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Double Victory : A Multicultural History of America in World War II
Double Victory A Multicultural History of America in World War II Author:Ronald Takaki " Until now, the story of America's role in World War II has been presented primarily through the lives of powerful policymakers and generals, or through the heroism of American soldiers of predominantly European ancestry. Award-winning historian Ronald Takaki's multicultural history offers a different perspective. In Double Victory, history is ... more »told through the lives of ordinary, ethnically diverse Americans -- a Tuskegee pilot wanting to fly and fight for freedom, a Navajo code talker using his native language to transmit battle messages, a Mexican-American woman riveting B-29 bombers in an airplane factory, a Japanese American feeling betrayed by his own government, and a Jewish-American soldier at Buchenwald pressing human ashes into his palm so that he would never forget what he had seen. Takaki scrutinizes the contradictions of the "good war." The war for the "Four Freedoms" was fought by a Jim Crow army; jobs in the "arsenal of democracy" were not open to all regardless of race; bloody race riots in the cities denied "freedom from fear" to blacks and Mexicans; the fight against Nazism was accompanied by the failure of our government to rescue Jewish refugees; and the leader of the free world signed the executive order for the internment of Japanese Americans. However, Takaki shows that minorities were not just victims but also actors in history, making choices and taking actions to insist that their nation live up to its founding principle of equality and to defend the world's unfinished, but best hope for, democracy. What emerges from Takaki's study is the affirming story of how minorities fought for a "double victory" against fascism abroad and prejudice at home."« less