1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910456572203321

Autore

Green Michael Cullen <1977->

Titolo

Black Yanks in the Pacific [[electronic resource] ] : race in the making of American military empire after World War II / / Michael Cullen Green

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca [N.Y.], : Cornell University Press, 2010

ISBN

0-8014-6221-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (219 p.)

Collana

United States in the world

Disciplina

940.54/03

Soggetti

African American soldiers - Japan - History - 20th century

African American soldiers - Korea - History - 20th century

Korean War, 1950-1953 - Participation, African American

Electronic books.

United States Armed Forces African Americans History 20th century

Japan History Allied occupation, 1945-1952

United States Race relations History 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction : everyday racial politics in a military empire -- Reconversion blues and the appeal of (re)enlistment -- The American dream in a prostrate Japan -- The public politics of intimate affairs -- A brown baby crisis -- The race of combat in Korea -- Epilogue : military desegregation in a militarized world.

Sommario/riassunto

By the end of World War II, many black citizens viewed service in the segregated American armed forces with distaste if not disgust. Meanwhile, domestic racism and Jim Crow, ongoing Asian struggles against European colonialism, and prewar calls for Afro-Asian solidarity had generated considerable black ambivalence toward American military expansion in the Pacific, in particular the impending occupation of Japan. However, over the following decade black military service enabled tens of thousands of African Americans to interact daily with Asian peoples-encounters on a scale impossible prior to 1945. It also encouraged African Americans to share many of the same racialized attitudes toward Asian peoples held by their white counterparts and to identify with their government's foreign policy objectives in Asia.In



Black Yanks in the Pacific, Michael Cullen Green tells the story of African American engagement with military service in occupied Japan, war-torn South Korea, and an emerging empire of bases anchored in those two nations. After World War II, African Americans largely embraced the socioeconomic opportunities afforded by service overseas-despite the maintenance of military segregation into the early 1950s-while strained Afro-Asian social relations in Japan and South Korea encouraged a sense of insurmountable difference from Asian peoples. By the time the Supreme Court declared de jure segregation unconstitutional in its landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, African American investment in overseas military expansion was largely secured. Although they were still subject to discrimination at home, many African Americans had come to distrust East Asian peoples and to accept the legitimacy of an expanding military empire abroad.