7 Comments

"Can we learn from the past?", Kevin asks.

As a fair number of commentators have said, such as Churchill, America has always done the right thing, but only after it has tried every other alternative!

After reading this column and the comments, this occurs to me as a strong corollary to that quip: "Americans may remember their history, but only after first refusing to learn anything from it."

Kevin: your post is even more fittingly ironic than I realized when I started this comment!

Countless examples stain US military history post-CW: the mistreatment of Pilipinos after The Philippines were taken from Spain. Unsure what-who these new colonials were, American political cartoonists caricaturized "Negro" stereotypes and slurs on them. Despite having been Catholicized by the Spanish for three centuries or so, President McKinley withdrew his pledge to grant them colonists their freedom until further colonization "Christianized" them!

Little need be cited about the faux New Jersian who resegregated the federal civil service and US Navy. Over the next quarter-century, African Americans were again deemed incompetent to serve as warriors (except in Buffalo Soldier cavalry units) until extreme military necessity compelled FDR to authorize the 761st Tank Bttn, the Tuskegee Airmen, and sailors but only if they all were segregated.

My uncle enlisted right after Pearl Harbor and like all Nisei, was shunted into a service battalion until FDR finally liked the idea of a "suicide battalion" of Nisei in 1944. Unc was trained as a medic but not assigned until he got into the new 442, as a rifleman. Issei and other Asians were allowed to serve in the US Navy earlier (my grandfather served on the USS Kearsarge in 1906), but only in roles such as busboys and kitchen help, or like the actor Mako in 'Sand Pebbles', mechanics' assistants. My three uncles who served all got and used their GI Bill benefits. The African American vets who lived in the Deep South were cheated by the Congressmen who prevailed on federal bureaucrats to redline residential zones or simply write these vets as unqualified for the benefits and loans.

Back to Pilipinos, the young men performing West Coast farm labor and factory work weren't allowed to enlist, until 1942 when a regiment of Fil-Am infantry were recruited. It was so immediately oversubscribed that a second regiment was allowed. Congress promised, again, that The Philippines would have both independence as a stalwart American ally but also dual citizenship. Immediately after the war, the nation got its independence (just how much it was to set up the anti-Red defensive screen off the Asian continent, you can guess). Congress reneged on the promised Citizenship and veterans benefits in 1946. (My wife was on Rep Nancy Pelosi's staff in 2009 when Pelosi got veterans benefits for by-then very elderly WW2 vets through Congress, when the GOP wasn't looking. We helped in the effort and were proud to walk with an honor guard when the ceremony in their honor was held here in San Francisco. Memory only took 63 years and a consummate politician who cared!)

One of our acquaintances is Betty Reid Soskin, the 102-year old NPS ranger who retold how she finally was allowed into the war factories; however, she and other Black women were denied factory production line work and relegated to clerical duties. Surprise? racism here, there, now, then, everywhere and every time!

Soskin said she once met a young sailor at a weekly party she and her then-husband hosted for Black sailors at Port Chicago -- that was on the weekend before the nuclear-level detonation of ammo transport ships occurred there. Stories circulated that these sailors were treated by Southern officers as slaves, even holding races to see which ship's laborers could carry their ammo loads faster up the gangplanks and into the holds. 70 years later, Soskin was still bothered by the memory of the young sailor who paid his respects to his hostess, as he had to report to duty at Port Chicago.

Using Black servicemen to race with live ammo in a military port, in July 1944? The 1864 pro-Confederate cartoon showing slaves used as cannon carriages proves that Confederate/Southern memories are entirely and perfectly circular! This brainless and soulless circuit required 80 years. (In 1994 the feds recognized the memory of these sailors with a memorial; "On July 17th, 2024, the Port Chicago 50, along with the 208 men who initially refused to work and were subsequently court-martialed, were officially exonerated by the Secretary of the Navy." (NPS webpage)

Another 80 years. In the local news this summer there was coverage and I think one of those 208 court-martialed sailors was still alive to attend.

Rueful thanks, Kevin !!

Expand full comment

Thanks for this post.

What an appalling cartoon, with those cannons. That’s not a complaint or criticism. It’s just a statement about something that in my view is necessary for people to see. It’s appalling, but I’m glad that I now know about it.

And I was glad to see this statement: “It was the enslaved population that helped to instigate the changes that gradually eroded the institution of slavery in the Confederacy and pushed the United States ever closer to a policy of emancipation.”

As I’ve said here before, and elsewhere, my view is that that crucial factor in the political evolution of emancipation is too little recognized.

But nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that Americans will esteem the Civil War‘s multitudes of freedom-striving, emancipation-forcing slavery escapees. Just not yet.

Expand full comment

Kevin,

Thank you for this. I have a chapter in my book about the controversy and the enlistment of Black soldiers during the war. This is a really insightful article which I will share with others in our field and elsewhere.

As always, all the best,

Steve Dundas

Expand full comment

Thanks for the feedback, Steven.

Expand full comment

After reading this post, I realize that I have been trying to identify which one of my civil war soldier ancestors were racists by the color of their uniform.

Expand full comment

In addition to the differnces in color of the uniform and the war aims, you might consider what each side did when confronted with evidence that their racist theories were wrong. Only one side reacted by refusing to take or exchange such people as prisoners of war.

Expand full comment

Hi Candee,

Thanks for the response. My goal here is not to collapse the distinction between the United States and the Confederacy. I've always maintained that the right side won that war, but we need to appreciate the ways in which the war represented continuity with the antebellum period. It comes down to the fact that most white Americans, regardless of where they lived, embraced racist ideas.

Expand full comment