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"Forget All Differences until the Forces of Freedom Are Triumphant": The World War II–Era Quest for Ethnic and Religious Tolerance
ROBERT L. FLEEGLER
IN NOVEMBER 1942, Louis Adamic, a public intellectual who wrote several books about the role of immigrants in American society, authored an article in the New York Times Magazine titled "No 'Hyphens' This Time." Adamic commented on the lack of punitive action against recent immigrants during the war: "So far in this war—aside from the campaign against the Japanese group on the Pacific Coast, which was old-time exclusionism hitched to a potentially serious military problem—there has been no great hue and cry about the 'foreigners.'"1 He suggested that Americans were beginning to think anew about diversity:
The result is the partial but continuing breaking down of the belief, held by many old-line Americans, that the great diversity of backgrounds in our population is a disadvantage to the United States as a nation. The gradual deterioration of this idea has apparently been enough to prevent anti-alien hysteria, in spite of considerable attempts not unrelated to Hitler's purposes to foment it.
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To contemporary ears, Adamic's indifferent reference to the Japanese American internment may seem incongruous. Nevertheless, his comments reflect that while the U.S. government interned 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, the conflict accelerated the incorporation of "white ethnic" groups such as Jews, Italians, and other descendents of the great immigrant wave of 1882 to 1924 into a broader conception of American nationhood. Adamic went on to presciently note, "It is possible that a few decades hence historians will regard this fact as one of our biggest present slices of good fortune."2 |
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Indeed, historians have often cited World War II as a key turning point in the acceptance of the Ellis Island–era immigrants. Most scholars agree that World War II accelerated the decline of nativism and the integration of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and their children into American society.3 Wartime migrations of Americans to different regions played an important role as 27 million citizens left their homes and neighborhoods for employment in wartime industries or to join the military.4 Many left homogenous, rural communities and urban ethnic neighborhoods where they had relatively little contact with people from different national and religious backgrounds. |
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The military experience brought disparate peoples into contact, as native-stock Americans and immigrants from various ethnic backgrounds fought and died together. In his 1944 book, A Nation of Nations, which detailed the contributions of virtually every immigrant group, Adamic wrote, "There is more getting together among Americans than ever before, more acceptance of people on the basis of their personal qualities regardless of background. This is especially true of the men in the services. There is nothing like being together in a foxhole, a bomber, or a submarine."5 A New York Evening Post headline above the obituary of soldiers from March 25, 1943, sounded this same theme: "Their Names Are Alien But—Their Blood is All American."6 |
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