Paradise or Hell Hole?: U.S. Marines in Post–World War II China

1998 ◽  
Vol 7 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 157-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xixiao Guo
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Chinese Communist Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The Many ◽  
Army Personnel ◽  
Nationalist Government ◽  
Communication Lines ◽  
The U.S

AbstractAmong the many U.S. servicemen stationed in China after World War II were the marines of the U.S. Third Amphibious Corps (IIIAC), sailors from the U.S. Seventh Fleet, and U.S. army personnel.1 Transported to the seaports of coastal China like Shanghai, as well as placed on the main communication lines between the major cities of the interior, these Americans encountered Chinese of all kinds—students, soldiers, merchants, bandits, politicians, and prostitutes. But whereas the Americans were done with their fighting in 1945, China was quickly convulsed into civil war between the Nationalist government of the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The fighting between the two dated to the 1920s. There was a brief period of uneasy unity before fighting erupted again, leading to Kuomintang successes and the Communists’ Long March of 1934–36. Japan’s brutal aggression after 1937 put an end to most of the fighting between the KMT and CCP, but once it became clear after 1941 that the United States would defeat Japan, it was only a question of time before the two started at each other. Given the longevity, magnitude, intensity, and complexity of the Chinese Civil War, the interaction between American soldiers and the Chinese people during this critical period in history was bound to be calamatous for all those involved.

Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s

1992 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Higgs
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Performance Measures ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Macroeconomic Performance ◽  
Command Economy ◽  
First Time ◽  
The U.S

Relying on standard measures of macroeconomic performance, historians and economists believe that “war prosperity” prevailed in the United States during World War II. This belief is ill-founded, because it does not recognize that the United States had a command economy during the war. From 1942 to 1946 some macroeconomic performance measures are statistically inaccurate; others are conceptually inappropriate. A better grounded interpretation is that during the war the economy was a huge arsenal in which the well-being of consumers deteriorated. After the war genuine prosperity returned for the first time since 1929.

Arabic Language Instruction

1971 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter F. Abboud
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Arab World ◽  
The United States ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
World War ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
The U.S

The last fifteen years have witnessed rapid growth in the number of students studying Arabic and of programs concerned with the teaching of the language. This is directly attributable to the awakened interest in the United States in the Middle East in general, and the Arab world in particular, as a result of the entry of the U.S. in World War II and its emergence as a global power with strategic, economical, and political interests in the area. This is not to say that the teaching of Arabic is a new phenomenon in the U.S. As an indespensible tool of Orientalistic scholarship, Arabic was taught for many years in a few institutions which offered programs in Oriental and Semitic Studies.

A Skeptical View of World War II

Worldview ◽  
1975 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 56-59
Author(s):  
Jorge I. Domínguez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Clear And Present Danger ◽  
The U.S

To understand history we must first unlearn it. Or, more accurately, we must unlearn canonized history. That is certainly the case if we are to understand U.S. entry into World War II—the last “good war” the United States fought; perhaps the only war not yet subjected fully to the revision of opinion that has been the lot of other contemporary wars. Bruce Russett's No Clear and present Danger. A Skeptical View of the U.S. Entry Into World War II takes us a long way in examining critically whether U.S. entry into that war was justified, yet it received much less attention than it deserved when it appeared in 1972.

scholarly journals The Function of Luxury: Visual and Material Abundance in Minoru Yamasaki’s U.S. Consulate in Kobe and Federal Science Pavilion in Seattle (1954–62)

Arts ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Joss Kiely
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
The United States ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
World War ◽  
Architectural Form ◽  
World Power ◽  
Global Exchange ◽  
The U.S

This article explores the visual abundance found in a number of early projects by Leinweber, Yamasaki and Hellmuth (LYH) and Minoru Yamasaki and Associates (MYA), which stands in stark contrast to the austere character of architectural form during the interwar period. Although Yamasaki received his architectural training in the 1930s, he was neither a true modernist, nor a fully postmodern architect. His aesthetic, and his firm’s work, lies in the interstices between these two distinct architectural moments, in company with contemporaries Edward Durell Stone and Paul Rudolph, among others. The work of these architects embraced a kind of visual and formal excess but stopped short of approaching the playful linguistic games of postmodern architecture. With themes of visual and material excess in mind, I examine two early commissions from the U.S. federal government that put into play ideas of global exchange, power, and extravagance in architecture as the United States emerged as a major world power in the aftermath of World War II, including the U.S. Consulate in Kobe, Japan (1954–1955) and the Federal Science Pavilion at the Seattle World’s Fair (1962).

scholarly journals The Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposia: Select Papers from the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Symposia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan N. Smith
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Building ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Confederate States Of America ◽  
World War ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
Mail Service

<p>Writers in the field of postal history have incredibly diverse interests and approaches. As a result, the postal history symposia have been organized around themes. The three themes represented in papers here are mail and the Civil War (2012), the development of transoceanic air mail service (2014), and the influence of postal treaties on post office reforms (2016).</p><p>The American Civil War affected mail in many ways, particularly in the Confederate States of America, which faced the challenge of quickly developing its own postal system, as well as shortages of supplies, including paper. The mail itself can be used to tell the story of the conflict through the examination of patriotic and propaganda images on envelopes and through the study of shifts in mail routes and practices as the war progressed.</p><p>The histories of aviation and of mail delivery are intertwined. Pressure to deliver mail faster and more efficiently helped to propel investment in aviation innovations. In turn, developments in flight opened new possibilities for carrying the mail. The development of transoceanic air mail from its very early days in the 1920s through the rise of military air mail services during World War II is examined.</p><p> Throughout much of history, mail has been the primary means of communication both within and between nations; thus, the regulations and agreements concerning what may be mailed, and for what cost, have had a profound effect on a population’s access to information. Postal reform, and particularly the creation of national postal systems, required that immediate needs as well as political and economic visions of the future be considered and addressed legally and structurally during state-building. Cases of the United States in the revolutionary era and Brazil in the nineteenth century are examined here.<br></p>

scholarly journals The Winton M. Blount Postal History Symposia: Select Papers from the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Symposia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan N. Smith
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Building ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Confederate States Of America ◽  
World War ◽  
Revolutionary Era ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
Mail Service

