THE MYTH OF THE GOOD WAR
That there can be a good war is indeed a myth. It is also a slap on the face for those families that lost a loved one in the war. The government wanted to win the war and to do this, they needed two things – support for the war by the citizens, and huge production of products needed at the war front. They censored movies so that the people at home would be for the war. Liberal organizations had to acquiesce to the illegal and inhuman imperatives passed down by the government. Labor organizations had to be subordinated to the government’s demands, so that the members could keep work, work, working. Gender stereotypes were re-enforced so that women would go back to being housewives after the war was over. The racism imposed on the Japanese enabled Americans to feel that they were not fighting other humans but rather, subhuman animals. Government censorship in the motion picture industry: The Office of War Information’s (OWI) Bureau of Motion Pictures assumed responsibility for making sure that moviegoers left those theaters only with government-approved thoughts in their minds. Lacking statutory authority to censor motion pictures, the government accomplished its objective through a combination of broad hints, appeals to patriotism and profits, and implied threats. The OWI wanted movies to extol the virtues of the American way of life and to portray the Allies as models of righteousness and the Axis as embodiments of evil. The OWI’s most effective threat was that films falling short of expectations would be denied export licenses, thereby cutting into their margin of profitability. The OWI in the movie Bataan, urged the studio to play up the prominence of two Filipino soldiers and applauded the inclusion of a black private, although, of course, combat units were not then integrated.
The acquiescence of liberals to wartime “imperatives”: In February 1942, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the executive order banning 8,000 Japanese Americans from the west coast, prominent civil libertarians, including most members of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) executive board, failed to condemn the step. The majority view of those in the ACLU was closer to that expressed by one of their leaders Alexander Meikelijohn: “…The Japanese citizens, as a group, are dangerous both to themselves and to their fellow citizens.”
The subordination of organized labor’s interests by its own leadership, to government policies: Shortly after the United States entered the war, representatives of labor and management had agreed on a no-strike pledge. By 1943, however, many workers, dissatisfied with wages and job conditions, pressed for a more militant policy. They called for revoking the pledge and often resorted to wildcat strikes. Union leaders on the other hand, nearly always advised caution and adherence to the agreement. “Let our slogan be WORK, WORK, WORK, PRODUCE, PRODUCE, PRODUCE,” said CIO official Philip Murray, and other leaders reiterated that motto even when members had legitimate grievances. When union members at Ford’s River Rouge plant discovered that management was planning to provoke a strike, they caused a violent disruption at the factory’s labor-relations office. In retaliation, Ford dismissed twenty workers, some of whom had not even taken part in the disturbance but were union activists. United Automobile Workers’ representative R. J. Thomas nevertheless backed the company’s decision and said “Public opinion has become inflamed against our union, there can be no such thing today as a legitimate picket line. Any person who sets up picket lines is acting like an anarchist, not like a disciplined union man.”
The active reinforcement of gender stereotypes: Even though millions of women entered the work force, many in jobs that had traditionally been reserved for men, the consensus among historians is that the war thwarted any potential for a significant alteration in gender roles. The war usually reinforced sex segregation in the workplace. A few women did jobs done by men, but more often than not women worked in a predominantly female department or job classification. The number of female employees at the Pennsylvania Railroad rose during the war from 2,400 to nearly 24,000, but women overwhelmingly filled traditional female jobs as clerks, stenographers, and switchboard operators. A war job was a vehicle through which a woman shouldered her civic and moral duties; any suggestion of individualistic or self-interested motives was disapproved. These attitudes inevitably prepared the ground for the mass layoff of women once the war was over.
The government sanctioning of racism: The current of wartime repression, also exerted a powerful pull in the area of race. Even while America condemned the Nazis’ racial doctrines, they accepted odious stereotypes of the Japanese. Americans saw Japanese as subhuman they were depicted as monkeys, baboons, dogs, rats & rattlesnakes. It was often said they hissed like snakes. The Red Cross and the armed forces adhered to their policies of segregating the blood plasma of black and white donors. Few official practices seemed better calculated to offend African-Americans, who pointed out that the policy “coincides with the Nazi philosophy of superior blood.”