Transcript
Tokyo Bay
September 2, 1945 (and 1853)
Sunday, September 2, 1945 Tokyo Bay
More than two hundred fifty Allied ships lie at anchor in the haze.
Japan's foreign minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu, climbs the ladder of the battleship Missouri, on an artificial leg.
Less than four weeks earlier, two atomic bombs had destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Behind General Douglas MacArthur stands General Jonathan Wainwright. He surrendered the American forces in the Philippines in 1942, and spent three years as a prisoner.
On the bulkhead above them hangs a faded flag with thirty-one stars.
Commodore Perry's warships carried that flag into this bay in 1853, to force Japan to open its ports.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur These proceedings are closed.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won.
Americans watched it in movie houses like this one. Ninety-two years after Perry, the United States had the largest navy in the world. Most of that change came after 1890, in four shocks. A war with Spain in 1898. The Great War. The Great Depression. And this war. Which one did the most to make modern America?
Two Americas
1890 · 1945
The 1890 census could no longer find a frontier line. In 1890, one American in three lived in a town or city. By 1920, most did.
Empty an American's pockets in 1890. For most people, Washington was the money and a two-cent stamp.
In 1945: a ration book, a draft card, a Social Security card and a pay stub with income tax withheld.
In 1890, there were no movies and no radio. By 1940, four homes in five had a radio.
By 1945, Americans bought about ninety million movie tickets a week.
In 1890, there was no limit on how many Europeans could come.
By 1924, quotas had cut southern and eastern Europe to a trickle and barred nearly all of Asia.
Inside the country, well over a million Black Southerners moved north and west.
In 1890, women voted on equal terms in one state.
By 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment barred every state from denying women the vote.
Four shocks got the country from one picture to the other.
Five Reels
1917 · 1945
In 1917 a volunteer stood under this screen and sold the war in four minutes.
In the spring of 1945, it showed what American soldiers found when they opened the Nazi camps.
The projectionist took over this booth in 1943, when her husband joined the Navy. He's due home next month.
Up here are five reels no newsreel ever made. Each holds one American life, 1890 to now. Run them, and decide which shock changed each life the most.
The Star's projectionist Pick a can. When the dot flashes, pull the lever.
Which Shock?
1890–1945
Five lives, and each shock was the biggest one for somebody. The exam wants one answer, and where it breaks.
Here's one. Claim: the Second World War did the most to make modern America.
Corroborate it. By 1945, more than twelve million Americans were in uniform. In 1890, the Army, Navy and Marines together had about thirty-nine thousand.
War plants ended the Depression's unemployment: from about fifteen percent in 1940 to about one percent in 1944.
In 1917, fifty House members voted against war. In 1941, one did: Jeannette Rankin, again.
The Senate refused the League of Nations in 1919 and 1920. In 1945 it approved the United Nations, eighty-nine to two.
Now qualify it. At home, the Depression came first.
Social Security, insured bank deposits, the minimum wage and union rights all came from the New Deal.
The Progressives came earlier, with the income tax, the Federal Reserve and women's votes.
Qualify again. Whose America? The war opened factory jobs to Black and Mexican American workers.
In 1942 the government sent about 120,000 Japanese Americans to camps. More than two-thirds were American citizens.
In the 1930s, officials pushed hundreds of thousands of Mexicans and Mexican Americans to leave. In 1942, Washington recruited Mexican farmworkers to come back, as braceros.
Measure the period five ways, and the biggest jump moves each time.
So modify the claim. The Second World War made America a world power and finished what the New Deal began at home.
For millions of Americans, the biggest change was a train north, a quota or a camp.
One more connection. In 1898, America took Hawaii, Guam and the Philippines. On December 7 and 8, 1941, Japan struck all three.
The smallest shock had the longest fuse.
Whose Century?
1941–1945
Ten months before Pearl Harbor, the publisher Henry Luce named the century.
Henry R. Luce …to accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world…
Luce, a missionary's son raised in China, was pushing Life's readers toward the war. His century said little about who at home would share it.
Henry A. Wallace I say that the century on which we are entering … can be and must be the century of the common man.
And back in 1903, Du Bois had named the century's problem: the color line.
On the Missouri, sailors took Perry's flag down for the trip home to Annapolis.
It took fifty-five years to make the country on that deck. What it did with that power fills the next fifty-five.