Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America

March 1, 2009
Nathaniel Frank
St. Martins Press

This book by Palm Center Senior Research Fellow, Nathaniel Frank, presents the latest research and over a decade of evidence on gay service . Forthcoming, 2009.  read more »

December 22nd, 2009

"We're here to defend democracy, not to practice it."

Guest Blogger
preview  (This post submitted by Christian Leuprecht) Implicit in this claim is the proposition is an allegedly inherent contradiction: That mounting an effective defence of the democratic way of life and its fundamental values of freedom, equality, and justice requires undemocratic practices that skirt these values.

The Pentagon's Gay Ban is Not Based on Military Necessity

January 1, 2003
Aaron Belkin
Journal of Homosexuality, Volume 41(1), The Haworth Press

Click here for a pdf version of this report.

ABSTRACT. When President Bill Clinton attempted to lift the U.S. military’s ban on gay and lesbian soldiers, Congress reacted by enacting a law that prohibits known homosexuals from serving in the U.S. armed forces. The official justification for the new policy is the unit cohesion rationale, the notion that if known gays and lesbians were allowed to serve, unit cohesion, performance, readiness and morale would decline. The thesis of this paper is that the evidence that advocates of discrimination invoke to support the plausibility of the unit cohesion rationale does not constitute scientifically valid data. Thispaper was delivered originally as a lecture at the Commonwealth Club of California and broadcast subsequently on National Public Radio.

The evidence that advocates of discrimination invoke to support the
plausibility of the unit cohesion rationale does not constitute
scientifically valid data.  read more »

August 14th, 2009

Generational Divide

Guest Blogger
preview (This post submitted by Becky Kanis) Lieutenant Dan Choi went back to West Point this past weekend...
June 23rd, 2009

Shalikashvili to Opponents of Open Gay Service: Please Get Your Facts Right

Aaron Belkin
preview General John Shalikashvili, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, published a Washington Post op-ed last week.

Attitudes of Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans Toward Gay and Lesbian Service Members

October 29, 2009
Bonnie Moradi, Laura Miller
Armed Forces & Society

Click here, to read the full manuscript as published in "Armed Forces and Society."

Abstract

U.S. policy banning openly gay and lesbian personnel from serving in its military rests on the belief that heterosexual discomfort with lesbian and gay service members in an integrated environment would degrade unit cohesion and readiness. To inform this policy, data from a 2006 survey of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans were analyzed in this study. Views of these war veterans were consistent with prior surveys of military personnel showing declining support for the policy: from about 75 percent in 1993 to 40 percent in this survey. Among the demographic and military experience variables analyzed, comfort level with lesbian and gay people was the strongest correlate of attitudes toward the ban. War veterans indicated that the strongest argument against the ban is that sexual orientation is unrelated to job performance, and that the strongest argument in favor of the ban is a projected negative impact on unit cohesion. However, analyses of these war veterans’ ratings of unit cohesion and readiness revealed that knowing a gay or lesbian unit member was not associated uniquely with cohesion or readiness; instead, the quality of leaders, equipment, and training were the critical factors associated with unit cohesion and readiness.

This paper was first published by the Palm Center in July, 2009.

This paper presents additional analysis of the 2006 Zogby Poll commissioned by the Palm Center.  Data indicated no associations between knowing a lesbian or gay unit member and ratings of perceived unit cohesion or readiness.  read more »

September 16th, 2008

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and Gender Violence

Indra Lusero
preview

There is one arena where apparently opponents of gay service and advocates of openly gay service agree. That is on the seriousness and prevalence of sexual and gender violence in the military.  read more »

Report of the General/ Flag Officers' Study Group

July 28, 2008
General/Flag Officers Study Group
Palm Center Whitepaper

The study group consisted of the following authors: Brigadier General Hugh Aitken, USMC. (Ret.), Lieutenant General Minter Alexander, USAF. (Ret.), Lieutenant General Robert Gard, USA (Ret.), Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, USN (Ret.)  Below is a copy of the text of the report, or you can click here for a pdf version.

