Minorities on the Home Front

Historian Allan M. Winkler, in his 1986 book Home Front U.S.A.: America During World War II, provides the following saying, which was familiar among black Americans during World War II (1939–45), "Here lies a black man killed fighting a yellow man for the protection of a white man." This saying reflected the wartime frustrations of many minorities in the United States. Americans on the home front generally supported the Allies' fight against the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan during World War II. The country was united in its patriotic desire to win the war. However, American minorities felt a contradiction in the wartime experience. While they were fighting overseas to save democracy, freedoms at home were still limited for people of color. Strong racial prejudices, centuries old, still existed in the United States, and racial conflicts on the home front escalated during the war years. Throughout the war, black Americans fought hard for new opportunities on the home front, with limited success; Japanese Americans had their rights as U.S. citizens ignored; and Mexican Americans, though welcomed into the job market, faced the same prejudices as they had in the past.

Black Americans

When the United States entered World War II in late 1941, the largest racial minority group in the United States was black Americans. They made up about 10 percent of the general population. After being freed from slavery only a few generations earlier, blacks still faced daily racial discrimination. In the South, where 75 percent of black Americans lived, racism was particularly bad. In many Southern states the so-called Jim Crow laws enforced legalized segregation (the separation of blacks and whites) in public places such as schools, theaters, and restaurants. In the North, urban ghettos (a section of a city where minorities live, often with overcrowding and poverty) and slums were growing as blacks migrated from the rural South to seek jobs. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and other organizations fought discrimination and segregation, but progress was slow. Blacks continued to be denied access to better education and higher-paying jobs, and life expectancy (the average lifespan of a group of population of people) for black Americans was considerably shorter than for white Americans. Discrimination continued throughout World War II, both in the military and in the civilian workforce.

Black Americans in military service

Like other minorities in America, black Americans hoped that the nation's war needs might improve

race relations on the home front. The United States needed people to help fight the war, and blacks hoped that serving in the military would bring them fair treatment, both in the service and at home. However, a great deal of racial prejudice was ingrained in the military, from top officers to lower ranks. As a result, at the beginning of the war the military draft favored whites over blacks. Blacks who enlisted in the military were assigned to service positions on the home front rather than to overseas combat units.

The army, the air force, and the marines excluded blacks totally at the beginning of the war. In the navy, blacks served only as waiters. Faced with pressure on the home front to change its policy, the army formed several all-black combat units and promoted a black officer, Colonel Benjamin O. Davis (1877–1970), to the rank of brigadier general in October 1940. He was previously a colonel, but President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) was under pressure during the 1940 election campaign from black voters because of the continued racially segregated military. However, the black units could only be led by white officers; Secretary of War Henry Stimson (1867–1950) believed blacks were mentally unfit to be battlefield officers. Many of the white officers assigned to lead black units also had strong racial prejudices and, thus, did not believe blacks could acquire sufficient technical skills for certain tasks or provide leadership. Proposals to integrate combat units drew a negative response from these officers. General George C. Marshall (1880–1959), for example, said that integration would be bad for morale. Even blood donated for medical needs was segregated. Following the guidance of the American Red Cross, the army also kept the blood plasma of blacks and whites separate.

Most black servicemen were assigned to home front service units, where they unloaded supplies, maintained vehicles and equipment, and built barracks and other facilities. Discrimination on the home front against black soldiers was common and widespread. In Kansas a restaurant served German prisoners of war being transported to prisoner camps but not their accompanying black American soldiers.

Progress was made despite these major social hurdles. Black representation in the army rose from less than 98,000 in November 1941 to almost 468,000 in December 1942. The navy began recruiting blacks in 1942, and by late 1944 there were five hundred black sailors. The U.S. Marine Corps also began recruiting blacks. Among the 504,000 U.S. troops serving overseas in the spring of 1943, 79,000 were black. The only black army division to see combat was the Ninety-Second Infantry. In the air force the all-black Ninety-Ninth Pursuit Squadron out of Tuskegee, Alabama, known as the Tuskegee Airmen, excelled in providing protection to bomber squadrons. Bomber squadrons were eager to have the Ninety-Ninth assigned to protect them. Overall, more than a million black Americans would serve in the armed forces throughout the war. Blacks who served abroad returned to the home front with an expanded view of the world and a better appreciation of their abilities. Black Americans were treated more fairly in foreign countries than in the United States and in the military they were given opportunities to develop skills and show their abilities; these opportunities were generally not provided on the home front.

