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Americans and the California Dream #6
Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950
The sixth volume in one of the great ongoing works of American cultural history--Kevin Starr's monumental Americans and the California Dream-- Embattled Dreams is a peerless work of cultural history following California in the years surrounding World War II.
During the 1940s California ascended to a new, more powerful role in the nation. Starr describes the vast expansion of the war industry and California's role as the "arsenal of democracy" (especially the significant part women played in the aviation industry). He examines the politics of the state: Earl Warren as the dominant political figure, the anti-Communist movement and "red baiting," and the early career of Richard Nixon. He also looks at culture, ranging from Hollywood to the counterculture, to film noir and detective stories. And he illuminates the harassment of Japanese immigrants and the shameful treatment of other minorities, especially Hispanics and blacks.
In Embattled Dreams , Starr again provides a spellbinding account of the Golden State, narrating California's transformation from a regional power to a dominant economic, social, and cultural force.
"With a novelist's eye for the telling detail, and a historian's grasp of the sweep of grand events.... [Starr's] got it all down.... I read the book with absorbed admiration."--Herman Wouk, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Caine Mutiny and The Winds of War
"The scope of Starr's scholarship is breathtaking."-- Atlantic Monthly
"A magnificent accomplishment."-- Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Brilliant and epic social and cultural history."-- Business Week
"Ebullient, nuanced, interdisciplinary history of the grandest kind."-- San Francisco Chronicle
During the 1940s California ascended to a new, more powerful role in the nation. Starr describes the vast expansion of the war industry and California's role as the "arsenal of democracy" (especially the significant part women played in the aviation industry). He examines the politics of the state: Earl Warren as the dominant political figure, the anti-Communist movement and "red baiting," and the early career of Richard Nixon. He also looks at culture, ranging from Hollywood to the counterculture, to film noir and detective stories. And he illuminates the harassment of Japanese immigrants and the shameful treatment of other minorities, especially Hispanics and blacks.
In Embattled Dreams , Starr again provides a spellbinding account of the Golden State, narrating California's transformation from a regional power to a dominant economic, social, and cultural force.
"With a novelist's eye for the telling detail, and a historian's grasp of the sweep of grand events.... [Starr's] got it all down.... I read the book with absorbed admiration."--Herman Wouk, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Caine Mutiny and The Winds of War
"The scope of Starr's scholarship is breathtaking."-- Atlantic Monthly
"A magnificent accomplishment."-- Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Brilliant and epic social and cultural history."-- Business Week
"Ebullient, nuanced, interdisciplinary history of the grandest kind."-- San Francisco Chronicle
386 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
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261 people want to read
About the author
Kevin Starr
78 books68 followersKevin Starr was an American historian, best-known for his multi-volume series on the history of California, collectively called "America and the California Dream".
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
June 26, 2021
Kevin Starr has created a brilliant picture of California in an eventful decade. Starr's writing is vivid and sweeping and he manages to place all the events and social evolution in perspective.
And I found material that was still fresh, even given my own background as a consumer of history and as a lifetime Californian. The impact of wartime shipbuilding and aviation industry on California's sleepy economy and postwar prosperity; the zoot-suit riots and what they revealed about California's race problems; the bar and nightlife scenes in SF and LA; the Legislature's mover-fixer Artie Samish and his downfall; the noirish Black Dahlia murder in a time when Hollywood was discovering film noir. Indeed, Mr. Starr illuminates the last one by pointing out Hollywood's mingling with the LA underworld and with some of the rougher LAPD detectives.
It's true that Starr may have crowded his canvas somewhat, but he is adept at fitting them together and presenting them as one epic transformation in the state's history. Given the impact that California's major social upheavals have had for the US and the wider world -- the Gold Rush, Silicon Valley, the dot-com boom -- this book, and this period, is well worth a read.
And I found material that was still fresh, even given my own background as a consumer of history and as a lifetime Californian. The impact of wartime shipbuilding and aviation industry on California's sleepy economy and postwar prosperity; the zoot-suit riots and what they revealed about California's race problems; the bar and nightlife scenes in SF and LA; the Legislature's mover-fixer Artie Samish and his downfall; the noirish Black Dahlia murder in a time when Hollywood was discovering film noir. Indeed, Mr. Starr illuminates the last one by pointing out Hollywood's mingling with the LA underworld and with some of the rougher LAPD detectives.
It's true that Starr may have crowded his canvas somewhat, but he is adept at fitting them together and presenting them as one epic transformation in the state's history. Given the impact that California's major social upheavals have had for the US and the wider world -- the Gold Rush, Silicon Valley, the dot-com boom -- this book, and this period, is well worth a read.
May 11, 2021
Having read other Kevin Starr books, I can say that this is an essential book to understanding California. This California state librarian has amassed a large handful of history books on California, each covering a different aspect of its history. Each book casts a different light on the state, each book an eye opener.
In the first few pages, it seemed like I knew nearly everything that Starr was recounting, which perhaps says more about me than about Starr. Soon, however, he started covering California in ways that I had never imagined. He talks about the undeclared war that California waged on Japan, for example, from 1900 - 1941, culminating in the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It completely rearranged the way that I think about Pearl Harbor.
