Showing papers in "Pacific Historical Review in 2003"

Alcatraz, Wounded Knee, and Beyond: The Nixon and Ford Administrations Respond to Native American Protest

Abstract: The period from 1969 to 1977 saw both unprecedented civil disobedience by Native American activists and breakthrough initiatives to advance Indian rights. This article argues that grass-roots protest helped push the executive branch to respond sympathetically to Native American concerns, replacing the policy of termination with one of tribal self-determination. After the seizure of Alcatraz Island (1969), Nixon9s aides began work on a presidential statement repudiating termination and legislation to advance self-determination for Native Americans. Following the standoff at Wounded Knee (1973), Congress began to pass the President9s agenda. Continuing Native American unrest kept Ford9s White House on the course charted by Nixon. Whatever their shortcomings, both Presidents deserve high marks for redirecting Indian policy and for avoiding bloodshed during their many standoffs with American Indians.

Saviors and Scientists: North American Protestant Missionaries and the Development of Anthropology

Abstract: Few historians of anthropology and missionary work examine the relationship of Protestant missionaries with nineteenth-century anthropologists and its effect on anthropological portrayals of Indians. This paper poses the question: Does it make a difference that early anthropologists in Canada and the United States also worked as Protestant missionaries or relied on Protestant missionaries for data? Answering yes, it shows how declining support for Indian missions led missionaries to peddle their knowledge of Indians to scholarly institutions. These institutions welcomed missionaries as professionals because of their knowledge, dedication, and time in the field. Such relationships helped create a transnational image of the Indian in late nineteenth-century North American anthropology .

Booting a Tramp: Charlie Chaplin, the FBI, and the Construction of the Subversive Image in Red Scare America

Abstract: John Sbardellati and Tony Shaw, 'Booting a Tramp: Charlie Chaplin, the FBI, and the Construction of the Subservice Image in Red Scare America', Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 72 (4): 495-530, November 2003. Published by University of California Press, available online at doi: 10.1525/phr.2003.72.4.495

Bloody Christmas and the Irony of Police Professionalism: The Los Angeles Police Department, Mexican Americans, and Police Reform in the 1950s

Abstract: On December 25, 1951, approximately fifty Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers brutally beat seven young men in their custody, including five Mexican Americans The ensuing controversy became known as Bloody Christmas Mexican American activists demanded investigations into allegations of police brutality and LAPD accountability to civilian control The LAPD9s new chief, William Parker, however, had just launched a reform campaign based on the police professionalism model, which stressed police autonomy, particularly about internal discipline Parker and his allies in city government stifled external investigations into department matters, vilified LAPD critics, and even ignored perjury by officers They thus helped create an organizational culture that valued LAPD independence above the rule of law and led to the LAPD9s estrangement from Mexican American and other minority communities

"There's no Yellow in the Red, White, and Blue": The Creation of Anti-Japanese Music during World War II

Abstract: This article focuses on the production of anti-Japanese music during World War II through the frameworks of popular culture, consumption, and propaganda and by analyzing the music itself, as well as lyrics and sheet music covers. Anti-Japanese music codified certain racial beliefs while distinguishing among Asian nationalities. Portraying Japan in racialized and gendered terms told Americans something about themselves and white male superiority. These musical images also demonstrated the dialogue between the music industry and its consuming audience. Publishers and composers tried to describe the nation9s emotions toward the enemy. Although their early efforts were somewhat successful, overall, anti-Japanese songs were not. Consumers looked to other musical forms and lyrics to embody the war, not necessarily voting against racism, but for more innovative music.

''A Score of Bloody Okinawas and Iwo Jimas'': President Truman and Casualty Estimates for the Invasion of Japan

Abstract: PaciÞc Historical Review, Vol. 72, No. 1, pages 93 Ð132. ISSN 0030-8684 ©2003 by the PaciÞc Coast Branch, American Historical Association. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, 2000 Center St., Ste. 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223. 1. Diary entry, Aug. 10, 1945, Diaries of Henry Lewis Stimson (microÞlm edition, reel 9), Henry Lewis Stimson Papers (hereafter Stimson Papers), Yale University Library, New Haven, Conn., from microÞlm at Harry S. Truman Library and Museum (hereafter Truman Library), Independence, Mo. 2. Martin Harwit, An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of the Enola Gay (New York, 1996); Edward T. Linenthal and Tom Engelhardt, eds., History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (New York, 1996); Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschults, Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (Stony Creek, Conn., 1997); Michael J. Hogan, ed., Hiroshima in History and Memory (Cambridge, Eng., 1996); Steven C. Dubin, Displays of Power: Memory and Amnesia in the American Museum (New York, 1999); The Enola Gay Debate: A Collection of Materials Documenting the Public Debate between Veterans and the National Air and Space Museum Concerning the Proposed Enola Gay Exhibit (Arlington, Va., 1995); Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian (New York, 1995); Robert P. Newman, The Enola Gay and the Court of History (Novato, Calif., forthcoming). “A Score of Bloody Okinawas and Iwo Jimas” : President Truman and Casualty Estimates for the Invasion of Japan1