Jobs on the home front

As mobilization of war industries began in 1940, black Americans were still suffering from a 20 percent unemployment rate; the unemployment rate of white Americans at the time was about 10 percent. Black Americans' family income was one-third of what white families made. Blacks worked mostly in unskilled positions, and only 5 percent of black males held professional, white-collar jobs, mostly with black-owned businesses in black communities. Blacks were at first denied access to the new, high-paying war industry jobs. Many companies had "whites only" hiring policies. In 1940, 100,000 workers were employed in the aircraft industry, but only 240 of them were black. These black employees were commonly assigned to low-paying, unskilled positions, serving as janitors and garage attendants, for example. Black women worked primarily as domestic servants or on farms.

Seeing such open discrimination by defense contractors motivated A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979) to take action. Randolph was a black union leader and president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the only all-black union. In January 1941 he called for blacks to march on Washington, D.C., to protest job discrimination. The march was set for July 1. Randolph expected between fifty thousand and a hundred thousand people to join the march. President Roosevelt feared that the event could cause violence in the nation's capital. He also thought it could set back his efforts to unite Americans for the war effort. On June 19, less than two weeks before the scheduled march, Roosevelt met with Randolph and other black leaders to search for a compromise. Randolph and the other black leaders bargained hard for a ban on racial discrimination in private industry and federal employment; they also asked for an end to segregation in the military. When Roosevelt agreed to most of these terms, Randolph called off the march.

To make his agreement with Randolph official, President Roosevelt issued an executive order, Executive Order 8802. It was the first official action Roosevelt had taken on civil rights (rights of personal liberty granted by the U.S. Constitution, such as the right to vote and freedom of speech, assembly, and religion) since he entered office in 1933. In fact, it was the first civil rights action taken by any U.S. president since the 1870s, following the Civil War (1861–65). Roosevelt's executive order banned discrimination in defense industries and government but did not end segregation in the military. The order also established the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), which was put in charge of investigating racial discrimination in the war industries. The FEPC was underfunded and held little power to institute changes, so it had to rely on publicity and persuasion. The commission sometimes threatened to draft into the military those business owners who were shown to discriminate by hiring whites when more qualified blacks had applied. At first the FEPC was placed within the Office of Production Management (OPM). Then it was moved, first to the War Production Board (WPB), then to the War Manpower Commission (WMC), and finally in mid-1943 to the Executive Office of the President. There it became more aggressive in pursuing cases of discrimination. FEPC received eight thousand complaints and resolved about one-third of them until it was disbanded in 1946.

Anti-discrimination measures continue

Roosevelt's executive order helped reduce racial discrimination, but civil rights activists still had plenty of work to do. Polls in 1942 indicated that the majority of white Americans denied any race problems existed in the United States. They believed that blacks worked in inferior jobs because of personal shortcomings, not racial discrimination. Hoping to accelerate positive change on the home front, Americans in favor of ending racial segregation in public places formed the Committee on Racial Equality (CORE) in 1942. They organized various public demonstrations, including sit-ins (occupying seats in a racially segregated public place to protest discrimination) in movie theaters and restaurants.

Faced with unrelenting discrimination on the home front, black Americans adopted the Double V campaign in 1942. "Double V" stood for two victories: military victory overseas and home front victory over racial discrimination. The Pittsburgh Courier, a popular black newspaper, first announced the campaign in February 1942, encouraging readers to support both victory goals. The newspaper immediately received an overwhelming response from black Americans in support of the Double V idea. The paper was a staunch critic of Roosevelt and actually endorsed the Republican candidates for president against Roosevelt in 1940 and 1944. The Courier asserted that Roosevelt had failed to support civil rights and new leadership was needed. President Roosevelt and others in his administration worried that the aggressive tone of the Double V articles and the active campaigning to end racial discrimination that would appear in each issue of the paper could damage national unity—unity that was crucial to the home front war effort. The Double V campaign had succeeded in gaining the attention it sought.

