The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii - Softcover

Bailey, Beth L.; Farber, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801848679 ISBN 13: 9780801848674

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994

Synopsis

As the forward base and staging area for all U.S. military operations in the Pacific during World War II, Hawaii was the "first strange place" for close to a million soldiers, sailors, and marines on their way to the horrors of war. But Hawaii was also the first strange place on another kind of journey, toward the new American society that would begin to emerge in the postwar era. Unlike the rigid and static social order of prewar America, this was to be a highly mobile and volatile society of mixed racial and cultural influences, one above all in which women and minorities would increasingly demand and receive equal status. Drawing on documents, diaries, memoirs, and interviews, Beth Bailey and David Farber show how these unprecedented changes were tested and explored in the highly charged environment of wartime Hawaii.

About this title

About the Author

Beth Bailey teaches American history and is director of American Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Review

"The First Strange Place is in the great tradition of oral history and yet it makes marvelous use of archival records―I was reminded both of Studs Terkel's sensitive ear and of Shelby Foote's sweeping vision."

(Boston Globe)

"A fascinating, startling, and wise book. It will now be impossible to tell the story of the modern civil rights struggle or of the women's movement without seeking to understand the anxieties that flourished on Hawaii after Pearl Harbor."

(Linda K. Kerber, University of Iowa.)

"Packed with rich sources, complex ideas, and some amusing lines―and written with writers' craft as well as historians' insight―this book is an excellent example of both new and traditional history."

(Natsuki Aruga, Saitama University, Japan.)

"A model of multicultural history―imaginatively researched, interpreted with discernment, and gracefully written."

(Harvard Sitkoff, University of New Hampshire)

About this edition

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0801848679
• ISBN 13: 9780801848674
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 296