and I should, by the way, add that over a million. African-Americans ended up serving in world war II. So while there was this systematic attempt to keep their numbers down, still a huge number of people still served. I don’t want people to, to, um, Misunderstand that, um, in terms of Japanese Americans, what ends up happening is so, so their experiences in the military are deeply shaped by the twists and turns of the war.
And, and, and, and so, for example, early on, before the U S is involved in the war prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans, um, well, long before that they are more or less excluded from. [00:13:00] The the, the army and completely excluded from the Navy. But then once the draft act has passed and the fall of 1940, the doors start opening up to Japanese American enlistment, not in the Navy, the Navy refuses to accept Japanese Americans, drought, the war.
So that is a continuity that runs from the beginning to the end of the war. But Japanese Americans in the. Start gaining full access to the, to the army shortly after the selective training and service act has passed in 1940. And so they’re kind of being included in the army alongside white people and kind of in the same sorts of number, not, not numbers, but the same kind of rates.
Um, but then the attack on Pearl Harbor happens, um, and there’s kind of complication, confusion. Uh, about how Japanese Americans to be treated. Should they be, should they remain fully included in the U S army? Ultimately the army says, no, we’re going to shut our [00:14:00] doors completely. And that’s what they do. So they kind of joined the Navy in early 1942 and say, you know what?
Japanese Americans are too dangerous. They’re they’re too. Untrustworthy, their Americanness is in doubt. We feel like they could be agents of Japan. We have no way of determining their loyalty in the ways we can for white people. And so therefore, on this basis, so they’re drawing on all the same kind of racist arguments that, uh, led to internment.
And they’re saying now the army is that Japanese Americans can’t enlist at all. So enlistment of Japanese Americans is completely, uh, Um, completely shut down. Um, but then by early 43, they’re allowed some are allowed to, uh, uh, volunteer out of, uh, incarceration camps on the west coast and in Arkansas. Um, and then by 4,000 early 43, by 44, they’re actually getting drafted out of those same [00:15:00] incarceration.
Um, and so you see kind of something of a full circle for Japanese or, or lots of change. Um, th the story for African-Americans is. Is is, has some change too, because they had been totally excluded from certain branches in the military. Um, like the Marine Corps, for example, and those sorts of exclusions fall away during the war.
But again, those restrictions never do. And that is a continuity for Japanese-Americans things are constantly changing. They’re totally excluded. Then they’re included, um, kind of along the lines of white people, then they’re completely excluded again. Then they’re included in kind of fits and starts over the rest of the war.
Um, so that just gives you a sense, just speaking, in terms of access to the military, gives you a sense of just how complex Japanese Americans experiences were during the war in the U S military,
Peniel: Tom, who was William hasty. And discuss the efforts [00:16:00] by William hasty and the NAACP and others to, um, have racially integrated units, uh, in the military.
Um, and how successful were those efforts and which branches, because you just talked about the Navy, not letting Japanese. Enlist these ever during the second world war, which branches were more amenable to some kind of reform and which ones were intractable when it comes to the desegregation of black or so-called colored troops?
Tom: Well, I’ll start with William hasty. So William hasty was, is a really important part of this story, um, because, so he was, I believe it was after the war. He became Dean of the law school at Howard university. He was a federal judge. Uh, in the us Virgin islands, um, and in 1940, he accepts a position as an [00:17:00] advisor on race issues.
Uh, mainly African issues related to African-American soldiers in the war department. So he works under Henry L Stimson. Who’s the secretary of war during world war two and hasty prior to this as very active in the NAACP and the NAACP had. You know, um, kinda change their views on integration in the military a little bit in the early, in the mid thirties, they, they oppose military segregation.
Um, but they’re not super outspoken about it and they understand that it’s a super controversial issue and they’re not really sure how forcefully to push against military segregation, but by 1940 and ha and William Hastie is really one of the, um, Key players here, you know, he’s kinda convinced that, uh, that a military that says it’s fighting for democracy and freedom cannot be segregated.
