Obstacles and Opportunities
As the life stories of historically underrepresented groups attest, many Americans—particularly those from racialized communities—live decidedly undemocratic lives. Native Americans face a long history of land dispossession and extermination, and for many decades government and religious officials removed Native American children from their families to attend boarding schools in an effort to eliminate indigenous culture and traditions. During World War II, peoples of color found themselves engaging in the conflict on two fronts: the fight against fascism and racist ideologies and practices abroad; and the fight against continued racism at home. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, heightened wartime anxieties and long-standing anti-Asian prejudice led the U.S. government to relocate forcibly nearly 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans from the West Coast to remote incarceration camps, without due process of law. African Americans also remained all too aware of the ironies of the fight against racism abroad, as they served in the U.S. military in segregated troops and continued to experience the discriminatory realities of everyday life in Jim Crow America.
Yet in spite of unequal treatment, brought into full relief during times of war, numerous peoples of color and members of immigrant populations asserted their American identities in military conflicts in the twentieth century and beyond, serving their country with patriotism and valor, and finding opportunities amidst the obstacles. At times wartime service allowed for claims to citizenship, as was the case with indigenous peoples. During World War I, American Indians served in the Armed Forces, fighting and dying in defense of the United States during an era when they were still denied U.S. citizenship. In 1919, however, Congress passed legislation that allowed those American Indian veterans who wished to become U.S. citizens to apply for, and be granted, citizenship.
Peoples of color also looked at military service as a way to prove the loyalty and worthiness of their communities, and thereby to make claims to first-class treatment. Such was the case with the scores of Japanese American men that volunteered to serve in the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team, in spite of the fact that members of their population remained incarcerated on the home front. Likewise, the black press’ positive press portrayals of World War II military service personnel, like the Tuskegee Airmen, an elite group of African American pilots, helped paved the way for the official desegregation of the Armed Forces in 1948. Military service proved equally opportune for Chinese Americans during the Second World War, as stereotypes of the Chinese population as “unassimilable aliens” gave way to depictions of “good” Asians in the wake of anti-Japanese sentiment and China allying itself with the United States. Many Chinese Americans thus joined the war effort in hopes to raise their status in the United States, and in 1943 the federal government repealed the Chinese Exclusion Acts of the late nineteenth century, allowing Chinese immigration for the first time in over 60 years (albeit in very low numbers). Foreign-born Chinese peoples were also given the right to seek naturalization in the United States.
Racial attitudes and discriminatory patterns did not change overnight, however, and many veterans of color learned quickly that their military uniforms did not shield them from systemic racism. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the G.I. Bill, promised money towards college education, low-interest home mortgages, and unemployment benefits to those who served in World War II. Yet inequities abounded as Jim Crow laws prevented black students from attending “white” colleges and universities, and non-whites regularly found themselves excluded from securing home loans and buying homes in suburban neighborhoods. Numerous veterans thus engaged in the larger civil rights movements of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, underscoring their military service and sacrifice, and thereby their right to equal treatment. As demonstrated in the biographies here, in spite of difficult circumstances, veterans of color rose to the occasion and utilized their experience in the military to provide for their families and communities, challenge exclusion, and demonstrate the value of cultural diversity in U.S. society.
