On
13 July 2003, California Governor Gray Davis signed a bill that
retroactively granted high school diplomas to Japanese-Americans
in internment camps during World War II. While the United
States has always prided itself on being a nation of immigrants,
WWII severely tested the idea of a multicultural melting pot.
About 100,000 US citizens of Japanese origin as well as recent
immigrants were deprived of their property and rights, and relocated
to internment camps by order of Congress. Over a half century
later, America still is making its amends.
Even under these extraordinary circumstances, many Japanese Americans
served in the US armed forces in WWII. Among them were about
500 Nisei (“second generation”) women who enlisted and worked as
Army office personnel, translators, and medical professionals. Women’s
Army Corp (WAC) Private Chizuko Shinagawa stated at the time: “It’s
a wonderful opportunity for my people to participate actively in
the greatest battle for democracy the world has ever known. By serving
in the WAC, I found the true meaning of democracy. . .All Americans,
whatever their ancestry, must remember that they will be judged
in the future by the part they play now.”
In Serving Our Country, Brenda L. Moore documents “the stories
of Nisei women who served in the military in World War II, and to
analyze the events that shaped their lives.” In addition to nine
interviews which she conducted herself, she used two interviews
by the National Japanese American Historical Society as well as
archival War Department materials and Japanese American press.
Delving into these sources as well as secondary material, she explores
the racial and societal pressures around the Nisei Wacs.
Not only did the women have to endure legal proscriptions and internment,
female soldiers were a new phenomenon—in fact, women in the military
were only granted equal status and benefits with men in 1943.
One Nissei Wac notes, “The men thought we were terrible to even
go into the military.” Colonel Marion Nestor, former WAC commander
at Military Intelligence Service Language School, said of her Nisei
Wacs: “The Japanese Americans were in a terrible position; their
whole families were in concentration camps. And. . .not only
that, but these women had to fight the Japanese male macho, if I
can use the word macho with the Japanese Americans. So for
[these women] to come into the military was a double-barrel thing.”
Moore, a veteran herself, handles the material deftly and she guides
the reader though the myriad of acronyms and military policy.
A sociology professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo,
her expertise on the experience of minorities in the military is
evident: she has previously published a book on African American
women in the service, To Serve my Race: The story of the only
African American WACs Stationed Overseas during World War II.
Moore makes thoughtful and meaningful comparisons on how the Asian
American and the African American experience differed. For
example, unlike African Americans who served in segregated units,
Japanese (as well as Korean and Chinese) American women served with
the general (white) population. Veteran Grace Harada recalls
that she received her basic training in Des Moins among hundreds
of white women and was the “only Oriental” in the group. African
American Wacs were “forced to billet in crowded [segregated] quarters,
were subject to racial slurs, and were not permitted to charge books
out of the Service Club. . .”
Moore’s stated focus is how the military affected these women’s
lives—an objective that she accomplishes. She concludes, somewhat
tepidly, that “the military was a turning point in the lives of
many [Nissei] servicewomen,” not a surprising conclusion if the
other life option is a relocation camp in the desert.
She touches on the tantalizing idea that “war has the ability to
reorder society”, but she never fully explores this interesting
idea: Did minority participation make the military re-think its
ideas on race? Or did that come later from the civil-rights
movement? Did it contribute to the idea of a multi-ethnic
soldiery or was their experience merely a blip? How did their
experience affect armed forces policy toward minorities in general?
The answers are more or less inferred in the book if one hunts for
them, but Moore focuses on the women’s experiences rather than military
policy. One hopes that Moore is considering writing a book
on how women and minorities affected the military: she is likely
to do a credible job. The book serves as a solid starting
point for the student of the Japanese American experience in World
War II. In the end, Moore provides an understanding to these
women, who in the face of great privation, chose to give more.