 

Report of the General/Flag Officers’ Study Group

A nonpartisan national study group, comprised of retired General/Flag Officers from different branches of the service, assembled to study the effectiveness of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” to review available evidence, consider arguments from all sides, and issue a public report.

REPORT CONTENTS
Executive Summary
Rationale
History of “don’t ask, don’t tell”
Findings
Recommendations
Appendices
Letter from the Palm Center
Study Group Biographies
Invited Experts


Executive Summary
A bipartisan study group of senior retired military officers, representing different branches of the service, has conducted an in-depth assessment of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy by examining the key academic and social science literature on the subject and interviewing a range of experts on leadership, unit cohesion and military law, including those who are training our nation’s future military leaders at the service academies. The Study Group emphasized that any changes to existing personnel policy must not create an unacceptable risk to the armed forces' high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.


The Study Group has made ten findings, including:

Finding one: The law locks the military’s position into stasis and does not accord any trust to the Pentagon to adapt policy to changing circumstances

Finding Two: Existing military laws and regulations provide commanders with sufficient means to discipline inappropriate conduct

Finding Three: “Don’t ask, don’t tell” has forced some commanders to choose between breaking the law and undermining the cohesion of their units

Finding four: “Don’t ask, don’t tell” has prevented some gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members from obtaining psychological and medical care as well as religious counseling

Finding five: “Don’t ask, don’t tell” has caused the military to lose some talented service members

Finding six: ““Don’t ask, don’t tell” has compelled some gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members to lie about their identity

Finding seven: Many gays, lesbians, and bisexuals are serving openly

Finding eight: “Don’t ask, don’t tell” has made it harder for some gays, lesbians, and bisexuals to perform their duties

Finding nine: Military attitudes towards gays and lesbians are changing

Finding ten: Evidence shows that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly is unlikely to pose any significant risk to morale, good order, discipline, or cohesion

On the basis of these findings, the Study Group offers the following four recommendations:

Recommendation 1. Congress should repeal 10 USC § 654 and return authority for personnel policy under this law to the Department of Defense.

Recommendation 2. The Department of Defense should eliminate “don’t tell” while maintaining current authority under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and service regulations to preclude misconduct prejudicial to good order and discipline and unit cohesion. The prerogative to disclose sexual orientation should be considered a personal and private matter.

Recommendation 3. Remove from Department of Defense directives all references to “bisexual,” “homosexual,” “homosexual conduct,” “homosexual acts,” and “propensity.” Establish in their place uniform standards that are neutral with respect to sexual orientation, such as prohibitions against any inappropriate public bodily contact for the purpose of satisfying sexual desires.

Recommendation 4. Immediately establish and reinforce safeguards for the confidentiality of all conversations between service members and chaplains, doctors, and mental health professionals.

Rationale

All policies that affect the military must be designed to promote readiness, and must be evaluated in terms of how well they measure up to that standard. The military, cultural, and political landscapes have shifted significantly in the years since the “don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT) policy was adopted in 1993. As a result, Professor Charles Moskos, one of the principle authors of DADT said in October 2007 that the time is ripe for, “a bi-partisan Commission [to] look at the whole issue of homosexuals in the military. This should involve the consultation of prominent Americans who are known to be pro-military and have respected national reputations.”

The Study Group agrees that a reasoned conversation on this subject requires the counsel of former military officials who have the institutional experience and perspective to offer sound recommendations to Congress and to the public concerning whether and how the current policy should be reformed.

As senior retired military officers, representing different branches of the service, we came into the process with open minds. We were supportive of the policy and felt that it was important at this time, on the eve of its 15th anniversary, to give considered thought from a military perspective to the policy’s current contribution to its stated goal: preserving military effectiveness. In our view, three conditions form the necessary foundation from which any re-examination of DADT should proceed: first, respect for military policy that maintains the armed forces' high standards of morale, good order and discipline; second, a willingness to examine the policy’s present relationship to military effectiveness; and third, the ability to engage controversial issues through sustained, rational inquiry and fact-finding.

