AMST2001 Chloe Rattray

The Second World War was fought for democracy and freedom, but these concepts failed to be
extended to all Americans during the period of war.

World War II was fought with the simple idea of freedom at its core. On the 6
th
of January 1941,
Franklin Roosevelt made a speech outlining the four freedoms that every person should inherently
possess: the freedoms of speech and religion and the freedom from fear and want. The right to
these freedoms should not just be extended to Americans, he said, but to all the citizens of the
world. This became the rallying call and the driving ideology behind the United States involvement
in the war. Men and women from all across the country came together and fought to preserve these
perceived freedoms; they were outraged both by the attack on their freedom at home and the
hateful crimes being perpetrated across the ocean in Europe. Seemingly, they were nonplussed
towards the sanctioned mistreatment of minorities right under their noses which spat in the face of
Roosevelts speech. We know now that if we lose this war it will be generations or even centuries
before our conception of democracy can live again, Roosevelt told the American public in 1942
1
,
but that conception of democracy failed to include the large majority of people living in the United
States who werent white. Institutional racism towards African, Japanese, Latin, and Native
Americans was still rampant in the forms of segregation and limited civil rights. This paper argues
that the values of freedom and democracy were only available on the basis of race, evident through
the continued mistreatment of African Americans, the persecution and internment of innocent
Japanese Americans, and the unchanged attitudes towards those coloured Americans who fought in
the war once it was over.

African Americans
African Americans during war time had less civil rights than almost any other minority. They could
only vote in theory, and they certainly werent free from want or fear. Men, women, and children
faced inequality in every sector as segregation was still in full swing. This included the segregation of
the armed forces. Many African Americans joined the war effort in what ways they could, primarily
by entering the army. For those men and women, it was a chance to win democracy for
[themselves] at home and to help win the war for democracy the world over.
2
It was declared that

1
Franklin D Roosevelt, Fireside Chat, February 23, 1942 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16224
2
The Social Impact of World War II Major Problems in American History 1920-1945, Cengage Learning 1999,
p.405
AMST2001 Chloe Rattray
the African American percentage of the population would be reflected in the armed forces, but
blacks continued to be excluded through organisations such as the New England army headquarters
who ordered that blacks be rejected from draft boards. Similarly, in 1940 the War Department
ordered Connecticuts quotas to be filled by only white citizens.
3
Measures were put in place so the
Negro percentage could not be filled completely, but approximately 10% of the armed forces
throughout the period of war were African Americans
4
. Another measure taken to prevent African
Americans from gaining entry or getting the positions they wanted was the Army General
Classification Test, an intelligence exam which provided convenient cover for an institution that was
determined to find a rationalization for racial discrimination
5
and served as yet another way to
disenfranchise African Americans. All of these preventative measures sprouted from the widespread
belief amongst white Americans that blacks were not good enough, not even to fight for freedoms
that they themselves did not possess.
The presence of segregation in the armed forces was a major cause of disillusionment for those who
managed to get in, as they rarely got posted in battalions that would see combat, and the attitudes
they encountered within were often more extreme than those they encountered at home. The
majority of African Americans enlisted in the armed forces were from the south but the troops who
enlisted from northern states were unused to the severe attitudes of the white, southern leaders.
They especially resented the way they were treated. They were not accustomed to being called
nigger, or to the Jim Crow restrictions on and off base.
6
The idea of segregation even followed
black troops overseas to Britain, where there existed no social or economic barriers between black
and white citizens. Acts of verbal and physical abuse amongst U.S. troops based on race forced
British authorities to adopt and enforce American segregationist measures to keep the peace.
7

Through a combination of laws and deep-set racist beliefs, African Americans were robbed of the
freedoms they were fighting to secure.


3
Nat Brandt, Harlem at War: The Black Experience in WWII, Syracuse University Press 1996, p.100
4
Selective Service and Victory: The 4
th
Report of the Director of Selective Service The United States Army
Centre of Military History. Washington Government Printing Office, 1948, pp.187-90
http://www.history.army.mil/documents/WWII/minst.htm
5
George White, Jr., I Am Teaching Some of The Boys: Chaplain Robert Boston Dokes and Army Testing of
Black Soldiers in World War II, The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 81, pp. 200-217
6
Brandt, Harlem at War, pp.102-3
7
Brandt, Harlem at War, p.105
AMST2001 Chloe Rattray
Japanese Americans
Perhaps the most anti-democratic and least talked about act of hypocrisy of the war period was the
mistreatment of Japanese Americans, beginning with the arrest of thousands of first generation
aliens on no grounds except race directly after the bombing of Pearl Harbour in 1941 and continuing
until the disbandment of internment camps at end of 1944. Oppression of the Japanese American
minority began long before Japans involvement in World War II; in fact, anti-Japanese sentiment
had been prevalent since the late nineteenth century when the anti-Chinese ideas blended into a
general distrust of Orientals. Japanese immigrants were denied civil liberties through a series of
discriminatory orders passed in the early 1900s which restricted immigration, citizenship, land-
owning rights, and several short-lived acts passed by the San Francisco school board in 1906 which
aimed to segregate Japanese students. President Theodore Roosevelt was vehemently against these
acts, and received largely negative reactions from Californian newspapers, the congressional
delegation, and Southern democrats when he announced to Congress his vow to protect all the
rights of Japanese American aliens and citizens.
8
35 years later, another Roosevelt was stripping
them all of their basic rights by passing Executive Order 9066.
Unlike most German and Italian Americans, Japanese Americans were subject to the suspicion of
treachery and espionage. Widespread fear and distrust brewed with every report of fifth columnist
Japanese troops in South East Asia
9
. The idea of the Japanese as a wily and conniving people was not
new in the United States, but the more news they received of Japans military activity, the more
basis they had for arguments for internment post-Pearl Harbour. In fact:
Japans unbridled ambition and ruthlessness and its hostility to America were
indisputable historical facts known well and widely before Pearl Harbour. After December 7,
1941, it would have been unforgivably irresponsible of American officials to ignore the
possibility of attacks on the mainland and the horrific threat Imperial forces might pose to
our soldiers and civilians alike.
10