And so the NAACP by [00:18:00] about 1940 starts really coming around. To believing that this actually needs to be a central civil rights issue of the world war II years, that these so-called black units, which really weren’t black units, they were black units in the sense that all, all soldiers in the all enlisted personnel in these units were black, but those senior, most officers were almost entirely white.
In any case, the civil rights establishment, the black civil rights establishment kind of slowly comes around to this view. That again, military integration has to be a central dimension of civil rights struggle during, during the war. Um, and so you see kind of over the course of the war. I think people assume that this was always this really important, big civil rights issue, but it really wasn’t, it was not on anyone’s agenda or it was on very few people’s agenda in the late thirties.
But by early night, by the early forties, it’s increasingly becoming this [00:19:00] really important demand, black civil rights activists. Um, and I really feel like, you know, Um, there’s this there, I tell the story about this kind of growing movement to demand integration in the military. And, you know, Truman’s executive order in 1948 to desegregate the military or, or to eventually, um, desegregate the military.
You know, you can’t understand that move. If you don’t understand this grassroots struggle that developed slowly but powerfully over the course of the war to demand integration in the middle of.
Peniel: Now I want to talk about the Jim Crow in uniform and you, you have very, very moving, uh, letters written by, uh, black soldiers talking about German prisoners free to move around the camp.
Unlike black soldiers who were restricted, the Germans walked right into the doggone place. Like any white American. We were wearing the same uniform, but we were. [00:20:00] And that’s a 1944 letter to Truman Gibson who replaced him. William hasty is the war department’s chief, uh, Negro adviser. But you also talk about, um, officer candidate schools.
And even when there were efforts that having a racially integrated, uh, officer candidate schools, uh, black candidates slept at the end of quarters away from everyone, everyone else, and were excluded from recreational halls. So talk to us about how, how, how did Jim Crow impact, uh, the training of soldiers?
Uh, the, the, the ranks of military personnel, um, how people were, um, treated and their efforts to gain promotions, to gain access, to gain knowledge and information.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think this is a piece that maybe people don’t fully understand just how expansive racism was. Anti-black racism was in the U S military [00:21:00] during the war.
So we’ve talked about two dimensions of this, right? We’ve talked already about the ways in which. Uh, black enlistment was greatly restricted. We’ve also talked about the ways in which units fighting units, um, were segregated during the war. And that’s usually what people think of when they think of military racism.
But, um, but it was, it was so much more. Far reaching that it shaped absolutely every aspect of black soldiers, military lives in uniform, right? So it shaped not just, again, their access to the military and the kinds of units they were serving. It, it shaped the sorts of jobs. They had, it shaped the kinds of money they made in those, for those working, for those military jobs, it shaped the kinds of promotions they could get in shape, the kinds of things.
They could achieve. There were all kinds of restrictions on the number of commissions that African-Americans received. You asked in a previous question, you know, what were some of the [00:22:00] variations across the services? You know, so the, the army, I think had thousands of black officers by the end of the war, the Navy had several dozen, you know, so while, whereas the Navy was integrating in certain ways, um, Um, more so than the army by the end of the war.
Um, when it came to promotions and when it came to commissions and when it came to positions of authority, the army actually gave, um, African-Americans a better shot than did the Navy, but neither of them gave a fair shot to African-Americans when it came to promotions, when it came to positions of authority, um, racism shaped recreational facilities, um, not just throughout the United States, not just in the.
But in the north, in the west and absolutely everywhere that the U S military travel during the war in Australia, there were segregated pools and bars and nightclubs, same went for China. The same went for India. The same went for, um, Decar in [00:23:00] west Africa. The same went for Italy and France and England and Germany and Belgium and, and, and, um, and points in between Pacific islands.
You know, so. There is a level of expansiveness it’s shaped kind of who, whom soldiers could date and potentially marry the military often greatly restricted African-Americans ability to, um, have friendships, romantic relationships with all kinds of people, not just white people, sometimes even black people in Africa.
