Friendly invasions: civilians and servicemen on the World War II American home front

Abstract

This dissertation challenges the idea that the United States “home front” in World War II escaped the violence and disorder visited upon overseas cities by military forces. It examines American “liberty ports”— from San Francisco and Los Angeles to New York and Boston— where millions of GIs and other Allied servicemen took leave and liberty. Emboldened by the privilege of their uniforms and near immunity from civilian laws and authorities, these troops caroused, fought with locals, rioted in the streets, and assaulted women. A near constant presence in many large ports and transportation hubs, servicemen effectively occupied entire urban districts, routinely provoking civil-military conflicts. Though many historians imagine that most troops spent the war abroad, in fact many of them remained stateside for the duration. Before the spring of 1944, when preparations for D-Day accelerated, 65-75% of all soldiers were stationed domestically. 25% of the U.S. Army’s forces never left the country at all. Friendly invasions and other occupations by troops not only impacted places such as Britain, France, Germany, Australia, and Japan; they fundamentally reshaped American cities and civilian life as well. To solve a number of manpower and training problems, U.S. military officials encouraged and inculcated in their recruits an aggressive, heterosexual masculinity that mocked civilian life as effeminate and weak. Many GIs embraced this vision of soldiering and took advantage of the military’s lenient stance toward “blowing off steam” in boom towns and liberty ports. Fist fights with civilian men, pursuing and cornering women, and rampant drunkenness went mostly unpunished as the Armed Forces struggled to mobilize for a two-front war. Nearby women faced many dangers, but they also found ingenious ways of defending themselves. Meanwhile, local politicians and businesses struggled to protest the militarization of their neighborhoods, even while doing their part for the war effort. This wartime militarization of civilian American life is a crucial but almost entirely forgotten factor in the rise of the military as a key institution of American society, as well as the postwar “civil-military divide.”2020-10-08T00:00:00