Racial tensions

Worker shortages began to occur in 1943 as American men joined the military in increasing numbers. The shortages meant new job opportunities for black Americans, who eagerly moved to urban areas to work in the war industry. About seven hundred thousand blacks relocated during the war; roughly four hundred thousand of them came from the South. They settled mostly in large cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, California, where new industrial centers had sprung up, and Detroit, Michigan, home of the giant Willow Run plant where large bomber aircraft were produced. With housing in short supply in war industry centers, black workers were often forced to live in high-density ghettos such as the South Side of Chicago. Social services, like food and healthcare, for the impoverished and unemployed in these overcrowded areas were in short supply, and local officials did not go out of their way to provide housing relief for the over-crowded conditions.

Living in overcrowded areas and suffering from continued discrimination, blacks were frustrated. Whites were unwelcoming, partly because of racial prejudice and partly because the black newcomers stretched housing and other resources that were already scarce. Under these conditions, increased interactions between blacks and whites led to race riots and fighting. In 1943 major incidents occurred in Newark, New Jersey; El Paso, Texas; Centreville, Mississippi; Beaumont, Texas; and Camp Stewart, Georgia. When twelve black workers were promoted at a shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, white workers rioted and injured twenty blacks. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, white transit workers went on strike when eight black motor-men were hired to drive the streetcars. President Roosevelt had to send armed troops to end the strike and to act as security guards on the cars.

The worst racial incident occurred in Detroit, where severe over-crowding led to increased tensions. In June 1943, during an intense heat wave, white teenagers and black teenagers began fighting in a crowded city park known as Belle Isle. The fighting escalated to a riot when a rumor spread that whites had thrown a black woman and her baby off a bridge. After dark, groups of blacks went through the city, looting (to rob by force) and fighting. After thirty-six hours of violence, U.S. troops were brought in to restore order. By the time calm was restored, thirty-four people had died, twenty-five of them black, and almost seven hundred had been injured. Some

$2 million of property damage had been done. Local police had done little to stop the beatings of blacks but did shoot several black looters. Another riot erupted two months later in August in New York City's Harlem district after a rumor started that police had killed a black soldier. Black mobs swept through the business district, smashing windows and looting. Six blacks were killed and three hundred injured. Following these riots various communities formed commissions to find ways to prevent further rioting. Coverage of the riots in newspapers and on the radio brought public attention to the plight of black Americans, so whites became somewhat more aware of the problems faced by the black minority.

By 1944 the U.S. Employment Service, which helped find workers for critical war industries, quit accepting whites-only requests from employers, and the National Labor Relations Board stopped certifying unions that excluded blacks.

Home front gains

The number of employed blacks rose from 4.4 million in April 1940 to 5.3 million in April 1944 (1.2 million of these workers held industrial positions). By 1945 more than 8 percent of war industry jobs were held by blacks, up from 3 percent in 1942. The number of skilled black workers doubled as new trades opened up. Most of the increase in job opportunities came in the last years of the war. Blacks also increased their numbers in federal employment from 1942 to 1945—from sixty thousand to two hundred thousand—and received better-paying positions.

President Roosevelt provided little personal support to the cause of racial equality, neither through promoting legislation to protect the rights of blacks nor making racial equality a priority in his administration. He was much more interested in getting production rolling and winning the war. He did not want to get involved in controversial home front issues that would distract from these goals. As a result, discrimination still loomed large in the United States. Blacks were often the first to be laid off when war industries began cutting back. The Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC), which had been in charge of investigating racial discrimination in the war industry, ceased its existence in 1946. Many blacks felt there was still a need for this commission, even though the war industry jobs had come to an end.

World War II brought at least one major change to black Americans: Racial barriers in the military and in industry were lowered. Many blacks considered the war a turning point in their struggle to gain better jobs. In addition, increased black activism during wartime laid the foundation for the civil rights movement that would swell in numbers and eventually pressure Congress into passing major legislation in the mid-1960s to guarantee the exercise of certain basic rights, such as equal access to public places and relief from discriminatory voting requirements. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) increased its membership during the war years, growing from fifty thousand to almost half a million.