If those black people were dating white officers or. Soldier American soldiers, those white soldiers and officers said, well, we can’t be sharing women even AF even black women in this case. So the point is that these, these racial lines, these color lines, this racism, um, was expansive geographically. It was expansive in terms of the kinds of.
Uh, dimensions of life, it shaped. Um, [00:24:00] and, um, and it was expansive in terms of time, you know, there, there, yes, there were moments when some of this racism, um, as a consequence of, of indefatigable, Civil rights organizing on the black and soldiers, black soldiers. There were times when some of these color lines are blurred a bit or, or, or fell away or were defeated.
Um, but for the most part, um, this racism was an enormous. For both at the beginning of the war and at the end of the war, and again, all around the United States and all around the world.
Peniel: I want to talk about those feelings of bonding, you know, um, in, in the chapter bonds and barriers you talk about, um, uh, in Ojibwe, uh, native American, um, Recalling his feeling of complete acceptance while serving in the army during world war II.
And that chapter opens with a Japanese American soldier. Who’s riding home, [00:25:00] uh, while training at our, uh, at our army camp in Texas. Um, and talking about racial discrimination and talking about. Or the Japanese colored as well. Um, and then there’s one, when the war started, I became a white man. So talk about the bonds and barriers.
And, and was there a difference between the way in which some people of color could acclimate and maybe get access to racial privilege for the first time, uh, between non-blacks and blacks, in terms of those bonds and barriers with, with, um, white troops and white military personnel.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah. This is a really important point and a really important question.
So one of the. Uh, challenges in this book was to try to make sense of the various forms of racism that, uh, the military, um, um, produced and reproduced, you know, and, and how did those racisms shape the experiences of. [00:26:00] African-Americans and other folks of color, Japanese Americans, Mexican Americans, indigenous Americans, Puerto Rican’s and so forth.
And, and as you can imagine, those stories are really, really complicated. So I just spent a bunch of time talking about the kinds of racism that African-Americans faced in uniform while training and fighting overseas. I’ll just say a little bit about. Um, non-black what I call non-black minorities, um, and their experiences cause they’re really, really complex.
So I should also say that African-Americans experiences could be complex despite the fact that there was all this. Entrenched racism in the military. Um, you know, African-Americans moved overseas and they met friendly Italians and friendly Brits and friendly French people and friendly folks, Pacific Islanders and Australians, and they were inspired and moved by, by the, the ability of, of, of these people.
[00:27:00] Sometimes white people to kind of. Ignore racist conventions that were so powerful in the U S and, and, you know, Medgar Evers has this great kind of, or I can actually, I guess it’s his brother who says, you know, Medgar Evers. My brother came back with this new sense of hope that people, all kinds of people could live in peace together.
Cause that’s what he experienced for the very first time when he was dating a French woman serving. European theater during the war. Um, so there were these moments of change and possibility and openness, um, for black soldiers overseas, there were even more of these opportunities for non-black minority soldiers.
Um, so Mexican Americans, American Indians, uh, Puerto Rican’s, um, you know, Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, um, they were not, the bottom line is they were not segregated. To the same extent as African-American troops were that’s the bottom line. They faced their own [00:28:00] forms of racism. No doubt. And I try to, you know, detail those, um, in the book, but nonetheless struck her structurally speaking.
They were placed, you know, in farm, they were given far more opportunities to strip, train, train, and to serve shoulder to shoulder with white troops. And in time. That had its effects, you know, um, that sometimes, you know, broke down color lines that divided, see Japanese Americans from white Americans or Mexican Americans from Anglos and, and, and, and, you know, ultimately.
Created these comradely bonds that would not have existed on the home front would not have existed in the civilian world. So for some of these non-black minorities, again, they, all of them faced various forms of racism, but they faced great. Acceptance greater tolerance, greater openness, uh, from white soldiers than African-Americans ever did.
And part of that, again, as a [00:29:00] consequence of military policy, military policy, put these non-black minority troops. In white units far more often than they did with African-Americans and therefore created the opportunities for these kinds of, uh, boundary breaking for this kind of boundary breaking to happen.