“A bi-partisan Commission [to] look at the whole issue of homosexuals in the military. […] should involve the consultation of prominent Americans who are known to be pro-military and have respected national reputations.”
~Charles Moskos

In 1993, when DADT was drafted, the policy was intended by DoD as an interim measure. The policy was the result of political compromise in the aftermath of a presidential campaign promise. Military and political leaders viewed DADT as a stopgap measure. While DADT was the right solution at the time it was enacted the statute and the policy have remained in force for years with almost no significant change. This fact alone goes against the original intent of the statute and signals the importance of resuming an informed civil-military conversation. It stands to reason that after such a significant lapse in time, it is now appropriate and necessary to assess the effectiveness and goals of the statute and the policy.

On February 28th, 2007, former Rep. Martin Meehan (D-MA) and a bipartisan group of 109 original cosponsors reintroduced the Military Readiness Enhancement Act in the House of Representatives to amend 10 USC § 654 to enhance the readiness of the Armed Forces by replacing the current policy concerning homosexuality in the Armed Forces with a policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The immediate prospects of this bill’s passage are uncertain. But the perspective of senior military leaders ought to be consulted in this dialogue, and the Study Group offers this report as a small step in that direction.

The aims of the Study Group are (a) to review the DoD DADT policy and the law, 10 USC § 654, “Policy concerning homosexuality in the armed forces”, to see if, over time, these two instruments are continuing to serve the best interests of the armed forces; (b) to provide objective, knowledgeable military judgment about the effects of the DoD policy and the law over time; and (c) to consider what steps, if any, should be taken by the military and Congress. It is not the intention of the Study Group to craft a new policy or to resolve questions raised by the possible continuation of the current policy. Rather, it has been the goal of the Study Group to review all available data and to hear and consider expert opinion in order to make recommendations on the overall current state of the DoD policy and law and its present impact on military personnel, leadership, and effectiveness.

This report is funded by the Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The Palm Center’s rigorous research has been published by distinguished military journals including Parameters, the official journal of the Army War College, and has been cited in major news venues around the world. As a think tank engaged in controversial social science research, Palm has also reached conclusions that are critical of military policy and that have, themselves, been critiqued by scholars with different opinions. In order to ensure the impartiality of this project, the Study Group insisted, and the Palm Center agreed, that as a condition of participation, the Study Group conclusions would be their own, and would be reported unmodified by Palm researchers or staff.

The Study Group has focused on two key areas concerning the policy on homosexuality in the military: 1) the “unacceptable risk” standard established in 10 USC § 654 and 2) DoD's policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” implementation of the law through implementing regulations, in particular Directive Number 1332.14. During meetings at the Army Navy Club in Washington, DC in August and September 2007, the Study Group heard testimony and comment from a wide array of experts and interested parties including architects of the 1993 policy; scholars of military personnel issues and military psychology; military commanders; service members discharged under the current policy; experts on foreign militaries and integration; foreign military commanders; and constitutional law and other legal experts. The Study Group carefully sought out expert opinion representing all viewpoints, including supporters and detractors, advocates and critics of the current policy.


§
10 USC 654
“The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.”
§


The Study Group reviewed materials from the 1993 Congressional hearings and met with architects of the statute and the policy. The group examined in detail the language of the law with the help of lawyers and legal scholars. Finally, the Study Group reviewed the relevant policies in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and discussed the relationship of the statute, the policy, and the UCMJ with military commanders who had experience implementing them in Iraq and elsewhere.

The Study Group examined the key academic and social science literature on the subject. This included the most recent quantitative information (polling data) available on military opinion and civilian attitudes; the most up-to-date research on unit cohesion and military psychology; and comparative work on foreign militaries. The group heard from academic experts on the history of sexual minorities in the military and on the history of DADT. The group spoke with and sought out the opinion of those who are training the nation’s future military leaders at the service academies.