Enemy aliens

After the fall of France to Germany in June 1940, fear of political radicals on the home front who might be sympathetic to Germany and Italy grew. On June 28, 1940, Congress passed the Smith Act, which made it illegal to promote the violent over-throw of the U.S. government. The act also required aliens (immigrants who are citizens of a foreign country) to register with the U.S. government, be fingerprinted, and list any organizations they belonged to. Aliens associated with Communist or Fascist organizations would be deported. (Communist organizations promote a political and economic system that bans private ownership of property and limits individual freedoms in order to maintain greater government control. Fascist organizations promote dictatorships based on strong nationalism and often racism. Both Communist and Fascist ideas conflict with America's political and economic systems, democracy and capitalism.) When the Smith Act was passed, aliens made up 3 percent of the U.S. population. A month before the Smith Act became law, President Roosevelt had authorized wiretaps on anyone suspected of subversive (working secretly to overthrow a government) activity. With the Smith Act in place, aliens were targeted for wiretapping. With fears of aliens growing, defense contractors refused to hire workers who looked like they might be from a foreign country, regardless of their citizenship. But when worker shortages began to grow in 1941, Roosevelt spoke out against such job discrimination. He stated that discriminating against aliens and immigrants was wrong and not helpful in the war effort. He asked the Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) to make sure industry employers cooperated with the government's antidiscrimination policies.

After the surprise Japanese attack on U.S. military bases in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, the United States officially entered World War II. All Italian, German, and Japanese aliens in the United States were designated "enemy aliens." Enemy aliens could not possess short-wave radios or cameras, and they were restricted from traveling near important defense installations. They had to carry special identification and could be detained or even deported readily.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested some enemy aliens immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor. They were often taken away abruptly, without any announcement or explanation to their families, and then placed in detention centers established by the U.S. Department of Justice. Eight of these detention centers—essentially prison camps—were located in Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Texas. Later the camps also held German and Japanese prisoners of war. Some Japanese Americans—who were U.S. citizens and not aliens—were taken to two Department of Justice centers called citizen isolation centers in Moab, Utah, and Leupp, Arizona.

In the next few months following Pearl Harbor, U.S. officials debated what to do with all the enemy aliens. Options included mass relocation or continuing detention. Finding little evidence of subversive activity, the government soon eased restrictions on Italian and German aliens. Japanese Americans faced a far more uncertain future.

Japanese Americans

Of all the various groups considered enemy aliens, Japanese Americans and aliens suffered the worst treatment by the U.S. government. The relatively small Japanese American population had always been the target of racial discrimination in the United States. Japanese Americans faced discrimination in hiring and housing. They were barred from marrying whites and were banned from some public places. They could not vote or own land, even if they were American citizens. About 127,000 Japanese Americans lived in the United States at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. Most of them—approximately 112,000—lived in California and along the western coast. They made important contributions to the region's economy through their agricultural production and harvest (principally vegetables) and their ethnic businesses, such as restaurants. However, they held little political power. About 80,000 were Nisei (pronounced "NEE-say"), or native-born U.S. citizens; their children were called Sansei (pronounced "SAN-say"). Roughly 47,000 were Issei (pronounced "EE-say"), Japanese immigrants born in Japan who were not American citizens. Immigration laws passed in 1924 prevented Japanese immigrants from attaining U.S. citizenship.

Executive Order 9066

Because of widespread discrimination, Japanese Americans lived in isolated communities. That raised even more suspicion from outsiders. The surprise raid on Pearl Harbor, carried out by Japanese bombers, had taken the lives of 2,300 American military personnel. This created feelings of hatred against Japan and Japanese people, and some members of the public began to pressure the government to remove Japanese Americans from their West Coast homes. Local

newspapers and politicians fanned the flames of hysteria by mentioning the possibility that Japanese Americans might be conducting espionage and

sabotage. After initially resisting the pressure, Roosevelt finally signed the removal order, Executive Order 9066, on February 19, 1942. All Japanese Americans were affected, even those with only one grandparent of Japanese ancestry. To oversee the removal, the War Department established the War Relocation Authority (WRA), which was headed by Milton Eisenhower (1899–1985), brother of General Dwight Eisenhower (1890–1969). However, Eisenhower left the position after only three months and was replaced by Dillon S. Meyer.