Now
Peniel: in the last part of the book, um, one of the last chapters is called deploying Jim Crow. And I thought this was fascinating because it really shows that. Sort of, um, the culmination in certain ways of this buildup that the book shows in terms of the recruitment, uh, the, the, the training, um, the politics that go with there, but then this deployment of this multiracial army military, that segregated and sort of, um, the experiences that both the troops have in real reality, but also.
The way in which their [00:30:00] supporters back home, including their mothers, their girlfriends, their wives, and you talk about black women, for instance, who are part of the waves and the wax who are deployed. Um, talk about. What happens once sort of Jim Crow is deployed. We have these soldiers who are in the European theater and you’ve got great.
The, the book has such great photos and you have a photo of even a GI black GI with a European wife, which certainly is anti white supremacy. And certainly, um, crossing the color line. Um, what happened. Once these troops are, are deployed, uh, in the European theater.
Tom: Um, yeah. So this is, yeah, such an interesting story, right?
Because the military has such, um, you know, a powerful hold on race relations when they’re in the U S they can kind of, to some [00:31:00] extent, control things a bit, but once they move overseas and I can focus on Europe in particular, you know, they, they, they still have immense control, but there’s. Um, enormous struggle over, over to what extent the U S military will be able to transplant its racist conventions to this new place.
Um, Ireland, England, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, um, You know, uh, which has its own racism. You know, these places are not kind of free of racism. Obviously they have Imperial histories, um, that are, are, are, are deeply shaped by racism, but, but African-American troops are, are, are Americans. They’ve got resources.
They’re not, they’re not migrants. They’re not planning on living. In these countries forever. Um, their, their liberator’s in many cases. So it’s just a, kind of a different dynamic and what ends [00:32:00] up happening in so many cases, you know, African-American soldiers are reporting over and over again, how friendly foreigners are to them.
And this isn’t universal by any means. They’re also facing a kind of. Uh, a homegrown racism in some of these European countries as well, but even so, um, there’s just so many stories of, of, you know, visiting people’s homes and being invited over for dinner and being invited to social clubs and being invited out to bars for drinks and.
Yeah. So African-American troops are welcomed by white people, into their hearts and homes in a way that kind of happens. So, so rarely in the U S so it was this kind of revolutionary could be this revolutionary and transformative experience for, for some African-American troops. Um, and the military, of course, that is not interested in blurred lines.
They’re interested in very distant. Um, [00:33:00] impermeable black, white lines are, are of course, you know, terrified by, by these, by these new kind of, um, Uh, opportunities that black folks receive in Europe. And so, and so it’s, it’s this kind of constant struggle, um, too, on the part of the military, it’s a struggle to kind of reinscribe these racial boundaries.
Reinscribe these black white lines when they’re not, um, when, when, when locals. Oftentimes, they’re not kind of respecting those lines nor are African-American troops either. In fact, African-American troops again are now trans just as the military is transplanting their color lines to places like Europe.
African-American troops are transplanting their civil rights, struggle to battle against those color lines. And in some cases they’re, they’re receiving all kinds of help from European friends. And in
Peniel: your conclusion, you look at all these different [00:34:00] aftermaths, including different perspectives that black and Japanese other soldiers have about the war.
Um, I was struck by, uh, the, the one, um, black veteran who came back from the China Burma, India theater, who says that quote, I saw many white and colored soldiers. Shake hands with one another. When the ship docked in Seattle, Washington, and as they parted for various separation centers, I left the service convinced that the United States can and should have a democratic army.
Um, You know, a Tuskegee airman recalled walking down the gangplank and a white soldier barking, the following orders, blacks over here, whites over here. Um, and, and another veteran who was black reported his friends telling him of white and colored signs when the docks, the minute they disembarked in us ports.
So what, what’s the conclusion of, of this [00:35:00] story in the sense of, um, the divisions that. In certain ways or at times, um, muddled over and muddled through overseas. But when people come back home, what, what kind of, what kind of, sort of social political context that they land back into and what did, what did the war experience inspire in both black and other people of color when they returned home?
