A Book I Liked
Today I finished reading “Now the Hell Will Start,” by Brendan I. Koerner, which I picked up based on boingboing’s recommendation. It’s a mind-blowingly detailed account of the saga of Herman Perry, a black GI in World War II who was stationed in Burma during the war as a physical laborer on the Ledo Road, a massively expensive construction project intended to be a supply line to keep the Chinese in the war and distracting the Japanese.
The book starts its tale a little bit before the draft and ends it a little after Perry was hanged for shooting a white officer. In that span it really opened my eyes about the kinds of racism that prevailed in the world at that time. We get a lot of history about the evils of Nazism growing up in the US, but in this book you get a glimpse at the mind boggling racism demonstrated by the Japanese, the Chinese (both with similar Master Race ideologies) and the United States.
Some of the most famous American blacks to have aided in the war effort were the Tuskegee Airmen and the 761st Black Panther tank battalion (which you can learn more about here), but the majority of black soldiers were deemed by military logic to be too cowardly and simple for combat—an interesting counterpoint to the Vietnam-era logic that disproportionately sent minorities into the meat-grinder. The army was so backward at this point that their medical apparatus even kept segregated blood supplies because they feared that white soldiers would refuse surgery if they thought they might receive transfusions of blood that once flowed through the veins of black soldiers.
All in all, this was a pretty staggering re-framing of World War II for me. I recommend you read this book. It might blow your mind.
Posted: August 31st, 2008 under Miscellaneous.
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