Fighting Words

Fighting Words A POSTWAR JOURNAL BY FRANCIS DAVIS FIGHTING WORDS: dented in immediacy and unanimity. Ours, even in the fraction which has the experience at all, is essentially specialized, lonely, A POSTWAR JOURNAL bitter and sterile; our great majority will emerge from the war almost as if it had never taken place; and not all the lip-service in the world about internationalism will make that different.” James Agee, “So Proudly We Fail,” The Nation, Oct. 30, 1943 1. TOTAL WAR I hate to argue with James Agee, for whom my respect borders on hero wor- ship. He was the film critic most worth reading before Pauline Kael, who was almost certainly influenced by him (she could have been sounding her own bat- tle cry when she wrote that his “greatness” as a critic, like that of André Bazin, came from responding to movies with his “full range of intelligence and intu- ition, rather than relying on formulas”). He was right about Americans fighting in parts of the world they knew nothing about: “After this war is over, I’ll have e suffer — we vaguely to buy a map to see where I’ve been,” a weary U.S. foot soldier pushing back the r e a l i z e—a unique and constantly intensifying schizophrenia 190 W Nazis in Italy says in William Wellman’s “The Story of G.I. Joe” (1945), one of 191 which threatens no other nation involved in this war. Geography is Agee’s favorite movies and one of mine. But everything else about Agee’s assess- the core of the disease. Those Americans who are doing the fight- ment of the impact of the Second World War on life in the U.S., and on its men ing are doing it in parts of the world which seem irrelevant to them; those who are not remain untouched, virginal, prenatal, overseas, was dead wrong. while every other considerable population on earth comes of age. Writing in the fall of 1943, just after Rommel’s defeat in North Africa, Agee In every bit of information you can gather about breakdowns of could take an eventual Allied victory for granted—something no one would American troops in combat, overseas, even in the camps, a sense of have been ready to do just a year earlier: unutterable dislocation, dereliction, absence of contact, trust, wholeness, and reference, in a kind and force that no other sol- We know how it turned out, and so it is hard to imagine it might diers have to suffer, clearly works at the root of the disaster. have been different. In retrospect the American war machine Moreover, while this chasm widens and deepens daily between seems so powerful, its industrial capacity so awesome, its scientif- our fighting and civilian populations and within each mind, anoth- ic prowess so elegant, that the outcome of the war must have been er—much deeper and wider than any which geography alone a foregone conclusion. It was not so early in the war… Pearl could impose —forms and increases between this nation and the Harbor, Wake, Bataan, Corregidor, Manila and all the Philippines, other key nations of the world. Their experience of war is unprece- Singapore, the linchpin of the British Empire in Southeast Asia— PREVIOUS SPREAD : Women working in Douglas Assembly Plant during World War II. FIGHTING WORDS FRANCIS DAVIS outpost after outpost fell, and it was even feared for a time that Look what happened in the midterm elections in 1942. Roosevelt General MacArthur had been captured. was still very popular, but there was a lot of dissatisfaction with Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, the war. We hadn’t struck out at Germany yet. And there were “Hollywood Goes to War” huge grievances at home. People couldn’t drive their private cars, because gasoline was being rationed. And the worst thing that The late summer of 1942 was perhaps the darkest period of the happened was three days before the midterm election, the coffee war for the Allies. In North Africa, the Axis forces under Field administrator announced only one cup of coffee a day. Well, to a Marshal Rommel were sweeping into Egypt; in Russia, they had coffee-drinking public, that was it. penetrated the Caucasus and launched a gigantic offensive against Doris Kearns Goodwin Stalingrad. In the Atlantic, even to the shores of the United States on “Meet the Press,” May 26, 2001 and in the Gulf of Mexico, German submarines were sinking Allied ships at an unprecedented rate. (The loss of 50 Democratic seats in the House and eight in the Senate The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition doomed the passage of any more New Deal legislation and set the stage for the postwar Congressional witch hunts.) The war touched all Americans, and some of its effects were pro- The Continental U.S. wasn’t bombed, and with the shameful exception of found. Nearly 10 percent of the country’s population served in the those Japanese-Americans whose loyalty was called into question and who were armed forces. For them, and for their loved ones, the threat of sent to internment camps, no one was driven from his home. But this was total 192 death was a harrowing reality. But the war was omnipresent in 193 lesser ways too…. Even the mundane aspects of daily consumption war, one in which Roosevelt had called for civilian involvement. There were no reminded one of the pervasive effects of the war: spreading oleo American war refugees. But there were massive population shifts, and the instead of butter on your morning toast, carpooling and using pub- dynamics of American life were never the same. lic transportation because of rationed tires and nonexistent new cars [Detroit’s assembly lines had been diverted to the production Even as World War II was transforming Detroit into the Arsenal of of tanks and bombers and PT boats], riding all night sitting on your Democracy, cultural and social upheavals brought about by the suitcase because the train was overcrowded [with seating priority need for workers to man the bustling factories threatened to turn being given to servicemen going on leave or returning from one], the city into a domestic battleground. relatives saving sugar for weeks so Dick and Mary could have a Recruiters toured the South convincing white and blacks wedding cake. Of course the war’s disruptions in the Continental to head north with promises of high wages in the new war facto- United States paled by comparison with the death and devastation ries. They arrived in such numbers that it was impossible to house endured by millions of Europeans and Asians. Nonetheless, to the them all. stock line “Don’t you know there’s a war going on,” changes both Blacks who believed they were heading to a promised land large and small provided a ready answer. found a northern bigotry as pervasive and virulent as what they Koppes and Black thought they had left behind in the Deep South. And southern whites brought their own traditional prejudices with them as both races migrated northward. FIGHTING WORDS FRANCIS DAVIS The influx of newcomers strained not only housing, but trans- Returning home was an improbable option, with all the messy portation, education and recreational facilities as well. Wartime questions it would raise. Most of the men discharged from the residents of Detroit endured long lines everywhere, at bus stops, Pacific Theater were processed out in San Francisco, and that’s grocery stores, and even newsstands where they hoped for the where they stayed. By the end of World War II, the military chance to be first answering classified ads offering rooms for rent. establishment had given San Francisco a disproportionately large Even though the city enjoyed full employment, it suffered the number of identified gays. many discomforts of wartime rationing. Child-care programs were Randy Shilts, “The Mayor of Castro Street: nonexistent, with grandma the only hope—provided she wasn’t The Life & Times of Harvey Milk,” 1982 already working at a defense plant. Vivian M. Baulch and Patricia Zacharias, Though reliable statistics are difficult to come by, there was a notable The Detroit News (from the paper’s web site) increase in juvenile delinquency during the war—not surprising, given the number of homes that were now fatherless, at least temporarily. (Sixteen mil- The black population of Detroit doubled to 200,000 between 1940 and lion American men served in the Armed Forces during the war, and because the 1943. There were race riots there and in New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, draft took men up to the age of 35, many of them had already started families.) St. Louis, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Mobile, Beaumont, Texas and Washington, With so many men in uniform on the prowl while they waited to be shipped out, D.C., in the summer of 1943. There were other changes, some of them not there was also an increase in teenage prostitution. Those underage hookers who 194 so obvious. were especially patriotic called themselves “victory girls.” Their customers 195 included young men not much older than themselves who were desperate to The military speeded San Francisco’s growth into a gay center. The lose their virginity before risking their lives in a foreign land. Second World War marked the first conflict in which the armed services tried to systematically identify and then exclude homo- 2. WAR BABY sexuals. In the process of examining the nearly 36 million men eligible for service, thousands were found to be homosexual and classified as such by the draft boards.

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