Myths and Realities

World War II

The “Good War”?

“The title of this book was suggested by Herbert Mitgang, who experienced World War Two as an army correspondent. It is a phrase that has been frequently voiced by men of his and my generation, to distinguish that war from other wars, declared and undeclared. Quotation marks have been added, not as a matter of caprice or editorial comment, but simply because the adjective ‘good’ mated to the noun ‘war’ is so incongruous.”

~Studs Terkel, “The Good War,” 1984

“Wars provided opportunities to sharpen American national identity…to transform millions of Americans whose loyalty was uncertain into ardent patriots…They were occasions for drawing firm boundaries around the national community and for intensifying popular devotion to its most cherished ideals.”

~Gary Gerstle

The Great Depression

“For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.”

~Speech before the 1936 Democratic National Convention

December 7, 1941

Remember Pearl Harbor!

The USS Arizona

Freedom and Liberty

“Double Victory”?

African AmericansMexican AmericansJapanese

AmericansNative Americans

African Americans In War

W.E.B DuBois“…the Negro is a sort of seventh

son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

~The Souls of Black Folk (1903)

Dorie Miller

“When the Japanese bomber attacked my ship at Pearl Harbor I forgot all about the fact that I and other Negroes can be only mess-men in the Navy.”

Job Discrimination

“Our war is not against Hitler in Europe, but against Hitler in America. Our war is not to defend democracy, but to get a democracy we have never had.”

Ira Hayes

The “Zoot-Suit” Riots

Anti-Japanese Sentiment

Executive Order 9066—The Internment Camps

“Wars provided opportunities to sharpen American national identity…to transform millions of Americans whose loyalty was uncertain into ardent patriots…They were occasions for drawing firm boundaries around the national community and for intensifying popular devotion to its most cherished ideals.”

~Gary Gerstle