Under the presidential order Japanese Americans had to register at control stations by the end of March. Evacuation notices were posted in prominent public places in and around Japanese American communities. Each family was issued a number and advised what they could take and when to leave. A total of 120,000 Japanese Americans, including men, women, and children, were rounded up beginning in March 1942. Seventy percent of them were U.S. citizens. They could only bring what they could carry, and they had to leave their pets behind. Other Americans took advantage of their plight by buying the homes, cars, and stores from the Japanese Americans at very low prices. The removal of Japanese Americans eliminated some competition in agriculture and small business, a welcome consequence for their competitors. There was no evidence that Japanese Americans were a security threat to the United States. Their relocation was the government's attempt to eliminate a perceived threat.

About 150,000 Japanese Americans lived in Hawaii, making up one-third of the island's population. U.S. military commanders in Hawaii were less prejudiced against these Japanese Americans. They selected a few hundred whose loyalty to the United States was suspect and sent them to the U.S. mainland for detention.

Detained Japanese Americans were taken to temporary holding areas called assembly centers. These centers were located at fairgrounds, exposition centers, stockyards, and racetracks, and at camps no longer used by the Civilian Conservation Corps, a federal agency that provided jobs for young men during the Great Depression. Life drastically changed with the loss of privacy and freedom. For example, families held at racetracks, who not long ago lived in their comfortable homes, were now crowded into horse stalls that acted as their home. The average stay for a family at an assembly center was one hundred days before being transported to a detention camp. At the centers government officials gave the detainees loyalty tests to help determine who the troublemakers might be.

The WRA soon discovered that communities located inland, away from the coast, were unwilling to accept the detainees. Therefore, ten permanent detention camps were hastily constructed in seven states, well away from existing communities. The camps were situated in the barren desert country of California (two camps), Arizona (two camps), Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and Idaho. The two other camps were located in Arkansas swamplands. Surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, the bleak camps consisted of wooden barracks covered with tar paper. Bathing areas, toilets, and eating facilities were public, used by all the detainees, and sanitation was poor. Shocked by the lack of privacy, women wore swimsuits to take showers. The barracks were divided by thin walls into one-room apartments. The apartments were lit with bare lightbulbs and contained very little furniture except cots for sleeping. Each one-room apartment housed one family, but because the walls were so thin, there was no privacy; families could hear all that went on within their barracks. Outside temperatures ranged from suffocating heat in the summer to temperatures below zero in the winter. Sand would blow in through cracks in the thin walls.

Did you know?

• Some of the Japanese American relocation camps have been preserved and interpreted for the public to help guard against similar occurrences in the future. The camp of Manzanar in California has been designated a national historic site and is operated by the U.S. National Park Service. Only the foundations of buildings and traces of the Japanese-style gardens remain.
• On June 29, 2001, a national monument in Washington, D.C., was dedicated to the memory of Japanese Americans in World War II. The memorial contains the names of the eight hundred Japanese Americans who were killed in combat.

Camp life was regimented. Children from elementary to high school age were expected to attend classes. Every morning all the detainees were required to attend the raising of

the American flag and say the Pledge of Allegiance. Detainees were not allowed to do much else, so morale was very low. Some camp jobs were available, such as making camouflage netting for the military, but there was very little incentive to work. Mental depression became a major problem. Riots and fights sometimes would break out among the detainees.

Appalled by their undeserved detention and the deplorable conditions of the camps, several thousand Japanese Americans angrily renounced their U.S. citizenship. Eighteen thousand "disloyal" detainees were sent to camp at Tule Lake, California. Tule Lake, located on a dry lake bed in the desert, was the largest relocation camp. The smallest camp was Grenada in Colorado, which held just over 7,300 detainees. The Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming held 11,000 detainees; it was the third largest community in the state.