What I was most interested in, given my ethnic background, was his chapter that covers the Zoot Suit Riots. This is a complex and confusing event in Los Angeles history, and a hard onion to peel back. I've read other books on it, and they are badly written and muddling. But Starr takes the event step by step, covering all the players, giving all the motivations, showing all the cowardice of the perpetrators, and even exposing the guilty institutions, including the police (who arrested Mexican victims but not the perpetrators), the LA Times (which maliciously misreported it), and the military (which let soldiers go AWOL, specifically to beat up Mexicans). It is a shameful chapter, and Starr casts light on it. In the same chapter, he shifts to the plight of African-Americans, as evidenced through the novels of Chester Himes, of whom I had never heard. It was great to be turned on to an author I'd never heard of, but who could cast light on issues of the time.
The next chapter was something I wasn't terribly interested in, but which helped me to understand California more fully. It covered the aerospace industry. I didn't know that more Los Angelenos worked in the aerospace industry in the 1940s than any other industry, including oil, automobiles, or Hollywood. I didn't know the namesakes of the major aerospace companies, including Henry J. Kaiser, Donald Douglas, and the Loughead brothers, Allan and Malcolm, who Americanized their company's name to Lockheed. I didn't know that during WWII, the aerospace industry so needed skilled workers that they raised pay dramatically and virtually socialized their workspace. And when you think about it, it's an extraordinary feat to go from Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic for the first time in 1931 to B-29s routinely doing it throughout the 1940s. That's what I was looking for, answers to the question: What was different about the 1940s?
This is the way that a Kevin Starr proceeds: He takes certain people whose stories are representative of their era and tells those stories, mostly synthesizing other authors' books. That's certainly true of the chapter on the movie industry, aka Hollywood. Starr focuses on Bob Hope, the British-born everyman comedian who made the USO a second job, and in so doing, focuses on Hollywood's mission to portray themselves as ordinary folks while still maintaining their elite status. Reading this chapter, I now see Bob Hope's USO work as more strategic than philanthropic. (Exceptions to this strategic approach to WWII include Clark Gable, Henry Fonda, Tyrone Power, Robert Montgomery, and Jimmy Stewart, among others, while the most egregious offenders were Errol Flynn and John Wayne.)
Starr also focuses on Marlene Dietrich, whose journey is fascinating in light of her German background (born and raised in Berlin), her androgynous image (dressing in tuxedos and men's wear), and the lesbian undertones of some of her films. These aspects of her career and life make her more contemporary in light of recent societal evolution. Starr also analyzes the different films that Hollywood put out, including the most racist (Air Force, Wake Island, and Gung Ho!), the most blatantly propagandistic (such as Wilson), the most complex (Why We Fight, All Quiet on the Western Front, Keeper of the Flame), and those that were outright banned (The Battle of San Pietro). As a result of reading this chapter, we rented Keeper of the Flame, which we had never heard of, and found it a fascinating fiction about a Lindbergh-like character.
The chapter called "Black Dahlia," chapter 8, was of great interest, as well. It covered crime, the underworld, film noir, and the like. The Black Dahlia Murder is thoroughly covered, as is Bugsy Siegel's murder. Newspaper journalists of the period are profiled, and all the papers covered. There are a couple pages on Caryl Chessman, the so-called Red Light Bandit who got the electric chair for raping women, which was a tad extreme. Movie-business crimes are covered, as is George Raft's connections to the criminal underworld. Particularly delightful is an insult to California published in the Saturday Evening Post: "Los Angeles is New York in purple shorts with its brains knocked out." Never heard that one before! I hope I remember it. He spends a couple of pages on the restaurants of the time, which is fascinating. He even goes through the famous boozers of the time. Then he gets into one of my favorites, Raymond Chandler. His is a tragic story. He was immensely talented, but his alcoholism cut his career short and made for sad, even pathetic anecdotes of the guy. I highlighted one detail that I'd like to copy: Chandler drank gin with lime juice. Starr finishes this chapter with a far too scant rundown of film noir. I mean, Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce are great film noir, but there's lots of celluloid beyond that. Couldn't he have mentioned Out of the Past? Or Pickup on South Street? Or even The Maltese Falcon? I would have loved to learn more about this subgenre. Still it seems petty to criticize Starr on this, since this book is filled with so so many other riches.
Earl Warren was a giant of California politics from the late 30s through 1952, however, I only knew him from his years as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It is fascinating to read about this major figure, who sat in an important but fairly silent position in history. Reading about Earl Warren supplements my understanding of California in a major way. He was honest, non-partisan, and decent. He was also governor of California for 10 years. After he ran for Vice President in 1952 and lost, President Eisenhower nominated him for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1953, and once seated, he veered to the left, as many conscientious Americans do when they cannot be fired, helming the Supreme Court through Brown vs. Board of Education and other landmark decisions that heralded so much social change in the 1950s and '60s. How can you understand California in the 1940s without talking about Warren?