Tom: Right. So, I mean, just, you know, just to kind of set it. The, you know, again, the war time experiences overseas could be so complex, right? So they could, for black soldiers, it could involve, uh, you know, a romantic relationship with a French woman. Um, but it also could involve, you know, violent attempts on the part of the us military to.
Um, to, to re-establish racist lines, um, everywhere, uh, in black soldiers lives overseas, right? So it was this kind of mix of [00:36:00] things and the same went for non-black minority soldiers, you know? So, so Japanese Americans, for example, who, as I mentioned earlier, right. Faced all kinds of racist restrictions to joining up.
Um, they were more than any other non-black group. Um, Uh, they were segregated in, in, in certain units. Um, and yet by the time they get overseas, they’re being hailed as these kind of, um, heroic, manly American soldiers. Um, You know, celebrated by their white comrades in arms as, as kind of quintessential American troops.
Um, and oftentimes by the way, um, this kind of celebration of Japanese American troops was in direct contrast to a kind of denigration of African American troops. So there’s a way. Japanese Americans are getting leveraged against African-American troops that, you know, the, the, the kind of celebration of Japanese American troops [00:37:00] was dependent upon the, the denigration of black troops.
So, so that’s how putting these stories in context can really. Help us to better understand, um, these, these complex dynamics, but in any case, the bottom line is these troops are returning, having experienced, not one thing, not two things, but all kinds of different things when it came to race and racism in uniform.
And so you see that complexity once they’re. Uh, once, once they’re returning to the United States. So you offered a couple of those stories about, you know, people returning home on these troop transports and getting off the dock and everyone’s kind of hugging and shaking hands. And some people feel hopeful that Hey, maybe America can be a racial democracy.
Look at all these, uh, new kind of interracial bonds that were created through. Service in the military during the war. So there’s that kind of happy, seemingly happy ending. But on the other hand, you have [00:38:00] people remembering, you know, walking down the gangplank and us military officials basically saying black folks over there, white folks over there.
Right. So again, this effort to reinscribe racial boundaries. So that complexity is, is really what, what animates the post-war years. Right. So my conclusion, I kind of try to lay out the, both the, the ways in which the military. Experienced during the war made America more egalitarian place and the ways in which it made America a much less egalitarian place.
So for example, um, on the one hand, you know, the military experience, um, you know, in bold, All kinds of American troops, American troops of color, and some minority of white troops to say, you know what? We just sacrifice or potentially sacrificed our lives. We just, um, sacrificed so much in our lives too. To, to fight for the United States.
And this [00:39:00] was supposedly for the four freedoms. This was supposedly for democracy and we really need to make this a reality in the United States, you know? And so folks come back, um, having Don the uniform to fight for the U S and to fight for all these, you know, um, wonderful ideals. And, and they, and they say, you know what?
This really needs to be a reality in the United States of America talks a good game about democracy, but we need to make that a reality for all people. African-Americans Mexican Americans, Japanese Americans, and so forth. And so what you see is this profound reinvigoration, civil rights struggles are happening throughout the war, in the military and outside of the military.
But when veterans come back, it’s this kind of whole new. Um, group of foot soldiers that are newly, um, uh, feeling newly enfranchised, feeling newly empowered to, to fight, to make America a better place, a [00:40:00] more egalitarian place. And so there’s that story and that’s kind of a common story. I think we tell ourselves because it’s, it’s kind of a happy ending for the war then.
Yeah, there was a lot of racism, but nonetheless folks came back and I became. You know, team members of post-war civil rights movements and made America a better place. Um, there’s a lot of truth to that. And I, I spell that out in my conclusion, but that’s not the only story, you know, so there are also ways in which the U S military and its deep deep commitments to racism, um, you know, um, interfered with, with, um, The move to make America more democratic place.
Um, and so I’ll just give you some examples for one thing. Of course, it traumatized and killed an unknown number of soldiers of color, especially black soldiers, but older soldiers as well. So for example, I tell the story of my wife’s grandpa and my wife’s grandfather who served in the U S army Japanese American man [00:41:00] serves in the us army.