The disparity between the democracy and freedoms available to white Americans and those
available to Japanese Americans was never clearer than when Roosevelt put Executive Order 9066

8
Robert C. Kennedy "For Heaven's Sake Do Not Embarrass the Administration!" On this Day, 1906, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/1110.html
9
Michelle Malkin, In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World War II and the War on
Terror, Regnery Publishing 2004, pp.14-16
10
Malkin, In Defense of Internment: The Case for "Racial Profiling", p.13
AMST2001 Chloe Rattray
into action and enabled the forceful relocation of over 100,000 Japanese people, the majority of
which were second and even third generation Americans.
Comparisons between the German camps for which internment is a kind euphemism and the
camps in the western United States fall short when it comes to conditions but part of the
undesirable connotation does apply: people were taken from their homes with little to no warning
and kept away from their homes for the duration of the war, based on no evidence except their
race. Abbie Salyers sums it up thus:
In all the Japanese American literature pertaining to the World War II experience,
[historians] are yet to find any reasonable attempt to equate the two experiences; however,
the tactics remain the same.
11

Although their conditions were nowhere near as dire as the concentration camps of Europe, theres
no denying that Roosevelts four freedoms were nowhere to be found in the Japanese internment.
The values of fairness and democracy that soldiers some of them distinguished and decorated
Japanese soldiers were fighting to protect and extend to those across the ocean were somehow
overlooked on the home front under the pretences of fear and national hysteria.

Mexican and Latino Americans
Discrimination and a lack of civil liberties were also present during the war period amongst the
Latino and more specifically Mexican Americans. There had been a long and storied history of anti-
Mexican and Hispanic sentiment in the United States since before the turn of the 20
th
century, and it
was carried into World War II along with every other racist belief surrounding minorities. Although
the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo meant that some of the Mexican Americans living in ceded territory
were still technically American citizens and considered white, they were successfully disenfranchised
by the people who migrated to the newly American states after the war with Mexico. The areas
most populated by Mexican American aliens and citizens alike were those closest to the border and
coincidentally those which harboured more racial prejudices than the times demanded, making
them natural targets of the race-based discrimination
12
By the economic crash of the 1930s, the

11
Abbie Lynn Salyers, The Internment of Memory: Forgetting and Remembering the Japanese American WWII
Experience, ProQuest 2009, p.6
12
Richard Griswold de Castillo, World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights, University of Texas Press 2008,
p.11
AMST2001 Chloe Rattray
Mexican American population had been marked as the scapegoat for the growing unemployment
problem and repatriation began, voluntary at first and then less so. Similarly to African Americans,
they were under the rule of segregation by the time of World War II and in the eyes of white
Americans they were members of a ragged race of inferiors provided by providence to do the
regions most unpleasant work.
13
Unlike the black Americans, they were not targeted for
segregation within the armed forces, and a combination of national fervour and hope for a career
outside of industry or agriculture led an estimated 350,000 Mexican Americans to enlist.
14

Several things made the Latino American troops so efficient in the theatre of war. Firstly, their
invaluable fluency in Spanish made them heroes when stationed in the Philippines. More
importantly, they had the urge to prove themselves and earn the freedoms the white soldiers
around them had back in the United States.
15
Their involvement in the military won them 13 Medals
of Honour during World War II and perhaps this would have been enough if the stigmas about
Mexican and Latino Americans werent so deeply rooted in racism and inequality. Their
disillusionment came upon returning home from the war and finding that they too had been duped
into fighting a war that changed nothing for them once they returned. Regardless of their medals
and achievements, they were still considered inferior when the war was over and their bodies were
no longer needed to fill the front lines.