<p>Writers in the field of postal history have incredibly diverse interests and approaches. As a result, the postal history symposia have been organized around themes. The three themes represented in papers here are mail and the Civil War (2012), the development of transoceanic air mail service (2014), and the influence of postal treaties on post office reforms (2016).</p><p>The American Civil War affected mail in many ways, particularly in the Confederate States of America, which faced the challenge of quickly developing its own postal system, as well as shortages of supplies, including paper. The mail itself can be used to tell the story of the conflict through the examination of patriotic and propaganda images on envelopes and through the study of shifts in mail routes and practices as the war progressed.</p><p>The histories of aviation and of mail delivery are intertwined. Pressure to deliver mail faster and more efficiently helped to propel investment in aviation innovations. In turn, developments in flight opened new possibilities for carrying the mail. The development of transoceanic air mail from its very early days in the 1920s through the rise of military air mail services during World War II is examined.</p><p> Throughout much of history, mail has been the primary means of communication both within and between nations; thus, the regulations and agreements concerning what may be mailed, and for what cost, have had a profound effect on a population’s access to information. Postal reform, and particularly the creation of national postal systems, required that immediate needs as well as political and economic visions of the future be considered and addressed legally and structurally during state-building. Cases of the United States in the revolutionary era and Brazil in the nineteenth century are examined here.<br></p>

George Taylor and the War Labor Board, 1942–45

2020 ◽  
pp. 27-49
Author(s):  
Ronald W. Schatz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Local Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Labor Management ◽  
Vice Chairman ◽  
The U.S

During World War II, the National War Labor Board served as the industrial equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court, issuing edicts of highly contentious labor-management disputes, and the Regional War Labor Boards and the board’s national staff resolved thousands of disputes at the local level and in specific industries. This chapter explains how the national and regional boards succeeded. It focuses on George W. Taylor, the NWLB’s vice chairman and mentor of the Labor Board staff, and Regional War Labor Board III headquartered in Philadelphia and chaired by Sylvester Garrett. It challenges earlier interpretations by Lichtenstein, Stone, Lynd, and others that the NWLB undermined unions and hurt workers. The opposite is more accurate. The board prevented Congress from passing draconian anti-union legislation, protected unions, helped the unions acquire many more members, and helped the United States produce the arms and other materiel needed to defeat the Axis powers.

Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 211-218
Author(s):  
Nancy Shoemaker
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Rockefeller Foundation ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Many ◽  
A Site ◽  
The U.S

This epilogue addresses how David Whippy, Mary D. Wallis, and John B. Williams—as they pursued respect in different ways—became party to the many changes taking place in Fiji due to foreign influence. Whippy, Wallis, and Williams were all involved, in one way or another, in the U.S.–Fiji trade. In the twentieth century, new incentives enticed Americans to Fiji. American global activism and private development schemes involved Fiji as much as other places around the world, and medical aid and research sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and a Carnegie Library at Suva introduced new forms of American influence in the islands. World War II, of course, brought Americans to the islands in droves. However, the main avenue by which Americans would come to Fiji was through the third wave of economic development that succeeded the sugar plantations of colonial Fiji: tourism. Now that the face of Fiji presented to the rest of the world evokes pleasure instead of fear, references to the cannibal isles have become nothing more than a nostalgic nod to Fiji's past. Previously considered a site of American wealth production, the islands have now become a site of American consumption.

From Honor to Dignity: Criminal Libel, Press Freedom, and Racist Speech in Brazil and the United States

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Hoffman French
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Hate Speech ◽  
The United States ◽  
Press Freedom ◽  
World War ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Human Rights Organizations ◽  
The U.S

Reports on violence against journalists in Brazil have captured the concern of international human rights organizations. This article discusses a case involving another such concern: the use of criminal defamation laws in Brazil to punish journalists for criticizing public officials. At the same time, Brazilian media sources regularly report on crimes of racism, which most often involve derogatory name-calling and hate speech. By examining the intersection of these apparently contradictory concerns, this article sheds new light on speech rights in Brazil and the United States and argues that a comparative perspective is crucial to contextualizing and harmonizing free speech and its limitations under modern democratic constitutions. By considering the infusion of traditional notions of honor and status with post-World War II views of dignity, this article argues for a comparative consideration of how best to combat racism and whether hate speech regulation in the U.S. should be reconsidered. As such, the type of law often used to protect the powerful in Brazil could come to be used to protect the vulnerable in the United States and opens the possibility that the irony of free speech could become more than just a scholarly debate.

8. The Two-Ocean Navy

2018 ◽  
pp. 80-96
Author(s):  
Craig L. Symonds
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
American History ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Central Pacific ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The U.S

Europe went back to war in 1939 and on July 19 1940, the U.S. Congress passed the Two-Ocean Navy Act, the largest naval appropriation in American history, which expanded the U.S. Navy by more than seventy per cent in preparation for the United States entry into the war. ‘The two-ocean navy: the U.S. Navy in World War II (1939–1945)’ outlines the key battles fought by the U.S. Navy: in the Pacific from 1941–43, in the Mediterranean from 1943–44, the Central Pacific drive from 1943–44, the D-Day landings in 1944, and the ferocious battles with the Japanese at Iwo Jima and Okinawa that ended the war.

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