Double Victory

Most accounts of America in the Second World War focus on senior officials and commanders, or on white soldiers of European descent. Ronald Takaki, a historian who taught at UC Berkeley, approaches the war from the bottom up, following everyday people from many backgrounds.

His cast includes a Tuskegee aviator who wants to fly and fight for liberty, and a Navajo code talker who relays battle messages in his native tongue. A Mexican American woman rivets bombers in an aircraft plant, while a Japanese American man feels abandoned by the government he is still expected to serve. A Jewish American soldier at Buchenwald presses human ashes into his palm so he will never forget what he witnessed.

Takaki argues that these minorities were fighting a twofold war, one against fascism overseas and another against discrimination at home. The result is a history of wartime America that treats that struggle as central rather than incidental.