The Study Group was saddened that not a single expert who opposes gays in the military was willing to meet or talk with us in person. For each expert, the group offered to take written, and/or in-person testimony, and offered to arrange and subsidize transportation to Washington, D.C. or to arrange videoconferencing or teleconferencing facilities. The group also asked experts who oppose gays in the military to provide additional names of experts who might participate. Because not a single one of these experts was willing to participate in person or to provide additional names of people who would, therefore the group devoted particular and extensive effort to the study of their published work and any written comments they were willing to submit for consideration.

History of “don’t ask, don’t tell”

The question of whether gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve in the U.S. military has surfaced several times in the history of the United States. Up until World War II, homosexuals were not specifically named in military regulations. Those caught engaging in homosexual conduct were punished or separated—albeit inconsistently—under regulations proscribing certain kinds of sexual behaviors or under policies targeting socially disreputable conduct or social types. By the end of World War II, all services banned homosexuals and homosexual conduct, although enforcement continued to be unevenly applied.

A string of court cases in the 1970s and 1980s challenged inconsistencies in how the homosexual exclusion policy was being implemented. In response to some of these legal challenges, and in deference to political considerations, the Carter Administration initiated the first Pentagon-wide ban on gays and lesbians in uniform. Implemented at the end of President Carter’s term, DOD Directive 1332.14 (DOD, 1982) effectively removed any discretion that different services or individual commanders previously enjoyed. The new policy modified the language that had regarded gay people as “unsuitable for military service” stating instead that “homosexuality is incompatible with military service.” The rationale given was that “the presence of such members adversely affects the ability of the armed forces to maintain discipline, good order and morale; to foster mutual trust and confidence among service members; to insure the integrity of the system of rank and command; to facilitate assignment and worldwide deployment of service members who frequently must live and work under close conditions affording minimal privacy; to recruit and retain members of the armed forces; to maintain the public acceptability of military service; and to prevent breaches of security.”

In the late 1980s, the homosexual exclusion policy came under increasing public scrutiny. A purge of suspected lesbians at the Parris Island Marine training center in South Carolina added to the momentum of critics of the gay ban, and new gay, lesbian, and bisexual advocacy groups joined civil rights organizations, legal aid groups, and members of Congress to raise awareness of the consequences of the policy. After the first Gulf War, the press reported allegations that the military had sent known gays and lesbians to war, only to discharge them upon their return. The confluence of ongoing legal challenges to the policy and growing opposition in the court of public opinion, particularly on college campuses, where the presence of ROTC was routinely protested, caught the attention of lawmakers and candidates for office in the early 1990s.

In October 1991, Gov. Bill Clinton, a Democratic contender for the White House, was asked during a speech at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government about his position on the ban on gay service members. He answered that he opposed it and would lift it if he became president. Clinton framed his position in terms of “meritocracy,” saying the nation could not afford to exclude capable citizens from helping their country even if some citizens did not like them. In contrast, those opposed to lifting the gay ban, including many members of the military and of religious and other socially conservative organizations, cast the issue as one of “national security” and “military readiness,” arguing that such a change would put lives needlessly at risk by compromising the high standards of discipline, morale, and unit cohesion on which a strong military relies.

After Clinton won the election in November 1992, his campaign promise on gays in the military dominated the news cycle for months. Opposition from the military was fierce, as was resistance from other sectors of American society. Senator Sam Nunn, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and General Colin Powell, Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, insisted that homosexual conduct must not be permitted in the military, and they pointed out that the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which bans certain sexual acts such as sodomy which are commonly associated with homosexuals, could only be changed by an act of Congress. President-Elect Clinton argued that a person’s status—as opposed to his or her conduct—should not be a bar to service. He continued to assert his intention to lift the ban outright and to allow gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans to serve their country without concealing their identity.

