Three cheers for the late Earl S. Parker, long-suffering secretary of the now-defunct American League of Justice (California) who recognized the tyranny inherit in the California Alien Land Bill of 1921! Seeing that the Japanese immigrants had been dealt enough cruelty by being denied citizenship, he was quick to point out that it was wrong to deny them real estate as well.
Click here to read about the Yellow Peril in Canada.
What we enjoyed about this piece by the Muckraking Ida Tarbell (1857 – 1944) was that it was written some six months after the heavy handed George Creel had ceased influencing Yankee magazine editors into printing pro-American blather, and so we tend to feel that her praise of the American Doughboys was quite sincere – and praise she does! Up hill and down dale, the Doughboys can do no wrong in her eyes.
This essay appeared in print around the same time the French had decided that all the Doughboys were just a bunch of racist hurrah-boys and were becoming increasingly sick of them. The Yanks might have squared their debt with the Marquis de Lafayette, but the recently returned Poilus were not above taking an occasional swipe at Ida Tarbell’s Doughboys…
Click here to read some statistical data about the American Doughboys of the First World War.
Interesting figures revealed by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1920 served to relieve much of the race-conscious anxiety among some of the members of the Anglo-Saxon majority:
The report of the Census Bureau on the number of Japanese residents in the United States shows that the number has been much exaggerated by those panic-stricken persons who affect to dread the rise of a new Japan in America…the Japanese population of the three states on the Pacific coast increased more slowly from 1910 to 1920than it did in the previous decade. There are 70,196 Japanese in California, which has a total population of 3,426,861; in other words about one Californian in every fifty is a Japanese.
The U.S. Census figures for 2011 indicated that the Asian-American population numbered over 17 million, with the lion’s share still residing in the West and the vast majority having arrived after 1965.
Even under the gloomy conditions of the camps the wheels of commerce continued to turn ~and they turned out an impressive $3,526,851.77! As can clearly be seen in the plans of the camps that are offered on this site, the camps all had commercial districts where the interned families could purchase needed goods and services; the ten Japanese-American internment camps had 160 businesses operating within their gates that managed to employ 1,853 souls. The attached chart from the 1944 records of the War Relocation Authority serves to illustrate the productivity of all these assorted commercial operations that had once thrived in the camps.
Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971), acclaimed as the most distinguished, if not the greatest, of living composers, now sojourning in America after an absence of ten years, ardently advocates and practices the composition of mechanical music – of not merely piano music, that is, which can be played on an automatic instrument, but music composed without purpose of performance by hand, designed for the player-piano solely, and intended to take advantage of characteristics and limitations inherent in an instrument operated by a perforated roll of paper.
There is anew polyphonic truth in the player-piano. There are new possibilities. It is something more. It is not the same thing as a piano…
This is the story of Bomber Harris, also known as Sir Arthur Travers Harris, Marshal of the Royal Air Force (1892 – 1984) between the years 1942 through 1945. He was the daily tormentor of Nazi Germany, striving relentlessly to bring an end to German hostilities by bombing their home front without pity. This article tells the tale of Harris the soldier and Harris the man: his W.W. I experiences, his inter-war training and Washington posting, his W.W. II contributions as Air Marshal as well as his family life.
Click here to read W.W. II articles about life in Harris-plagued Germany.
Click here to read about the 1943 bombing campaign against Germany.
Although historians may like to refer to World War II as the first hi-tech war, some of the ancient tools were still put to use with great effect. The attached article gives a very brief outline concerning the W.W. II use of carrier pigeons and the goings on at Camp Crowder, Missouri, where these birds were trained.
Since 1400 B.C. these birds have acted as couriers; they are the oldest instruments of war still in use. Although they form only a small part of our tremendous Signal Corps resources, the Army maintains a corps of expert pigeoneers who have rendered their birds, by scientific training and breeding, ten percent stronger than those used in World War One.
During the course of World War II the U.S. Army signal Corps deployed more than 50,000 carrier pigeons.
You might also enjoy reading this article about the carrier pigeons of W.W. I.
The antisemitic radio ramblings of Father Charles Coughlin (1891 – 1979) prompted the brain trust of the nascent radio world to ponder deeply the differences between hate speech and free speech and where their responsibilities rested in the matter.
The antisemitic radio ramblings of Father Charles Coughlin (1891 – 1979) prompted the brain trust of the nascent radio world to ponder deeply the differences between hate speech and free speech and where their responsibilities rested in the matter.
One month after this article was seen on the newsstands, America would be reading a good deal about the U.S. Army Assault Climbers when they thirsted to read further about those hardy lads who climbed the steep cliffs at Point du Hoc on D-Day; but in May of 1944, the term was new to them. The article is well illustrated with two color images and a brief explanation as to what was involved in the training of those lucky souls who were charged with the task of learning how to climb the rocky terrain held by the Fascist powers.
Read what the U.S. Army psychologists had to say about fear in combat.