The chapter about anticommunism in California was eye opening. I knew that Joe McCarthy demagogued on anticommunism in the early 1950s, but I had no idea that there was a California Committee on Un-American Activities as early as 1947. Starr goes through the Hollywood Ten, the screenwriters who were persecuted and blackballed for their political views, and it certainly was eye opening. Of the ten, only Dalton Trumbo was a major writer. And behind the scenes were other Hollywood luminaries supporting them, including Humphrey Bogart. And the chairman of that committee, John B. Tenney, also branded racial intermarriage as communistic, which is telling. He was pals with Sam Yorty, whom I remember from the early 1970s as mayor of Los Angeles, an old guy with a gravelly voice. Tenney is described well, including this thumbnail: "hard-drinking, paranoid, dyspeptic...." That, of course, could describe any grouchy archconservative from John Tower to John Boehner to Matt Gaetz. Knowing that type from today's headlines, I'm sure that "self-serving" and "mendacious" would fit into the personality type, as well.
Throughout, I imagined the process that Kevin Starr must have gone through to write these books. He takes a story that is representative of a particular period, and then condenses it and ties it in to the larger currents of California history. He must have read a number of pertinent books about each subject, from the shelling of Santa Barbara to the Zoot Suit riots to Japanese internment to 1940s film history to the aerospace industry to Earl Warren to early Richard Nixon. Reading Starr’s books is kind of like reading Reader's Digest Condensed versions of all the most important and representative people, institutions, and currents of California history of the period. In that sense, it is a fabulous overview, and a great addition to my education.
In the first few pages, it seemed like I knew nearly everything that Starr was recounting, which perhaps says more about me than about Starr. Soon, however, he started covering California in ways that I had never imagined. He talks about the undeclared war that California waged on Japan, for example, from 1900 - 1941, culminating in the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It completely rearranged the way that I think about Pearl Harbor.
What I was most interested in, given my ethnic background, was his chapter that covers the Zoot Suit Riots. This is a complex and confusing event in Los Angeles history, and a hard onion to peel back. I've read other books on it, and they are badly written and muddling. But Starr takes the event step by step, covering all the players, giving all the motivations, showing all the cowardice of the perpetrators, and even exposing the guilty institutions, including the police (who arrested Mexican victims but not the perpetrators), the LA Times (which maliciously misreported it), and the military (which let soldiers go AWOL, specifically to beat up Mexicans). It is a shameful chapter, and Starr casts light on it. In the same chapter, he shifts to the plight of African-Americans, as evidenced through the novels of Chester Himes, of whom I had never heard. It was great to be turned on to an author I'd never heard of, but who could cast light on issues of the time.
The next chapter was something I wasn't terribly interested in, but which helped me to understand California more fully. It covered the aerospace industry. I didn't know that more Los Angelenos worked in the aerospace industry in the 1940s than any other industry, including oil, automobiles, or Hollywood. I didn't know the namesakes of the major aerospace companies, including Henry J. Kaiser, Donald Douglas, and the Loughead brothers, Allan and Malcolm, who Americanized their company's name to Lockheed. I didn't know that during WWII, the aerospace industry so needed skilled workers that they raised pay dramatically and virtually socialized their workspace. And when you think about it, it's an extraordinary feat to go from Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic for the first time in 1931 to B-29s routinely doing it throughout the 1940s. That's what I was looking for, answers to the question: What was different about the 1940s?
This is the way that a Kevin Starr proceeds: He takes certain people whose stories are representative of their era and tells those stories, mostly synthesizing other authors' books. That's certainly true of the chapter on the movie industry, aka Hollywood. Starr focuses on Bob Hope, the British-born everyman comedian who made the USO a second job, and in so doing, focuses on Hollywood's mission to portray themselves as ordinary folks while still maintaining their elite status. Reading this chapter, I now see Bob Hope's USO work as more strategic than philanthropic. (Exceptions to this strategic approach to WWII include Clark Gable, Henry Fonda, Tyrone Power, Robert Montgomery, and Jimmy Stewart, among others, while the most egregious offenders were Errol Flynn and John Wayne.)
Starr also focuses on Marlene Dietrich, whose journey is fascinating in light of her German background (born and raised in Berlin), her androgynous image (dressing in tuxedos and men's wear), and the lesbian undertones of some of her films. These aspects of her career and life make her more contemporary in light of recent societal evolution. Starr also analyzes the different films that Hollywood put out, including the most racist (Air Force, Wake Island, and Gung Ho!), the most blatantly propagandistic (such as Wilson), the most complex (Why We Fight, All Quiet on the Western Front, Keeper of the Flame), and those that were outright banned (The Battle of San Pietro). As a result of reading this chapter, we rented Keeper of the Flame, which we had never heard of, and found it a fascinating fiction about a Lindbergh-like character.
The chapter called "Black Dahlia," chapter 8, was of great interest, as well. It covered crime, the underworld, film noir, and the like. The Black Dahlia Murder is thoroughly covered, as is Bugsy Siegel's murder. Newspaper journalists of the period are profiled, and all the papers covered. There are a couple pages on Caryl Chessman, the so-called Red Light Bandit who got the electric chair for raping women, which was a tad extreme. Movie-business crimes are covered, as is George Raft's connections to the criminal underworld. Particularly delightful is an insult to California published in the Saturday Evening Post: "Los Angeles is New York in purple shorts with its brains knocked out." Never heard that one before! I hope I remember it. He spends a couple of pages on the restaurants of the time, which is fascinating. He even goes through the famous boozers of the time. Then he gets into one of my favorites, Raymond Chandler. His is a tragic story. He was immensely talented, but his alcoholism cut his career short and made for sad, even pathetic anecdotes of the guy. I highlighted one detail that I'd like to copy: Chandler drank gin with lime juice. Starr finishes this chapter with a far too scant rundown of film noir. I mean, Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce are great film noir, but there's lots of celluloid beyond that. Couldn't he have mentioned Out of the Past? Or Pickup on South Street? Or even The Maltese Falcon? I would have loved to learn more about this subgenre. Still it seems petty to criticize Starr on this, since this book is filled with so so many other riches.