In January 1993, just days after Clinton’s inauguration, the new President came to a compromise with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and members of Congress to suspend certain aspects of the homosexual exclusion policy while studying the issue for a six-month period. The most notable change for the interim period was that recruits would no longer be asked if they were homosexual as a pre-condition for enlistment. But investigations of homosexuality would continue and, if found out, gays and lesbians would be transferred into the “standby reserves,” where they would receive no pay or benefits.

President Clinton then ordered his Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, to study how best to reform the policy in a way that would end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation while remaining consistent with the standards of discipline and order necessary to maintain military readiness. Policy options were supposed to take the Uniform Code of Military Justice into consideration.

Secretary Aspin ordered two major studies that spring. One study was by a panel of general/flag officers called the Military Working Group (MWG), which Aspin appointed and instructed to deliver a report by July 1993. The RAND Corporation’s National Defense Research Institute, a private think tank created by members of the military following World War II, commissioned the other study. The two organizations delivered competing proposals, with the MWG suggesting a policy that retained the finding that “homosexuality is incompatible with military service,” and RAND concluding that sexual orientation should be considered “not germane” in determining who should be allowed to serve.

While military experts were preparing their reports, Congress separately held hearings on the matter, led by Sen. Nunn. The hearings, both in the House and Senate, took place over several months and invited testimony of numerous parties, including national security experts, legal scholars, sociologists, members of Congress, and current and former members of the armed forces. The Senate also conducted field hearings to discuss the matter with enlisted personnel on ships and submarines.

On July 19th 1993, the Clinton White House announced its policy, Clinton in a Ft. McNair speech made permanent the temporary suspension of asking potential recruits to reveal their sexual orientation. In a memo signed by Secretary Aspin, “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue,” and the Department of Defense directed that applicants for military service would “not be asked or required to reveal their sexual orientation.” The policy called for the separation of service members “for homosexual conduct,” which was defined to include “a statement by a service member that demonstrates a propensity or intent to engage” in homosexual acts. Acts are defined as “any bodily contact” between members of the same sex undertaken “for the purpose of satisfying sexual desires” or which a “reasonable person would understand to demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts.” The policy explained that “an open statement by a service member that he or she is a homosexual” would be taken to demonstrate a “presumption that he or she intends to engage in prohibited conduct.” Therefore, both statements to that effect and the prohibited conduct itself would result in separation.

It is the practical and everyday flexibility of military commanders that leads some to mistakenly assume that DADT is working. The policy is not working; rather, it is military leaders who are making it work.
Congress debated and then voted on a variety of versions of Clinton’s policy, finally passing a version in September that hardened the language by making a number of changes. In particular, the new Senate language did not mention “don’t pursue” and did not echo the Clinton policy’s assertion that “sexual orientation is considered a personal and private matter and homosexual orientation is not a bar to entry or continued service unless manifested by homosexual conduct,” while it did call gays an “unacceptable risk” to the military, and allowed the Secretary of Defense to re-instate “asking” if deemed appropriate. The Senate version required the separation of service members found to have engaged in or attempted to engage in homosexual acts, defined to include statements that they are gay or bisexual. The House passed an identical measure by a vote of 301 to 134, and, in November 1993, President Clinton signed the legislation (the National Defense Authorization Act of fiscal year 1994) into law. Over the next several months, the Pentagon wrote implementing regulations that updated prior Department of Defense directives, and the statute and regulations were implemented in February, 1994.

Study Group Findings

Finding one: The law locks the military’s position into stasis and does not accord any trust to the Pentagon to adapt policy to changing circumstances