Detention camps close

By 1943 detainees who could show evidence of an employment offer were allowed to leave. Although it was not an easy task to find an employer while living in such isolation, some thirty-five thousand detainees succeeded and were able to leave the camps by late 1944.

All the remaining detainees were released in December 1944 as the war was drawing to an end. (Many did not leave until later in 1945 when the camps actually closed.) However, for many of them life did not get much easier for a while. The government provided very little assistance for them to reenter society. Some were even fearful to return to U.S. society, because of the general hostility toward Japanese Americans. Many Japanese Americans were able to integrate back into mainstream society, although their resentment and psychological distress lingered.

Remembering Life in Relocation Camps

Many books have been published that describe what life was like in the remote Japanese American relocation camps; some are firsthand accounts. The first such book, Citizen 13660 by Mine Obuko, was published in 1946. Later publications include I Am an American: A True Story of Japanese Internment by Jerry Stanley (New York: Crown Publishers, 1994); The Invisible Thread by Yoshiko Uchida (New York: Beech Tree Paperback, 1995); Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience, edited by Lawson Fusao Inada (Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2000); The Children of Topaz: The Story of a Japanese-American Internment Camp by Michael O. Tunnell and George W. Chilcoat (New York: Holiday House, 1996); Remembering Manzanar: Life in a Japanese Relocation Camp by Michael L. Cooper (New York: Clarion Books, 2002); and Japanese American Internment during World War II: A History and Reference Guide by Wendy Ng (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002). The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) first televised a program titled Children of the Camps in 1999. Copies are available from the Asian American Telecommunications Association.

For almost three years, Japanese Americans had been stripped of their rights, their dignity, and their property, even though there was never any evidence that they were a security threat. No Japanese American was ever charged with anti-American activities. According to estimates, detainees lost some $400 million in property and income. When the detention was legally challenged, however, the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1944, sided with the government, saying that detention was judged a military necessity.

Japanese Americans in World War II

During World War II thirty-three thousand Japanese Americans were serving in the U.S. armed forces. In 1943 Nisei (native-born U.S. citizens) became eligible to join. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was composed entirely of Japanese Americans. This group fought in Europe and became the most decorated army unit of World War II. One of the decorated Nisei veterans was Daniel Inouye (1924–), who would later represent Hawaii as a senator. In January 1944 Nisei became eligible for the military draft; two from the Heart Mountain detention camp were Medal of Honor winners. Ironically, they were fighting for the same government that imprisoned their families on the home front. Some detainees in the camps contributed to the war effort by making handmade blankets for the Red Cross or buying U.S. war bonds with the small government allowances they were given while detained.

In 1959 U.S. citizenship was restored to Japanese Americans who had renounced it in protest of their treatment. In 1988, more than four decades after the detention, President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004; served 1981–89) signed legislation authorizing payment of $20,000 to each surviving person who had been detained in the camps.

Mexican Americans

The war years provided jobs for Mexican Americans, who only a few years earlier had faced severe racial discrimination and even deportation. About 1.5 million Spanish-speaking people lived in the United States at the time the nation entered the war in 1941. Mexican Americans were by far the most numerous of the Spanish-speaking population. Most lived in the Southwest and West. Some 350,000 Mexican Americans served in the armed forces during World War II.

Like black Americans, Mexican Americans were not able to find jobs at the beginning of the war. For example, no Mexican Americans were employed in Los Angeles shipyards in 1941. However, worker shortages soon opened opportunities for minorities, and many Mexican Americans then took jobs in the war industries. Most worked in the West Coast shipyards and airplane factories. By 1944 seventeen thousand were employed in the Los Angeles shipyards. The hiring of Mexican Americans was also seen in other war industrial centers. To help Americans, including Mexican Americans, living in small isolated communities in the Southwest gain the skills needed for better-paying industrial jobs, the Department of Labor's Office of Education established vocational schools. These schools were located in various cities, including Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico, and training included plumbing, welding, and mechanics.