Earl Warren was a giant of California politics from the late 30s through 1952, however, I only knew him from his years as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It is fascinating to read about this major figure, who sat in an important but fairly silent position in history. Reading about Earl Warren supplements my understanding of California in a major way. He was honest, non-partisan, and decent. He was also governor of California for 10 years. After he ran for Vice President in 1952 and lost, President Eisenhower nominated him for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1953, and once seated, he veered to the left, as many conscientious Americans do when they cannot be fired, helming the Supreme Court through Brown vs. Board of Education and other landmark decisions that heralded so much social change in the 1950s and '60s. How can you understand California in the 1940s without talking about Warren?
The chapter about anticommunism in California was eye opening. I knew that Joe McCarthy demagogued on anticommunism in the early 1950s, but I had no idea that there was a California Committee on Un-American Activities as early as 1947. Starr goes through the Hollywood Ten, the screenwriters who were persecuted and blackballed for their political views, and it certainly was eye opening. Of the ten, only Dalton Trumbo was a major writer. And behind the scenes were other Hollywood luminaries supporting them, including Humphrey Bogart. And the chairman of that committee, John B. Tenney, also branded racial intermarriage as communistic, which is telling. He was pals with Sam Yorty, whom I remember from the early 1970s as mayor of Los Angeles, an old guy with a gravelly voice. Tenney is described well, including this thumbnail: "hard-drinking, paranoid, dyspeptic...." That, of course, could describe any grouchy archconservative from John Tower to John Boehner to Matt Gaetz. Knowing that type from today's headlines, I'm sure that "self-serving" and "mendacious" would fit into the personality type, as well.
Throughout, I imagined the process that Kevin Starr must have gone through to write these books. He takes a story that is representative of a particular period, and then condenses it and ties it in to the larger currents of California history. He must have read a number of pertinent books about each subject, from the shelling of Santa Barbara to the Zoot Suit riots to Japanese internment to 1940s film history to the aerospace industry to Earl Warren to early Richard Nixon. Reading Starr’s books is kind of like reading Reader's Digest Condensed versions of all the most important and representative people, institutions, and currents of California history of the period. In that sense, it is a fabulous overview, and a great addition to my education.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 22, 2016
Chapter 2 of this book is entitled “Shelling Santa Barbara” and is the most relevant to this section on the war.
The chapter starts by talking about the submarine I-17 which, in December of 1941, operated off the coast of California.
Then the chapter gets REALLY interesting. It holds that, for all practical purposes, California was already at war with Japan; indeed, it refers to the California-Japanese war of 1900-1941. It's a term used by the Southern California journalist and historical Carey McWilliams.
The book holds that the war that California declared was one based on “fierce, racial hatred, uncompromising and annihilating in intent.” Further, this hatred, and the acts it resulted in, actually poisoned US/Japanese relationships even before the war started.
The book refers to the interment of the persons of Japanese ancestry from California as “...one of the most egregious violations of civil rights in American history...”
1882: The Chinese Exclusion Act is passed, largely as a result of pressure from California. This was also a result of racism, and the feelings shifted easily from being anti-Chinese to anti-Japanese.
1886: the Kingdom of Hawaii makes an agreement with Japan to allow Japanese laborers to come to Hawaii.
1890: members of the Shoemaker Union assault Japanese shoe-makers in San Francisco.
1891: members of the Cooks and Waiters Union trash a Japanese restaurant.
1900: The US formally declares Hawaii a territory after basically taking it over by force, a move spurred on by American business interests.
May 7, 1900: San Francisco Labor Council holds an anti-Japanese rally. The Japanese are portrayed as undermining American workingmen by working for low wages. One speaker basically advocates firing at any ships bringing Japanese to the state.
1901: Japan cuts back on issuing passports to contract laborers who would be going to the US and Hawaii.
May 6, 1905: The San Francisco school board segregates Japanese students into a separate school. This amounted to 93 students out of a total of 25,000 in the system.
May 7, 1905: Another anti-Japanese rally denouncing the influx of Japanese labor into the state.
May, 1905: The Japanese Exclusion League gets started in California, trying to get a complete ban on all Japanese from entering the state.
April, 1906. During the great earthquake and its aftermath, there are 19 assaults against Japanese residents. Japan, meanwhile, had sent money to help the city recover.
December, 1906: The President of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt, has to intervene in the school board affair. A study he ordered done said there was no justification for the exclusion of the Japanese students.
1905/1906: Both countries draw up plans for a possible conflict. It is suggested in Japan that they war with California, but not the rest of the US.
(sometime between then and February of 1907): A labor leader says that the states west of the Rocky Mountains should go to war with Japan on their own.
