In “A People’s War?” Howard Zinn maintains PHUS’s theme of denouncing American imperialism, bringing its focus now onto American involvement in WWII. This was an extremely thought-provoking chapter for me, especially in consideration of Zinn’s discussion of Pearl Harbor. In my US History education, I had never learned about the causes of Pearl Harbor; I was always under the impression that it was a sudden, immoral attack from the Japanese that randomly killed American civilians. However, as Zinn notes, the federal government had been warned of provoking war with Japan after imposing sanctions on Japanese trade in response to Japan’s imposition on Chinese land that might have threatened America’s open-door economic policy in China. This is very indicative of America’s imperialist interests at the time preceding the war’s onset in the United States, and America’s economic drive escalated at the time that Hawaii, its door into the arena of Pacific trade, had been attacked.
I think it’s also very important to note the hypocrisy underlying the notion by which the United States claimed that their involvement in the War was motivated by a moral opposition to the ongoing genocide of Jewish people in Germany. First of all, Eugenics had gained popularity in the US decades before the onset of WWII, revealing that American History didn’t strictly reject the eugenic ideology behind Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Secondly, though the US likely recognized the Holocaust as immoral, it didn’t take much interest in participating in War because of the Holocaust alone. As Zinn notes, FDR deferred action pertaining to the Holocaust to the State Department, where “anti-Semitism and a cold bureaucracy became obstacles to action” (Zinn 415). Not only did the Imperialist threat of Pearl Harbor more effectively provoke the United States to participate in war than did the genocide of Jewish people, but during WWII, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, allowing the army to begin its establishment of Japanese internment camps, revealing a lack of inherent US opposition to concentration camps. At a time when the federal government directly condoned the internment of Japanese people, it was a rather bold move of the United States to claim wartime involvement on the basis of opposition to the concentration of Jewish people. Considering this, I think it’s extremely important to analyze all underlying factors (imperialism included) in studying the United States’ involvement in WWII in order to properly recognize the unethical aspects of US history so that future American policies can be driven by an understanding of the historical wrongs of which this country must avoid repetition.
I think the United States’ reasoning for provoking Japan in order to enter the war reveals a lot about the country’s motivations to join the war. The United States was not interested in fighting the current war against Nazism, the Holocaust, and Fascism. Rather, the United States was already fighting the next war: the war against the USSR for control of the global economic system. Of course, this suggests that our educational system does indeed cover up our nation’s faulty reasoning for entering WW2.
Upon reading Zinn’s chapter, I got the impression that President Roosevelt didn’t initially use the treatment of the Jews in Germany as a reason for fighting at all. It seemed as though while the US knew of the mistreated of Jewish people in Germany, no one could have possibly imagined that it went to the extent of extermination. The discovery of the horrific reality of Nazi concentration camps came after the US involved itself in the war and was not an inspiration for joining. Instead, the concentration camps have been a way that the US has since justified it decision to join the war and the way it has been taught in America has been so deeply nationalist, that the US’s reasoning for taking up arms against the Axis powers has falsely switched to protecting the Jews.
What really stood out to me was the mixed perceptions we have of leaders. I think that a lot of the time we view leaders as innocent or doing the best they can but in reality there was planning and manipulation on their part. This related back to the idea of American exceptionalism and the idea that the US is a very individualistic society and we make decisions to benefit ourselves regardless of international consequences.