Memory in the 20th Century, Essay Example

Memory in 20^th Century America: An Analysis of Adams, Kruse and Houston

Oscar Wilde once wrote, “The man with a clear conscience probably has a poor memory.” The truth of this statement can also apply to nations. The works of Michael Adams, Kevin Kruse and Jeanne and James Houston in discussing the creation of modern American historical memory suggest novel ways in which a people create their past. In selectively creating a reaffirming nationalist ethos while rejecting many of the negative aspects undergirding America’s contemporary success, the authors provide a unique insight into the way in which World War Two, Civil Rights and the emergence of the Conservative Movement are preserved. All three works suggest that the significant social changes which occurred across American from 1945-1965 are a result of direct experience of these critical military and civil rights events free of historical memory. It is only with the emergence of a new generation reliant completely on indirect historical memory that a socio-political backlash as embodied in the reactionary Conservative movement could have occurred post-1965. This paper will explore Michael Adams’ The Best War Ever: American and World War II, Kevin Kruse’s White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism and Jeanne and James Houston’s Farewell to Manzanar with the goal of understanding how the World War Two Era was remembered in popular memory and how this memory influenced contemporary America’s view of itself.

In The Best War Ever, Adams posits that the way in which America remembers its actions and role in World War Two has been substituted for a sanitized version which fails to accurately represent what actually occurred. This thesis is put forward by using movies and television representations of the conflict. Rather than a morally sound and racially harmonious view of America sacrificing for democracy and human rights, Adams presents America’s actions in their full complexity. Various moral questions revolving around America’s delayed entrance into the global war when combined with the civil rights abuses perpetrated against the Japanese-American and African-American communities undermine the perspective of “The Greatest Generation” working to save humanity from the worst aspects of human nature. Furthermore, the massive economic benefits and the rise of the military-industrial complex are discussed and how this does not fit into the artificial historical memory created of World War Two.

Intriguingly, Adam analyzes the “good war” model of World War Two by contrasting it with the “bad war” historical memory of the Vietnam War. While serviceman from World War Two were seen as honorable well-adjusted heroes returning to a prosperous society free of racial conflict, the historical memory of Vietnam Veterans is one of drug-abuse, guilt and maladjustment to civilian life. As students of history and American citizens it is important that a balanced and accurate understanding of the war be achieved. While the war did halt German and Japanese military expansion and numerous war crimes (i.e. the Holocaust, Rape of Nanking, etc.), contemporary historical memory must also include the story of Japanese-American internment, the fire-bombing of Dresden and the nuclear devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which cost millions of civilian lives. In short, Adams puts forward the argument that the popular memory of the “Good War” and the “Greatest Generation” can be understood as reflecting America’s desire to forget its less than honorable actions while promoting Cold War nationalism and sweeping under the collective rug the significant racial and social tensions which would explode in the decades following the conflict.

Another major aspect of modern American memory of the World War Two era that is often ignored is the racial intolerance and prejudice which affected Japanese-American communities. In Jeanne and James Houston’s Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne’s personnel experiences as an interned American citizen of Japanese ancestry is presented in memoir-form. The book raises the unconstitutional manner in which Japanese citizens were treated as they were forced to live in detainment camps throughout the Western United States under Executive Order 9066. The novelized memoir presents Jeanne’s experience as a young girl living in a detention camp during World War Two. The story recounts the profound personal disruption that these citizens experienced as they were outcast from American society following Pearl Harbor. Following the end of the war, Jeanne’s family had lost a significant portion of their family possessions and wealth made worse by no government reparations or even admission of wrong doing until decades after the War. The book raises serious issues regarding how society chose to both ignore and not remember the civil rights abuses against the Japanese population. It is likely that this unfortunate series of actions was ignored as the detainment of ethnic minorities raises profoundly unsettling similarities to the Nazi’s abuses of its own populations. By failing to remember this historical episode in the historical consciousness, later American generations were able to establish a simpler moral framework to the conflict with the Japanese in the Pacific. More than the civil rights abuses against the African-American population, the novelty and over-reaction which affected the Japanese can be seen as contributing to the push for Civil Rights as it most closely mirrored the abuses of America’s World War Two enemies.

In Kevin Kruse’s White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism and Crisis in Levittown the gradual success of the Civil Rights movement is presented as radically influencing the emergence of modern social and residential patterns (i.e. “white flight”). These social changes alongside the challenges of the Vietnam War period are asserted by Kruse to have directly influenced the Conservative Movement as embodied in Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign. Kruse demonstrates how following 1965, there emerged a significant political element which defined there entire memory of World War Two through the sanitized lens of historical memory. This group of middle to upper class Caucasians had little to no experience of the Civil Rights abuses of the 1940’s era and instead understood African-American’s push for equal rights as an assault on a historical way of Southern life.

These profound changes resulted in a re-segregation of society via a phenomenon known as “white flight” to suburbs in both the North and the South. The political standard bearer of this demographic shift can be seen in the rise of the Conservative Movement and most notably Ronald Reagan. In his candidacies for President in 1976 and 1980, Reagan utilized racially-tinged images of welfare queens and outright racist references (e.g., speaking on the negative social impact of food stamp fraud to a Southern audience, Reagan spoke of a “young buck” (“buck” being a derogatory Southern term for an African-American man). By both attacking the social welfare state and minorities, Regan sought to enhance the power and security of the white minority which had fled to the suburbs of major American cities. In short, these race-baiting Conservative social narratives can be seen as a delayed reactionary response to the profound social advances following World War Two, which resulted both from a desire to distinguish ourselves from the abuses of the Germans and Japanese and as a response to our own actions on the Japanese and African-American populations. The rise of Conservatism therefore can be seen as drawing on the ersatz historical memory of World War Two which ignores the war’s real events and socio-political lessons for a sanitized, nationalistic version.

In conclusion, the inaccurate but ubiquitous historical memory of the “Good War” has a persistent and negative impact on American life. The war cost millions of civilian lives, violated millions of American citizens’ civil rights and produced a powerful military-industrial lobby which constitutes to impact American decision making decades later. Though the actions of the Nazis and Japanese are indefensible and horrible, American’s focus on the ‘goodness’ of the war and the virtue and sacrifice of the “Greatest Generation” is a product of selective memory. To properly learn the lessons of the war, the historical complexity of the conflict and its profound social impacts must be viewed objectively.

References

Adams, MC. (1993). The Best War Ever: America and World War II, Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, MD.

Houston, JW and Houston, J (1973). Farewell To Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment. Laurel Leaf: New York, NY.

Kruse, KM. (2007). White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ.

Crisis in Levittown – Need Reference