The opportunities that the war opened up in terms of paying jobs in industry and stations within the
military paved the way for African and Latino American civil rights in the following decades. The
ordeal that was the Japanese internment and to a lesser extent, the internment of German and
Italian Americans also contributed to the rising passion in minorities to gain the liberties they
fought for in the early 1940s. That having been said, the discrimination and mistreatment of these
minorities cannot be brushed aside because the successes of their respective civil rights movements
can be traced back to their actions during the war.

13
Griswold de Castillo, World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights, p.7
14
Los Veteranos: Latino Americans in WWII, The Nation WWII Museum New Orleans,
http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-students/ww2-history/at-a-glance/latino-
americans-in-ww2.html
15
Los Veteranos: Latino Americans http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-
students/ww2-history/at-a-glance/latino-americans-in-ww2.html
AMST2001 Chloe Rattray
To say that World War II was fought for the ideals of freedom and democracy is only partly correct; it
was fought to preserve white freedom and white democracy, at home and overseas. When
Roosevelt told the American people to [remember] that the common enemy seeks to destroy every
home and every freedom in every part of our land
16
, a large number of the people listening to his
fireside chat didnt have those freedoms. When he pleaded with the wartime nation that in time of
crisis when the future is in the balance, we come to understand, with full recognition and devotion,
what this Nation is, and what we owe to it
17
, he didnt spare a thought to what he and every white
citizen owed to those without the privilege of race: a slice of the freedom pie, and a share of the
liberties that the country was built on.
















16
Roosevelt, Fireside Chat, February 23, 1942 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16224
17
Roosevelt, Fireside Chat, February 23, 1942 http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16224
AMST2001 Chloe Rattray
Appendix
Below is a section of a transcript of President Roosevelts February 23, 1942 Fireside Chat, found at
The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16224

We are calling for new plants and additions to old plants. We are calling for plant conversion to
war needs. We are seeking more men and more women to run them. We are working longer hours.
We are coming to realize that one extra plane or extra tank or extra gun or extra ship completed
tomorrow may, in a few months, turn the tide on some distant battlefield; it may make the
difference between life and death for some of our own fighting men. We know now that if we lose
this war it will be generations or even centuries before our conception of democracy can live again.
And we can lose this war only if we slow up our effort or if we waste our ammunition sniping at each
other. Here are three high purposes for every American:
1. We shall not stop work for a single day. If any dispute arises we shall keep on working while the
dispute is. solved by mediation, conciliation, or arbitration- until the war is won.
2. We shall not demand special gains or special privileges or special advantages for any one group or
occupation.
3. We shall give up conveniences and modify the routine of our lives if our country asks us to do so.
We will do it cheerfully, remembering that the common enemy seeks to destroy every home and
every freedom in every part of our land.
This generation of Americans has come to realize, with a present and personal realization, that there
is something larger and more important than the life of any individual or of any individual group-
something for which a man will sacrifice, and gladly sacrifice, not only his pleasures, not only his
goods, not only his associations with those he loves, but his life itself. In time of crisis when the
future is in the balance, we come to understand, with full recognition and devotion, what this Nation
is, and what we owe to it








AMST2001 Chloe Rattray
Bibliography

1. Los Veteranos: Latino Americans in WWII, The National WWII Museum New Orleans.
[ONLINE] Available at: http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-
students/ww2-history/at-a-glance/latino-americans-in-ww2.html [Accessed on 16 May
2013]
2. The Social Impact of World War II, Major Problems in American History 1920-1945. 1999.
C. Gordon New York: Houghton Mifflin.
3. Brandt, Nat, 1996. Harlem at War: The Black Experience in WWII. First ed. Syracuse
University Press
4. Griswold de Castillo, Richard 2008. World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights,
University of Texas Press.
5. Kennedy, Robert C., 2001. For Heaven's Sake Do Not Embarrass the Administration!" On
this Day, 1906, [ONLINE] Available at:
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/1110.html [Accessed 16 May
2013]
6. Malkin, Michelle, 2004. In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World
War II and the War on Terror, Regnery Publishing
7. Rodriguez, Clara E.,2000. Changing Race: Latinos, the Census, and the History of Ethnicity,
New York, New York University Press.
8. Roosevelt, Franklin D., Feb 23 1942. Fireside Chat [ONLINE] Available at:
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16224 [Accessed 17 May 2013]
9. Salyers, Abbie Lynn, 2009. The Internment of Memory: Forgetting and Remembering the
Japanese American WWII Experience, ProQuest Publishing
10. White Jr, George, 2012. I Am Teaching Some of The Boys: Chaplain Robert Boston Dokes
and Army Testing of Black Soldiers in World War II, The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 81,
No. 3, Special Issue: Testing and Assessing African Americans: Past, Present, and Future
Problems and Promises.

11. The United States Army Centre of Military History, 1948. Selective Service and Victory: The
4
th
Report of the Director of Selective Service. Washington Government Printing Office
[ONLINE] Available at: http://www.history.army.mil/documents/WWII/minst.htm [Accessed
on 16 May 2013]