New Deal Public Works at War: The WPA and Japanese American Internment

Abstract: PaciÞc Historical Review, Vol 72, No 1, pages 63 Ð92 ISSN 0030-8684 ©2003 by the PaciÞc Coast Branch, American Historical Association All rights reserved Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, 2000 Center St, Ste 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223 I thank the archivists and staff at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, the National Archives in Washington, DC, and the Franklin D Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York The University of California, Berkeley, department of history and the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute provided grants for research I also thank Mark Leff and the PaciŽc Historical Review referees for their helpful and detailed critiques on earlier drafts of this essay 1 Franklin D Roosevelt to Maj Gen Philip B Fleming, Dec 4, 1942, in Federal Works Agency, Final Report on the WPA Program, 1935–1943 (Washington, DC, 1947), v Originally named the Works Progress Administration, the WPA was renamed in 1939 when it was placed under the supervision of the Federal Works Agency 2 For a powerful analysis that places the WPA at the core of the New Deal, see Edwin Amenta, Bold Relief: Institutional Politics and the Origins of Modern American Social Policy (Princeton, NJ, 1998) For the WPAOs often-overlooked role in producing infrastructure, see Jason Scott Smith, Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933–1956 (Cambridge, Eng, forthcoming) New Deal Public Works at War: The WPA and Japanese American Internment

Pilgrims at the Golden Gate: Christian Scientists on the Pacific Coast, 1880––1915

Abstract: There has never been a social history of Christian Science, a distinctive and controversial new religious group that emphasized metaphysical healing. The group appeared in the United States in the 1870s and 1880s under the leadership of Mary Baker Eddy. This article examines the early rapid growth of Christian Science on the Pacific Coast, for the religion flourished to a greater degree in this health- conscious and socially fluid region than in any other section of the world. Analysis of the occupations of more than 1,000 members and spouses of six Christian Science churches in California, Oregon, and Washington for the years 1905-1907 provides detailed conclusions at variance with previous conjecture. The new evidence shows that Christian Scientists on the Pacific Coast were an ethnically homogeneous, uprooted, and energetic lot from all social levels, with a surprisingly large contingent from the working classes.

Employers and Exceptionalism: A Cross-Border Comparison of Washington State and British Columbia, 1890––1935

Abstract: Based on Sanford M. Jacoby9s ““American Exceptionalism Revisited: The Importance of Management,”” this article tests his hypotheses about differences between American and Canadian employers. First, is ““exceptionalism”” useful for examining cross-national differences in capital/state/labor relations? Second, do Jacoby9s independent and dependent variables make American employers different? Third, were American employers more individualistic, wealthy, aggressive, and hence effective in countering trade unions and socialism than employers elsewhere? This case study of Washington state and British Columbia employers and their organizations examines whether the two national groups differed in economic and social background, ideology, values, objectives, and tactics. This regional study reveals more similarities than differences ““in kind.”” It finds that socially and politically constructed factors, especially the extent of state interventions, created divergent cross-border industrial relations systems, rather than exceptionalism.

Operation Smallbridge: Chester Ronning, the Second Indochina War, and the Challenge to the United States in Asia

Abstract: In 1966 Canadian diplomats and politicians sought to bring the United States and North Vietnam to the negotiating table. Canada9s secret search for peace, code-named Operation Smallbridge, was led by retired diplomat Chester Ronning, who twice traveled to North Vietnam. Although Ronning9s first mission convinced him that Hanoi was willing to discuss terms, U.S. escalation of the war continued. On his second mission, Ronning discovered that Washington9s rejection of Hanoi9s overture had hardened the official attitude in North Vietnam. Ronning may have exaggerated the breakthrough from his earlier visit, and his efforts may have unrealistically raised expectations for a settlement. Instead of bringing the adversaries closer together, Operation Smallbridge inadvertently made the Vietnam conflict and its belligerents more intractable and the prospects for a peaceful political solution more unlikely.

Western Literature at Century's End: Sketches in Generation X, Los Angeles, and the Post-Civil Rights Novel

Abstract: Since the early 1990s several "serious" southern California writers have begun writing science fiction, detective stories, mysteries, comic satires, even magical realism, finding freshly relevant ways to represent western life at century9s end. Through novels by Sandra Tsing Loh and Cynthia Kadohata, I locate this turn to the popular within a larger political and cultural context we might call "post-Civil Rights." In such novels, texts do not take racial alterity as a starting, radically disruptive fact, although they do not claim that America has outgrown racism. Rather, a new racial subject and/or series of racial formations is under construction, invested in updating and reformulating the status of the nonwhite racial other, to account for the enormity of change in recent years, especially the place of youth within globalization discourse.

Through the Looking Glass: What Western Historians and Literary Critics Can Learn from Each Other

Abstract: In this meandering think piece, the author considers the differences and similarities between western historians and literary critics, taking into consideration intellectual training, ideological biases, and methodological practices. In the process, he frequently changes his mind, contradicts himself, probably confuses the reader, and most certainly makes a mess of his argument. Those without patience or a sense of humor should think twice before reading ahead.

Movement and Adjustment in Twentieth-Century Western Writing

Abstract: Western American literature in the twentieth century has effectively mirrored life in the region. The West has for centuries seen more geographic movement, and accompanying cultural adjustment, than other American regions. These themes of movement and adjustment have dominated western writing. Literary historians' frameworks for categorizing and analyzing this writing have emphasized a tidy process of organic development in western writing, from "frontier fiction" to more mature "regional writing," or from frontier to regional to post-regional literature. Such models underestimate the degree to which movement and adjustment continued to shape western writing in the twentieth century and tend to separate literature produced by white Europeans from that of other cultural groups. This essay suggests that the more fluid movement and adjustment model can better illuminate the connections between ostensibly separate cultural literary streams.