Uh, I was able to find that he wrote to secretary Stimpson, the secretary of war during the war saying essentially, you know what, send me to Japan. No one thinks I’m a real American everyone’s cursing me out and calling me a chap and saying, I don’t deserve to wear an American uniform. And so, you know, what, if you think I’m Japanese, I don’t want to be in the U S army anymore.
Send me to Japan. And they. The us military doesn’t, uh, you know, uh, uh, seed to this request, but they do send them to this kind of hard labor battalion, and he’s closely surveilled for the rest of the war he gets, uh, other than honorable discharge, which restricts his access to the GI bill benefit, GI bill benefits after the war.
And he really struggles for the rest of his life and dies. An alcoholic. And I have to believe that part of his, his struggles after the war, um, related directly back to the traumas that he faced [00:42:00] as an American soldier during world war II. Right? So I don’t want to lose, lose track of that, or, you know, John hope, Franklin tells a moving story about how his brother, who I think was a principal of a high school, you know, and ends up dying very shortly after the war.
Because of, because of the immense suffering that he faced during the war, uh, at the hands of whites, supposedly comrades in arms. Um, and so I don’t want to kind of, I don’t want the. Happy story of civil rhe post-war civil rights activism to kind of drown out some of these more sober entails because you know, the racism was, you know, again, so expansive and obviously the effects of that expansive racism didn’t end when the war and it didn’t end when men came back or women came back from serving that could continue to shape people’s lives long into the post-war years.[00:43:00]
Um, so that’s just one effect, but you know, the, another effect is that these divisions, and again, it wasn’t just the black, white division, but the divisions between Japanese Americans and other troops, the divisions between say American Indians and other troops, all of this kind of complex Welter. Color lines was really confusing and it kind of further etched in American life.
These deep, deep racist divisions that 16 million people in the U S military that’s like w I don’t know, 12% of the us population. This was a, uh, you know, a significant part of their day-to-day life at a very impressionable age. And so these deep racist divisions. All kinds of American’s views about what was possible, what was desirable in the post-war years, you know?
And so there were all these kinds of efforts to organize interracially and unions and other kinds of places during the war. But a [00:44:00] lot of that interracial ism kind of stumbled in the post-war years. And some of that had to do with the cold war. Some of that had to do with the red scare, some of that had to do with a tax on the left, but I actually think a big part of it also had to do with a factor that folks haven’t really talked too much about.
And that is the deep divisions that again, 16 million service members experienced on a daily basis while serving in the U S military during the war. That just gives you a taste of just some of the complex consequences of racist divisions and battles over racist divisions in the military during world war two.
Peniel: Well, that’s a great way to end our conversation. You end the book by talking about the over-representation of white fatalities, uh, during world war II, and you say viewed through. Viewed this way, military white supremacy, crown few true victors. So it has been with all forms of white [00:45:00] supremacy. So thank you.
This has been a wonderful conversation we’ve been talking with. Um, I’ve been talking with Tom Guglielmo, who is the author of divisions, a new history of racism and resistance and America’s world war II, military. Uh, who’s also a professor and chair of the department of American studies at George Washington university.
Uh, the author of white on arrival, um, which is an award-winning book, but I want everyone to go out and get divisions, a new history of racism and resistance in America’s world war II, military. Uh, published by Oxford university press. This is brand new. It’s got the brilliant painting by Charles White soldier on it, and it’s really a fantastic, um, you know, definitive history of, of race and racism in, in the U S military during the second world war.
So, Tom, thank you so much for joining.
Tom: Thank you Peniel really, really, really enjoyed it. Thanks
Peniel: for listening to this episode and you can check out related content on Twitter [00:46:00] at Peniel Joseph that’s, P E N I E L J O S E P H. And our website, CSR D dot LBJ that you texas.edu and the center for study of race and democracy is on Facebook as well.
This podcast was recorded at the liberal arts development studio at the college of liberal arts at the university of Texas at Austin. Thank you.