Thoughtful, low-key survey of WW II Hawaii - the "first strange
place" for almost a million US soldiers, sailors, and Marines.
After an obligatory Day of Infamy prologue, Bailey and Farber (both
American History/Barnard College) take a look at pre-WW II America,
an innocent and provincial nation not yet homogenized by TV or
hardened by modern war, and one in which future soldiers from
Kansas, Georgia, and New York could barely understand one other.
The authors then discuss the Hawaii of that time, an isolated,
colonial territory dominated by a white oligarchy and five large
companies, but with - as the resourceful Mabel Thomas, proprietor
of the era's Malahuai dance palace, noted - "Hawaiians, Japanese,
Chinese, Filipino, Portuguese, Puerto Rican, Spanish, Javanese,
[and] Malayan" women mixing it up on the dance floor. The onslaught
of mainland soldiery into this melting pot created a potent
situation, with tens of thousands of male war-workers, most of them
living in vast barracks, forming lines around the block leading to
whorehouses (supported as a necessity by the local elite) that
stank of sweat, cigarettes, and disinfectant, while surrounding
them stood the fragile local culture. Bailey and Farber don't catch
the ear as Somerset Maugham did in describing South Seas life, or
as James Jones did in detailing the ways of WW II soldiers; nor do
they have the epic narrative line of some other recent WW II
histories like George Feller's Tennozan (p. 368). What they do
create here, supported by quotations from diaries and letters of
the time, is a sense of a vast, restless bus terminal where no one
is at home or at ease, populated by men itchy with testosterone,
fear, and disorientation as their boundaries and expectations are
violated - especially true in the case of southern whites. An
engaging study, shedding relevant historical light on today's
multiethnic America. (Kirkus Reviews)
As the forward base and staging area for all U.S. military
operations in the Pacific during World War II, Hawaii was the
"first strange place" for close to a million soldiers, sailors, and
marines on their way to the horrors of war. But Hawaii was also the
first strange place on another kind of journey, toward the new
American society that would begin to emerge in the postwar era.
Unlike the rigid and static social order of prewar America, this
was to be a highly mobile and volatile society of mixed racial and
cultural influences, one above all in which women and minorities
would increasingly demand and receive equal status. Drawing on
documents, diaries, memoirs, and interviews, Beth Bailey and David
Farber show how these unprecedented changes were tested and
explored in the highly charged environment of wartime Hawaii.
General
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