March, 1907: the order for the exclusion of the Japanese students is withdrawn. Roosevelt issues an executive order prohibiting further Japanese immigration into the US via Hawaii, Canada or Mexico.
1907: Japan agrees not to issue any more passports to contract laborers.
1908: Gentlemen's Agreement with Japan: Japan promises to stop issuing passports to laborers that want to immigrate to the US. The San Francisco Police Commission refuses to license any new Japanese restaurants. Also, the Anti-Jap Laundry League is founded in San Francisco. California politicians try to get a measure passed to segregate all Japanese children in all the public schools of the entire state. Other measures they tried to pass were those that would stop Japanese from owning land, bar them from being director's of corporations, and one that would basically established legalized ghettos for Japanese.
1908: Cosmopolitan magazine has an article by a Congressman predicting that Japan would land a million-man army on the West Coast within six months of any war breaking out between Japan and the US.January 16, 1909: Roosevelt wires the governor of California, basically stating that California was undermining US national policy in relation to Japan. Two weeks later, a mob in Berkeley attacks Japanese residents.
1909: A California politician in the US Congress tries to get a measure going which would exclude Japanese from the entire country, not just California. The measure gets withdrawn.
1909: A book, The Valor of Ignorance, is published, outlining a Japanese invasion of the US. The book was actually fairly close to what later really happened as far as the Far East theater goes. It also predicted that the Japanese would attack Washington State, the San Francisco area, and Los Angeles. The Japanese were pictured as landing at Santa Monica bay and then seize Los Angeles and gain control of the rest of Southern California. They would also land in Monterey Bay, surround San Francisco and bombard the city until it surrendered. The Japanese army would then move east to the Sierra Nevada area.
1910: One of the men running for governor does so on an anti-Japan platform.
1911: The Chronicle refers to the picture brides as prostitutes.
1912: Woodrow Wilson, running for office, says that the Japanese do not blend with the Caucasian race, that they are not assimilating into our culture.
1913: Japan sends a commission of Conciliation to California to try and find out why they are hated so much, and to find some way the two areas could get along better. One of the people on the committee writes a pamphlet, Survey of the Japanese Question in California, urging the Japanese in California to try to understand American culture and get along with it as much as possible, and asks whites for understanding.
1913: The San Francisco Examiner mocks the pamphlet, basically questioning the right of anyone Japan to recommend anything to the US.
1915: The Hearst newspapers publish what they say are plans for a Japanese invasion of California via Mexico.
1919: Japan stops issuing passports to “picture brides.”
1920: The Alien Land Initiative causes an outrage in Japan.
Oct. 6, 1920: The American Association of Tokyo and the American Association of Yokohama cable the Secretary of State, saying that there was “intense feeling” in Japan over the California action.
1921: Must We Fight Japan is published, saying that there will definitely be a war with Japan. The book says that the persons of Japanese ancestry in California will become a “fifth column” for Japan.Nov. 1922: The Supreme Court decides that Japanese are “ineligible aliens,” meaning they cannot gain US citizenship.
1924: A California senator introduces a bill in Congress to stop “all aliens ineligible to citizenship” from immigrating to the US, which would have stopped all first-generation Japanese. The Japanese ambassador writes a letter of protest to the US Secretary of State. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge replies that Japan was threatening the US.
1924: Immigration Act of 1924 (Oriental Exclusion Act). This was to end all Japanese immigration to the US forever.
1925: Sea Power in the Pacific is published, suggesting that the Japanese/American war would begin with a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto read the book and it's possible it influenced him in his later push for the attack on Pearl Harbor.
1927: The Reckoning is published in Los Angeles, also about a Japanese attack on the West Coast, this time using poison gas bombs and incendiary bombs.
Oct. 14, 1940: Newsweek publishes an article on the “threat” that was posed by Japanese Americans living near military instillations in Hawaii and California.
Feb. 1942: The Los Angeles times calls for the removal of all persons of Japanese ancestry from California.
Among the major California publications that were anti-Japanese was a magazine called The Argonaut. The San Francisco Chronicle was a similar type of newspaper. That paper ran headlines like “Brown Asiatics Steal Brains of Whites,” which sounds like something out of the cheap tabloids of today that run stories like My Grandmother was really an Alien from Mars.
Another thing that the Japanese immigrants were criticized for was their birth rate, and that some of the Japanese men might want to take white wives. The sexuality of the Japanese was branded as “something loathsome and degenerate.”
The chapter starts by talking about the submarine I-17 which, in December of 1941, operated off the coast of California.
Then the chapter gets REALLY interesting. It holds that, for all practical purposes, California was already at war with Japan; indeed, it refers to the California-Japanese war of 1900-1941. It's a term used by the Southern California journalist and historical Carey McWilliams.
The book holds that the war that California declared was one based on “fierce, racial hatred, uncompromising and annihilating in intent.” Further, this hatred, and the acts it resulted in, actually poisoned US/Japanese relationships even before the war started.
The book refers to the interment of the persons of Japanese ancestry from California as “...one of the most egregious violations of civil rights in American history...”
1882: The Chinese Exclusion Act is passed, largely as a result of pressure from California. This was also a result of racism, and the feelings shifted easily from being anti-Chinese to anti-Japanese.
1886: the Kingdom of Hawaii makes an agreement with Japan to allow Japanese laborers to come to Hawaii.
