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Coming Out Under Fire
During World War II, as the United States called on its citizens to serve in unprecedented numbers, the presence of gay Americans in the armed forces increasingly conflicted with the expanding antihomosexual policies and procedures of the military. InComing Out Under Fire, Allan Berube examines in depth and detail these social and political confrontation--not as a story of how the military victimized homosexuals, but as a story of how a dynamic power relationship developed between gay citizens and their government, transforming them both. Drawing on GIs' wartime letters, extensive interviews with gay veterans, and declassified military documents, Berube thoughtfully constructs a startling history of the two wars gay military men and women fough--one for America and another as homosexuals within the military.Berube's book, the inspiration for the 1995 Peabody Award-winning documentary film of the same name, has become a classic since it was published in 1990, just three years prior to the controversial \"don't ask, don't tell\" policy, which has continued to serve as an uneasy compromise between gays and the military. With a new foreword by historians John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, this book remains a valuable contribution to the history of World War II, as well as to the ongoing debate regarding the role of gays in the U.S. military.
eBook
Every Day a Nightmare
In December 1941, the War Department sent two transports and a freighter carrying 103 P-40 fighters and their pilots to the Philipines to bolster Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s Far East Air Force. They were then diverted to Australia, with new orders to ferry the P-40s to the Philippines from Australia through the Dutch East Indies. But on the same day as the second transport reached its destination on January 12, 1942, the first of the key refueling stops in the East Indies fell to rapidly advancing Japanese forces, resulting in a break in their ferry route and another change in their orders.
This time the pilots would fly their aircraft to Java to participate in the desperate Allied defense of that ultimate Japanese objective. Except for the pilots from the Philippines, almost all of the other pilots eventually assigned to the five provisional pursuit squadrons ordered to Java were recent graduates of flying school with just a few hours on the P-40. Only forty-three of them made it to their assigned destination; the rest suffered accidents in Australia, were shot down over Bali and Darwin, or were lost in the sinking of the USS Langley as it carried thirty-two of them to Java. Even those who did reach the secret field on Java wondered if they had been sacrificed for no purpose. As the Japanese air assault intensified daily, the Allied defense collapsed. Only eleven Japanese aircraft fell to the P-40s.
Author William H. Bartsch has pored through personal diaries and memoirs of the participants, cross-checking these primary sources against Japanese aerial combat records of the period and supplementing them with official records and other American, Dutch, and Australian accounts. Bartsch’s thorough and meticulous research yields a narrative that situates the Java pursuit pilots’ experiences within the context of the overall strategic situation in the early days of the Pacific theater.
eBook
A Nation Forged in War
World War II shaped the United States in profound ways, and
this new book—the first in the Legacies of War
series—explores one of the most significant changes it
fostered: a dramatic increase in ethnic and religious
tolerance.
A Nation Forged in War is the first full-length study
of how large-scale mobilization during the Second World War
helped to dissolve longstanding differences among White
soldiers of widely divergent backgrounds. Never before or since
have so many Americans served in the armed forces at one time:
more than 15 million donned uniforms in the period from 1941 to
1945. Thomas Bruscino explores how these soldiers' shared
experiences—enduring basic training, living far from
home, engaging in combat—transformed their views of other
ethnic groups and religious traditions. He further examines how
specific military policies and practices worked to counteract
old prejudices, and he makes a persuasive case that throwing
together men of different regions, ethnicities, religions, and
classes not only fostered a greater sense of tolerance but also
forged a new American identity. When soldiers returned home
after the war with these new attitudes, they helped reorder
what it meant to be white in America. Using the presidential
campaigns of Al Smith in 1928 and John F. Kennedy in 1960 as
bookend events, Bruscino notes a key change in religious bias.
Smith's defeat came at the end of a campaign rife with
anti-Catholic sentiment; Kennedy's victory some three decades
later proved that such religious bigotry was no longer an
insurmountable obstacle. Despite such advances, Bruscino notes
that the growing broad-mindedness produced by the war had
limits: it did not extend to African Americans, whose own
struggle for equality would dramatically mark the postwar
decades. Extensively documented,
A Nation Forged in War is one of the few books on the
social and cultural impact of the World War II years. Scholars
and students of military, ethnic, social, and religious history
will be fascinated by this groundbreaking new volume.
eBook
Beyond Rosie : a documentary history of women and World War II
\"More so than any war in history, World War II was a woman's war. Women, motivated by patriotism, the opportunity for new experiences, and the desire to serve, participated widely in the global conflict. Within the Allied countries, women of all ages proved to be invaluable in the fight for victory. Rosie the Riveter became the most enduring image of women's involvement in World War II. What Rosie represented, however, is only a small portion of a complex story. As wartime production workers, enlistees in auxiliary military units, members of voluntary organizations or resistance groups, wives and mothers on the home front, journalists, and USO performers, American women found ways to challenge traditional gender roles and stereotypes. Beyond Rosie offers readers an opportunity to see the numerous contributions women made to the fight against the Axis powers and how American women's roles changed during the war. The primary documents (newspapers, propaganda posters, cartoons, excerpts from oral histories and memoirs, speeches, photographs, and editorials) collected here represent cultural, political, economic, and social perspectives on the diverse roles women played during World War II.\"--Page 4 of cover.
Book
Learning under fire
Thrown into the heart of war with little training--and even less that would apply to the battles in which they were engaged--the units of the 112th Cavalry Regiment faced not only the Japanese enemy, but a rugged environment for which they were ill-prepared. They also grappled with the continuing challenge of learning new military skills and tactics across ever-shifting battlefields.
eBook
Rosie the riveter : women working on the home front in World War II
\"This WWII history of the over 18 million women serving in the labor force includes first-hand accounts, propaganda posters, and numerous period photographs\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Guard Wars
An inventive study of relations between the National Guard and the
Regular Army during World War II, Guard Wars follows the Pennsylvania National
Guard's 28th Infantry Division from its peacetime status through training and into
combat in Western Europe. The broader story, spanning the years 1939--1945, sheds
light on the National Guard, the U.S. Army, and American identities and priorities
during the war years. Michael E. Weaver carefully tracks the division's difficult
transformation into a combat-ready unit and highlights General Omar Bradley's
extraordinary capacity for leadership -- which turned the Pennsylvanians from the
least capable to one of the more capable units, a claim dearly tested in the Battle
of the Hürtgen Forest. This absorbing and informative analysis chronicles the
nation's response to the extreme demands of a world war, and the flexibility its
leaders and soldiers displayed in the chaos of combat.
eBook