Native Americans and World War II
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Some 25,000 American Indians served in the military during World War II. Described as the first large-scale exodus of indigenous peoples from the reservations since the defeat of their ancestors by whites in the 1800s, the international conflict was a turning point in American Indian history. Men of native descent, drafted into the military like other American males, enjoyed full integration into the armed forces. Their fellow soldiers often held them in high esteem, in part since the legend of the tough Indian warrior had become a part of the fabric of American historical legend. White servicemen sometimes showed a lighthearted respect toward American Indian comrades by calling them "chief."
The resulting increase in contact with the world outside of the reservation system brought profound changes to American Indian culture. "The war," said the U.S. Indian commissioner in 1945, "caused the greatest disruption of Indian life since the beginning of the reservation era," affecting the habits, views, and economic well-being of tribal members (Bernstein, p. 131). The most significant of these changes was the opportunity--as a result of wartime labor shortages--to find well-paying work. Yet there were losses to contend with as well. Altogether, 1,200 Pueblo Indians served in World War II; only about half came home alive.
[edit] Postwar readjustment
American Indian veterans encountered varying degrees of difficulty in re-entering tribal life after World War II, depending on the individual and the tribe. Some tribes gave their veterans a hero's welcome; others treated them as if they had been sullied by their contact with whites. The Zuni Pueblo insisted that their servicemen be cleansed in a purifying rite before reinitiating contact with tribal members; on the other hand, the Navajo viewed their veterans as a positive force, whose service and contact in the war portended progress for the tribe. Meanwhile, with peace came a diminished respect from the outside world. Having been treated as equals and esteemed as warriors during the war, the Indians now felt acutely the sudden loss of their former status once they removed their uniforms, returning once again to second-class status in the eyes of many whites.
Prejudice was evident in the decline of the economic fortunes for American Indians in the postwar years. Some veterans earned subsistence checks of $90 a month from the government while receiving agricultural training. But these payments were only temporary, and long-term career positions on reservations in New Mexico were limited. Veterans tried to cope by moving to cities; the Indian population in urban centers more than doubled (from 24,000 to 56,000) from 1941 to 1950. Some veterans, like Abel in the novel, moved to California cities only to experience little success there. More than three thousand Indians lived in San Francisco and Los Angeles after the war; fewer than five hundred, or a sixth of them, were able to find steady jobs. Tellingly, the median income for urban male Indians was $1,198 a year, in contrast to $3,780 for the white male population.
Though assimilation into the general population may have seemed a relatively easy matter for urban Indians--in contrast to those remaining on the reservations--often the opposite was true. Many urban Indians came to identify more strongly than before with their "Indianness" and tended to form American Indian enclaves in the city, with members from different tribes banding together in pan-Indian groups that gave rise to new mixtures of traditions.