1890: members of the Shoemaker Union assault Japanese shoe-makers in San Francisco.
1891: members of the Cooks and Waiters Union trash a Japanese restaurant.
1900: The US formally declares Hawaii a territory after basically taking it over by force, a move spurred on by American business interests.
May 7, 1900: San Francisco Labor Council holds an anti-Japanese rally. The Japanese are portrayed as undermining American workingmen by working for low wages. One speaker basically advocates firing at any ships bringing Japanese to the state.
1901: Japan cuts back on issuing passports to contract laborers who would be going to the US and Hawaii.
May 6, 1905: The San Francisco school board segregates Japanese students into a separate school. This amounted to 93 students out of a total of 25,000 in the system.
May 7, 1905: Another anti-Japanese rally denouncing the influx of Japanese labor into the state.
May, 1905: The Japanese Exclusion League gets started in California, trying to get a complete ban on all Japanese from entering the state.
April, 1906. During the great earthquake and its aftermath, there are 19 assaults against Japanese residents. Japan, meanwhile, had sent money to help the city recover.
December, 1906: The President of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt, has to intervene in the school board affair. A study he ordered done said there was no justification for the exclusion of the Japanese students.
1905/1906: Both countries draw up plans for a possible conflict. It is suggested in Japan that they war with California, but not the rest of the US.
(sometime between then and February of 1907): A labor leader says that the states west of the Rocky Mountains should go to war with Japan on their own.
March, 1907: the order for the exclusion of the Japanese students is withdrawn. Roosevelt issues an executive order prohibiting further Japanese immigration into the US via Hawaii, Canada or Mexico.
1907: Japan agrees not to issue any more passports to contract laborers.
1908: Gentlemen's Agreement with Japan: Japan promises to stop issuing passports to laborers that want to immigrate to the US. The San Francisco Police Commission refuses to license any new Japanese restaurants. Also, the Anti-Jap Laundry League is founded in San Francisco. California politicians try to get a measure passed to segregate all Japanese children in all the public schools of the entire state. Other measures they tried to pass were those that would stop Japanese from owning land, bar them from being director's of corporations, and one that would basically established legalized ghettos for Japanese.
1908: Cosmopolitan magazine has an article by a Congressman predicting that Japan would land a million-man army on the West Coast within six months of any war breaking out between Japan and the US.January 16, 1909: Roosevelt wires the governor of California, basically stating that California was undermining US national policy in relation to Japan. Two weeks later, a mob in Berkeley attacks Japanese residents.
1909: A California politician in the US Congress tries to get a measure going which would exclude Japanese from the entire country, not just California. The measure gets withdrawn.
1909: A book, The Valor of Ignorance, is published, outlining a Japanese invasion of the US. The book was actually fairly close to what later really happened as far as the Far East theater goes. It also predicted that the Japanese would attack Washington State, the San Francisco area, and Los Angeles. The Japanese were pictured as landing at Santa Monica bay and then seize Los Angeles and gain control of the rest of Southern California. They would also land in Monterey Bay, surround San Francisco and bombard the city until it surrendered. The Japanese army would then move east to the Sierra Nevada area.
1910: One of the men running for governor does so on an anti-Japan platform.
1911: The Chronicle refers to the picture brides as prostitutes.
1912: Woodrow Wilson, running for office, says that the Japanese do not blend with the Caucasian race, that they are not assimilating into our culture.
1913: Japan sends a commission of Conciliation to California to try and find out why they are hated so much, and to find some way the two areas could get along better. One of the people on the committee writes a pamphlet, Survey of the Japanese Question in California, urging the Japanese in California to try to understand American culture and get along with it as much as possible, and asks whites for understanding.
1913: The San Francisco Examiner mocks the pamphlet, basically questioning the right of anyone Japan to recommend anything to the US.
1915: The Hearst newspapers publish what they say are plans for a Japanese invasion of California via Mexico.
1919: Japan stops issuing passports to “picture brides.”
1920: The Alien Land Initiative causes an outrage in Japan.
Oct. 6, 1920: The American Association of Tokyo and the American Association of Yokohama cable the Secretary of State, saying that there was “intense feeling” in Japan over the California action.
1921: Must We Fight Japan is published, saying that there will definitely be a war with Japan. The book says that the persons of Japanese ancestry in California will become a “fifth column” for Japan.Nov. 1922: The Supreme Court decides that Japanese are “ineligible aliens,” meaning they cannot gain US citizenship.
1924: A California senator introduces a bill in Congress to stop “all aliens ineligible to citizenship” from immigrating to the US, which would have stopped all first-generation Japanese. The Japanese ambassador writes a letter of protest to the US Secretary of State. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge replies that Japan was threatening the US.
1924: Immigration Act of 1924 (Oriental Exclusion Act). This was to end all Japanese immigration to the US forever.
1925: Sea Power in the Pacific is published, suggesting that the Japanese/American war would begin with a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto read the book and it's possible it influenced him in his later push for the attack on Pearl Harbor.
1927: The Reckoning is published in Los Angeles, also about a Japanese attack on the West Coast, this time using poison gas bombs and incendiary bombs.
