CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WORLD WAR II AND AMERICA’S ETHNIC PROBLEM
Chapter Thesis No matter the unjust treatment they had received, the non-white citizens of the United States still tried to prove their loyalty to a country that had not always returned that affection.
Chapter Summary Set in the context of World War II, Takaki revisits each of the race/ethnic groups he had centered on in previous chapters. One irony is that war was framed as a struggle with the fascist German “master race” which sought to eliminate “inferior” non-Aryans (along with Gypsies, the disabled, homosexuals, and Catholics); others saw that the United States needed to confront and repair its own racist history and its present. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Japanese Americans were rounded up into internment camps, kept separate from their own country, based not on their actions, but on their heritage. Still these citizens enlisted by the thousands in the fight against the Axis; some served in intelligence, helping to translate (and foil) Japanese battle plans. Some returned 77