As many Americans left rural life for military service or higher-paying jobs in the war industry, farm workers grew scarce. U.S. growers looked to Mexico for aliens (immigrants who hold citizenship in a foreign country) who could assist with the work. However, because Mexican American aliens had suffered so much discrimination in the 1930s (through mass deportation to Mexico, including even those with U.S. citizenship who had never lived in Mexico), the Mexican government would not immediately agree to a new worker program. Instead, Mexican officials insisted that the workers' basic human rights be protected. They reached an agreement with the United States in 1942; the agreement provided for food, shelter, medical care, and transportation for alien workers. Several hundred thousand Mexican workers entered the United States through the new worker program, known as the Braceros program (braceros is a Spanish word meaning "day laborers" or "people who work with their arms"). Despite the safeguards, these workers still faced considerable discrimination and poor working conditions in America's fields.

Discrimination in housing, wages, and jobs was present in the industrial centers as well, and it contributed to the formation of Mexican American youth gangs who resented the dominant U.S. culture. Some Mexican American youths wore "zoot suits"—consisting of full coats reaching to mid-thigh, trousers flared at the knees but tight at the ankles, thick-soled shoes, felt "pancake" hats, and long key chains—as a symbol of cultural pride. These outfits were meant to intimidate white Americans because the outfits were different and defiant against standard U.S. cultural values. Violent clashes broke out when servicemen on leave in the cities made advances toward Mexican American young women, many of whom were girlfriends of the gang members. In June 1943 the "zoot suit riot" broke out in Los Angeles, California, when servicemen, claiming revenge, attacked and beat Mexican Americans wearing zoot suits. Civilians and military police stood by and watched as the fighting went on. The Los Angeles City Council eventually banned zoot suits in an attempt to head off further conflict. The Los Angeles incident and similar clashes in other cities raised awareness about prejudice against Mexican Americans. As a result, local citizen groups began working to reduce prejudice and improve the economic status of Mexican Americans.

"Americans All"

"Americans All" was a key slogan that was used to unite U.S. citizens during World War II. The phrase suggests that all Americans shared equal status. However, racial minorities in the United States were not treated as equals by most white Americans. They did not have the same opportunities as white Americans did to contribute to the war effort, on the home front or on the battlefield. Nonetheless, with the dramatic exception of the Japanese Americans, minorities did gain entrance into mainstream America during the war, by serving with distinction in the armed forces or by moving to urban areas where they could improve their economic status. The fears and suspicions of the war years inspired legislation like the Smith Act, but the United States continued to grant citizenship to qualified aliens—two million in all—throughout World War II.

Many black Americans and Mexican Americans who served in the military saw greater acceptance of racial diversity overseas. When they returned to the home front, they refused to accept discrimination any longer. For example, many blacks originally from the South chose to resettle elsewhere after returning. (The South had a lengthy, well-established tradition of racial discrimination extending back to the slavery days of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.) Black Americans worked hard to end discrimination, and their efforts built the foundation for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

For More Information

Books

Acuna, Rodolfo. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. 5th ed. New York: Longman, 2003.

Cooper, Michael L. Fighting for Honor: Japanese Americans and World War II. New York: Clarion Books, 2000.

Daniels, Roger. Prisoners without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II. New York: Hill & Wang, 1993.

Fremon, David K. Japanese-American Internment in American History. Springfield, NJ: Enslow Publishers, 1996.

Kelley, Robin D. G., and Earl Lewis. To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Murray, Alice Yang. What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean? Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000.

Saunders, Kay, and Roger Daniels, eds. Alien Justice: Wartime Internment in Australia and North America Portland, OR: International Specialized Book Services, 2000.

Stanley, Jerry. I Am an American: A True Story of Japanese Internment. New York: Crown, 1994.

Takaki, Ronald T. Democracy and Race: Asian Americans and World War II. New York: Chelsea House, 1995.

Takaki, Ronald T. Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 2000.

Wynn, Neil A. The Afro-American and the Second World War. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1976.

Web Sites

Japanese American National Museum. http://www.janm.org (accessed on July 1, 2004).

National Archives and Records Administration. http://www.nara.gov (contains many digital images of Japanese American internment in section on War Relocation Authority) (accessed on July 1, 2004).

National Japanese American Historical Society. http://www.nikkeiheritage.org (accessed on July 1, 2004).