Oct. 14, 1940: Newsweek publishes an article on the “threat” that was posed by Japanese Americans living near military instillations in Hawaii and California.
Feb. 1942: The Los Angeles times calls for the removal of all persons of Japanese ancestry from California.
Among the major California publications that were anti-Japanese was a magazine called The Argonaut. The San Francisco Chronicle was a similar type of newspaper. That paper ran headlines like “Brown Asiatics Steal Brains of Whites,” which sounds like something out of the cheap tabloids of today that run stories like My Grandmother was really an Alien from Mars.
Another thing that the Japanese immigrants were criticized for was their birth rate, and that some of the Japanese men might want to take white wives. The sexuality of the Japanese was branded as “something loathsome and degenerate.”
August 24, 2020
This volume could have done with a bit more editing as it does occasionally dwell too long on minor items and not every obscure alley it turns down is as interesting as others, but that said, I found it to be a veritable treasure trove of insights and chronicling of how California made its move to the forefront of American economic and cultural life in the years leading up to and immediately following World War II. I was born in Yuba County and grew up in Shasta County and learned a great deal about the happenings in my home state during the decade that my parents met (though they didn't get around to adopting me until 1962) from this book. The chapters about the history and extent of anti-Japanese sentiment in California prior to Pearl Harbor, and about the rapid industrialization of the state in response to the needs of the war effort and the role of women in that were the best chapters in my view. The story of the ascendancy of Earl Warren and of Richard Nixon, while worthy and interesting, was a bit overdone I thought, and while I understand the need to feature the influence of California's two greatest cities, San Francisco and Los Angeles, I found the virtual neglect of the northern third of the state, excepting a couple of passing references to Butte County and my hometown of Redding, to be regrettable. Still and all, a fine bit of storytelling and historical gold mining finds its way into these pages.
May 16, 2024
Fact and stat heavy history of California in the WWII years, before and after. It was kind of like a history textbook. I'm glad I wasn't going to be tested on any of the information because there was so much of it. My favorite chapters had to do with Hollywood during the war years and the crime in LA in the 40's and 50's. Earl Warren was a dominant figure in California politics, more than I had known. To me he was always known as the Chief Justice of the "Warren Court" during the 50's and 60's in DC. Don't hear much about him anymore. The passage of time definitely dims things. That's why I love reading history. Brings back those things that were a big deal "back then" but are largely forgotten now.
December 30, 2022
Though chapter headings suggest a chronological treatment, the text follows Starr's normal topical arrangement, and the subjects selected, their treatment, and the quality of the writing made it, for me, the best of the series (so far)
June 26, 2018
This Californian historian's books are always enjoyable and informative.
February 23, 2025
Starr fixates on race like only a Mainlander can.
May 28, 2010
As the stories in this Series become more contemporary, hey I
wasn't alive in the 1940s but I know people who were! and also
as places I've visited in California are mentioned, the reading
becomes more fun and nostalgic, a Californian would probably get
extra enjoyment out of it.
Starr has the general idea of WW2 but apparently not the
details, even I found several mistakes, for example the
'Doolittle raining fiery destruction on Tokyo.' and crediting
Pearl Harbor hero Dorie Miller with shooting down 6 Zeroes!
(Dorie himself said 'Maybe I got one'. The Japanese only lost
29 for the whole attack.)
Peculiar though that you get a Professor outside their area of
expertise, California, and he's no more knowledgeable than the
next guy, or maybe using exaggerations to support his views?
Fabrications of this sort make one wonder what else the
Professor has slanted?
Starr spends a prelude to WW2 chapter making a case for
California's racial animosity towards the local Japanese as the
cause for Japan's attack on the USA. After this interesting and
remarkable assertion he waffles a bit and then says well maybe,
Japan after all was busy working on genocide in China (he
doesn't mention the 9 million Chinese that will die, or the
occupation of Korea since 1910 and enslavement many of its
people, or Japan's own sense of racial superiority).
He then leaves it that the attitudes of California had a
considerable role in bringing about the conflict. In recounting
the tale of the Japanese submarine shelling Santa Barbara
industrial targets instead of civilian he sounds
wistfully disappointed. Maybe this is the 'enlightened'
revisionist viewpoint , but hey, you see what you think.
Regarding the internment of the Japanese Americans he doesn't
report on whether any did have any spy or collaborator
connections. I've never read of any myself, but you'd think
that would be a something to assert in their defense.
Everyone's a movie critic and you can tell Starr really enjoys
discussing Hollywood, the movie chapters in all his books are
real entertaining including War Hero Audie Murphy's initial trip
to Filmland. The film 'Best Years of Our Lives' among others,
is discussed at some length. That flic is one of my favorites,
so an interesting insight into its effect and reflection on the
era.
Other fun items - the jitterbug was wild, frenetic,
anti-establishment and fraught with all sorts of implications.
Artie Shaw condemned it as anarchistic. Tommy Dorsey defended
the dance.
Sounds like the twist from a later era.
There's plenty of new good stuff in this volume and plenty of
rehashing. There are reasons and advantages regarding the reruns, one
you may not have read any of the previous volumes on the subject
and it also gives you a reinforcement on the characters.
This volume was published in 2002, and the first in 1973, you
can almost feel the technology changes of that era taking place
in word processing, cut and paste became a boon to works like
these. Starr has a dozen or so other works on California, I'm
certain he's getting a lot of mileage out of repackaged
research.
