Black Yanks in the Pacific: Race in the Making of American Military Empire after World War II

by Michael Cullen Green

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801448966
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	09/02/2010
Series:	The United States in the World
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michael Cullen Green received a PhD in American History from Northwestern University. He lives in Chicago.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Everyday Racial Politics in a Military Empire
Chapter 1: Reconversion Blues and the Appeal of (Re)Enlistment
Chapter 2: The American Dream in a Prostrate Japan
Chapter 3: The Public Politics of Intimate Affairs
Chapter 4: A Brown Baby Crisis
Chapter 5: The Race of Combat in Korea
Epilogue: Military Desegregation in a Militarized World
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Marilyn Young

Black Yanks in the Pacific is consistently interesting; it challenges standard interpretations and opens new ground. Michael Cullen Green's original interpretations of race and empire contribute to the history of U.S. militarization, race in the military, the occupation of Japan, and the Korean War.

Marc Gallicchio

In Black Yanks in the Pacific, Michael Cullen Green employs military records, the African American press, oral histories, and NAACP records to reconstruct the experience of the many black GIs who served in Asia in the years between the end of World War II in the Pacific theater and the Korean armistice. Green shows how military culture, red tape, and prevailing attitudes in African American communities back home reinforced the inclination of black GIs to eschew lasting nonwhite alliances and maintain their stake in the empire.

Marc Gallicchio Marc Gallicchio

In Black Yanks in the Pacific, Michael Cullen Green employs military records, the African American press, oral histories, and NAACP records to reconstruct the experience of the many black GIs who served in Asia in the years between the end of World War II in the Pacific theater and the Korean armistice. Green shows how military culture, red tape, and prevailing attitudes in African American communities back home reinforced the inclination of black GIs to eschew lasting nonwhite alliances and maintain their stake in the empire.

Bruce Cumings

Michael Cullen Green has written a fascinating and illuminating work. It opens a new window on the experiences of African Americans in joining armed services that over time became much more integrated than most American institutions, suffering racial discrimination nonetheless, and then coming to terms with the prejudices against Asians that they typically shared with whites. The paucity of similar accounts gives this book an unusual interest and provenance.

Editorial Reviews

During the decade following WWII, the US embarked upon two great historical journeys—the civil rights movement and the Cold War. In this brief but thought-provoking study, Green examines the interaction of these two forces through the eyes of African American soldiers stationed in postwar Asia.... A fascinating sidelight is Green's examination of the sad fate of African-Asian offspring left behind. A thoughtful, provocative study that skillfully integrates the interplay of domestic and foreign policy. Summing up: Highly recommended.

Choice

"Michael Cullen Green has written a fascinating and illuminating work. It opens a new window on the experiences of African Americans in joining armed services that over time became much more integrated than most American institutions, suffering racial discrimination nonetheless, and then coming to terms with the prejudices against Asians that they typically shared with whites. The paucity of similar accounts gives this book an unusual interest and provenance."

Bruce Cumings

"In Black Yanks in the Pacific, Michael Cullen Green employs military records, the African American press, oral histories, and NAACP records to reconstruct the experience of the many black GIs who served in Asia in the years between the end of World War II in the Pacific theater and the Korean armistice. Green shows how military culture, red tape, and prevailing attitudes in African American communities back home reinforced the inclination of black GIs to eschew lasting nonwhite alliances and maintain their stake in the empire."

Marc Gallicchio

"Black Yanks in the Pacific is consistently interesting; it challenges standard interpretations and opens new ground. Michael Cullen Green's original interpretations of race and empire contribute to the history of U.S. militarization, race in the military, the occupation of Japan, and the Korean War."

Marilyn Young

"During the decade following WWII, the US embarked upon two great historical journeys—the civil rights movement and the Cold War. In this brief but thought-provoking study, Green examines the interaction of these two forces through the eyes of African American soldiers stationed in postwar Asia. . . . A fascinating sidelight is Green's examination of the sad fate of African-Asian offspring left behind. A thoughtful, provocative study that skillfully integrates the interplay of domestic and foreign policy. Summing up: Highly recommended."—Choice (July 2011)

"Michael Cullen Green has written a fascinating and illuminating work. It opens a new window on the experiences of African Americans in joining armed services that over time became much more integrated than most American institutions, suffering racial discrimination nonetheless, and then coming to terms with the prejudices against Asians that they typically shared with whites. The paucity of similar accounts gives this book an unusual interest and provenance."—Bruce Cumings, Chair, History Department, and Gustavus F. and Ann M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago, author of Dominion From Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power

"Black Yanks in the Pacific is consistently interesting; it challenges standard interpretations and opens new ground. Michael Cullen Green's original interpretations of race and empire contribute to the history of U.S. militarization, race in the military, the occupation of Japan, and the Korean War."—Marilyn Young, New York University, author of The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990

"Black Yanks in the Pacific is an innovative analysis of the interplay between U.S. racial politics, foreign policy, and the American occupations of Japan and Korea. The book is both highly readable and intellectually provocative. Green reveals how occupation and combat experiences among African American GIs shaped their perception of an emerging American empire in the Pacific and forced a reluctant military establishment to confront the painful realities of institutional racism."—Michael Schaller, Regents Professor of History, University of Arizona, author of The American Occupation of Japan

"In Black Yanks in the Pacific, Michael Cullen Green employs military records, the African American press, oral histories, and NAACP records to reconstruct the experience of the many black GIs who served in Asia in the years between the end of World War II in the Pacific theater and the Korean armistice. Green shows how military culture, red tape, and prevailing attitudes in African American communities back home reinforced the inclination of black GIs to eschew lasting nonwhite alliances and maintain their stake in the empire."—Marc Gallicchio, Villanova University, author of The Scramble for Asia

From the Publisher