In the Shadow of the Greatest Generation by Melinda L. Pash

Author:Melinda L. Pash
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780814767696
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Denied burial in Sioux City, Iowa, because of his Winnebago ancestry, fallen Sergeant First Class John Rice is laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors. Rice’s mother, Mrs. Samie Davis, can be seen in the wheelchair in the front row. U.S. Signal Corps, courtesy of the Harry S. Truman Library (photograph no. 2005-12).

Confronted with Jim Crow segregation and bigotry, the unsavory hallmarks of American life outside of the U.S. military, many nonwhite returnees felt confused, even angry. They had marched to war armed with the belief that their wartime service would result in a “larger measure of freedom, dignity, and opportunity for our loved ones at home.” That had not happened and, like the wife of an Army veteran denied service at several California restaurants, they wondered why they had fought at all and “[w]here is the country that he fought for?”114 Others asked, “Who was my worst enemy, really?”115 Were communists abroad as bad as racists at home? White veterans, possessing intimate friendships across the color line from their service in the Army or Marine Corps, also felt “deeply perplexed about the racial discrimination” leveled against their comrades.116 But what would they do about it?

In light of the activism and controversy stirred up by the Vietnam War and veterans of that conflict, historians have tended to view Korean War veterans as passive, easily accepting the status quo and peacefully melting back into society after returning from the war. Indeed, raised during the Great Depression and World War II, most veterans of Korea early learned and internalized the lesson that no matter the circumstances, one had no other choice but to uncomplainingly forget personal preferences and get on with the tasks at hand. The culture of conformity that rose with the Soviet threat in the years after World War II reinforced the inclination to subvert one’s own desires for the security of the country. Consequently, Korean War veterans, whatever their ideas on the matter, did not launch any great crusades to win equal civil rights for Americans of all colors.

However, Korean War veterans individually protested Jim Crowism and contributed to the quest for social justice in invaluable ways. One black noncommissioned officer, frustrated at having to move to the back of the bus when it left the base, made a point while on post of sitting “right behind the driver, just to watch the cracker burn up.”117 Delbert White, faced with discrimination while looking for work, decided to do something about it and filed a complaint with a government agency.118 During the Vietnam War, Clarence Adams, one of the American Korean War POWs who originally refused repatriation and went to the People’s Republic of China, made radio broadcasts telling African Americans, “If you are going to fight, you need to go home and fight for your own cause. You’re being wasted for a cause that isn’t even yours.”119 Others joined the NAACP and contributed to its “Freedom Fund” to “help improve our democracy.”120 So many blacks

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