December 17, 2009
This book is terrible, unless you are looking to learn completely random and assinine information about California, pre-ww2, and ww2 era.
If Kevin Starr perhaps read less like and ADHD kid given 400 pages to ramble on in, it would be more emjoyable.
For someone who is supposedly the State Librarian and a professor at USC, you think he would be more organized, truthful and succinct. Unfortunately the lack of editing and the blatent misrepresentations of history strewn about present as fact only to be revealed 30 pages later as a fabrication of Starr's imagination is not only ridiculous but infuriating.
Perhaps if this was not a requirement for my English class, and I was not on deadlines I would have a greater appreciation for this work, but given the circumstances surrounding my exposure to his writing all I can say is he is redundant, ridiculous and ranting.
For one chapter he rambled on for over 30 pages about the same topic where as the one simple sentence would have sufficed.
People in California leading up to World War 2, were escapist in their art, cinema, and nature.
That's it, I don't need to know about ice skating, or beer drinking, or wine, or skiing, it is all just example after example of the same illiteration, selfish and escapist activity.
The chapter the shelling of Santa Barbara sets up a hypothetical situation as fact, and then reveals 20 pages later that it was all a fabrication.
Unless you enjoy mundane facts like what local beer brands were drunk during 1939, you can skip this one.
If Kevin Starr perhaps read less like and ADHD kid given 400 pages to ramble on in, it would be more emjoyable.
For someone who is supposedly the State Librarian and a professor at USC, you think he would be more organized, truthful and succinct. Unfortunately the lack of editing and the blatent misrepresentations of history strewn about present as fact only to be revealed 30 pages later as a fabrication of Starr's imagination is not only ridiculous but infuriating.
Perhaps if this was not a requirement for my English class, and I was not on deadlines I would have a greater appreciation for this work, but given the circumstances surrounding my exposure to his writing all I can say is he is redundant, ridiculous and ranting.
For one chapter he rambled on for over 30 pages about the same topic where as the one simple sentence would have sufficed.
People in California leading up to World War 2, were escapist in their art, cinema, and nature.
That's it, I don't need to know about ice skating, or beer drinking, or wine, or skiing, it is all just example after example of the same illiteration, selfish and escapist activity.
The chapter the shelling of Santa Barbara sets up a hypothetical situation as fact, and then reveals 20 pages later that it was all a fabrication.
Unless you enjoy mundane facts like what local beer brands were drunk during 1939, you can skip this one.
August 20, 2009
A well written synopsis of life in California during the 1940s. Kevin Starr is California's historian. This is definitely a book for Golden State history buffs more than anything else, but Starr nonetheless has an engaging writing style.
I like his strategy of not trying to cover everything, but rather looking at one significant event, trend, or personality from each year of the 1940s and then fleshing it out to examine what it means in the overall picture.
The year 1944, for example, is all about Henry Kaiser, the eccentric and uber motivated ship builder who also gave us the current legacy of the Kaiser health plan.
I had heard about Kevin Starr before, and look forward to reading his other books about decades in California's history, being a California native myself. I grabbed Embattled Dreams first as it was the only one available at the library at the time.
I like his strategy of not trying to cover everything, but rather looking at one significant event, trend, or personality from each year of the 1940s and then fleshing it out to examine what it means in the overall picture.
The year 1944, for example, is all about Henry Kaiser, the eccentric and uber motivated ship builder who also gave us the current legacy of the Kaiser health plan.
I had heard about Kevin Starr before, and look forward to reading his other books about decades in California's history, being a California native myself. I grabbed Embattled Dreams first as it was the only one available at the library at the time.
January 21, 2012
"The automobiles of 1940 -- all of them, up and down the price range -- flowed as one harmonious form as opposed to being a composition of separate parts. This was the influence of the airplane, of course; but it was something more as well: a recognition by Detroit (or, in the case of Studebaker, South Bend, Indiana) that the automobile had become the primary expression of taste and imaginative possibilities for the American household and had hence become not just a machine for travel but a sculptural form expressive of freedom and release." (22)
"There was talk of dropping the film [Casablanca] into the B category, with Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan in the leads..." (164)
"strenuous averageness" (Time magazine of Bob Hope, 173)
"There was talk of dropping the film [Casablanca] into the B category, with Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan in the leads..." (164)
"strenuous averageness" (Time magazine of Bob Hope, 173)
June 7, 2012
Kevin Starr continues to juxtapose the great and gritty of California history. A state that could produce Earl Warren at the same time it put its Japanese population in concentration camps and allowed its Hispanic population to be persecuted during the Zoot Suit Riots. Documenting all the changes in WWII that would make California a hub of the military-industrial complex and a cultural capital. Reading this series of books provides a microcosm of developing modern America.
July 22, 2010
WWII is a fascinating history subject, but what was happening California during WWII isn't necessarily as compelling. Chapters on Patton are very interesting for those interested in WWII history however.
November 22, 2009
Starr is a superb historian and has done intense research for this book. Mixed with his engaging writing style, it makes for an excellent read.
August 11, 2012
A brilliant account of California during WW II.
July 20, 2016
Dense, but interesting
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