As a result of the way in which the DADT law is written, the Defense Department is restricted from adjusting its policy to suit military needs or readiness. The Study Group finds that it is the practical and everyday flexibility of military commanders that leads some to mistakenly assume that DADT is working. However, the policy is not working; rather, it is the flexibility of military leaders, often ignoring or violating the policy, who are making the system work. The Defense Department needs the latitude to develop and adapt a policy that meets its needs. The framing of the current law does not recognize military flexibility or accord the Pentagon the authority to adjust its policies. The justification for the restrictions on homosexuals found in 10 USC § 654 is contained in the 15 Congressional findings provided in the beginning narrative of the statute. The last finding sets the rationale for the law, "The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability." The "unacceptable risk" standard was carefully established by Congress in 1993 based on expert testimony from trustworthy military leaders. The basis for their advice to Congress lies in the attitudes toward homosexuality by members of the armed forces serving at that time or earlier. Witnesses confirmed to us that attitudes of the members of the armed forces concerning homosexuality have changed since 1993. The Study Group was informed that only about 20 percent of those serving in 1993 when the law was passed remain in the service today. If DoD needed to adjust the policy because of the changing attitudes, it would be unable because of the specificity of the law. The Study Group believes that Congress should return the authority to the Defense Department to establish personnel policies that meet the needs of the military.

Finding Two: Military laws and regulations provide commanders with sufficient means to discipline inappropriate conduct.

Many types of conduct are not appropriate for military settings. The Uniform Code of Military Justice, as well as Pentagon regulations, provide commanders with numerous and sufficient means for disciplining inappropriate public displays of affection, fraternization, adultery, or any other conduct which is prejudicial to the maintenance of good order, discipline, morale and unit cohesion. In addition, the Defense of Marriage Act prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages for any purpose, even if recognized by any particular state.

Finding Three: DADT has forced some commanders to choose between breaking the law and preserving the cohesion of their units

The Study Group was concerned to learn that DADT puts some commanders in a double bind in their everyday workplace, as they weigh the need to follow the law against the importance of keeping their teams together.

The Study Group heard from a heterosexual officer who returned recently from a tour of duty in Iraq. He told the group that one of his best non-commissioned officers was probably a lesbian, and that if he had been presented with credible evidence of her homosexuality, he would have been forced to choose between following the law and keeping his unit intact. For this officer, unit cohesion was marked by the need to retain a qualified, meritorious lesbian service member. When asked which choice he would have made, he said that he would have opted to break the law. Experts in military law attested, “The statute makes it mandatory to follow up if told.” Yet, a former non-commissioned officer confirmed, “There were times I should have said something. I didn’t. I helped people manage their career.” He acknowledged, “I was breaking the law myself.”

Related to this issue, legal and military experts confirmed that even though DADT requires commanders to take action upon learning of a subordinate’s homosexuality, “no commander has been admonished for not following up.” Therefore, in practice, because many reported cases are based only on rumors or unobserved behavior, commanders can have a great deal of discretion about whether to launch an investigation into someone’s sexual orientation. This is one factor that can lead to uneven and sometimes arbitrary enforcement. One non-commissioned officer told us that, “You get accustomed to being ‘open’ at one duty station, then you’re transferred to another, stricter, more conservative environment, and there you have problems.” For gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members, the unpredictability of enforcement can add a burden to their ability to perform their duties.

Finding four: DADT has prevented some gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members from obtaining psychological and medical care as well as religious counseling

The Study Group was surprised to learn about the lack of confidentiality accorded gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members in conversations with doctors, chaplains, counselors, and other professionals in whom heterosexual military members can freely confide. The policy also creates ethical dilemmas for professionals attempting to balance their obligation to obey federal law and their obligation to professional ethics.

Despite the general supposition that conversations with clergy are supposed to be confidential in the military, gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members have been investigated and discharged when chaplains reported the contents of their private conversations to commanders. Professor Tobias Barrington Wolff published a study on this topic that found that in 2000 “the Pentagon actually instructed gay soldiers to speak with clergy if they had questions about the policy, implicitly suggesting that confidentiality would be respected. But this instruction provided little security, as the military has continued to initiate discharge proceedings against gay soldiers when chaplains report the statements that the soldiers make during counseling sessions.” He adds “some military commanders instruct doctors and therapists that they are required to report any soldier who speaks about being gay during treatment.” Vincent Patton, former Master Chief Petty Officer of the Coast Guard, confirmed that confidentiality in the Chaplains Corps is a serious issue. He indicated that gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members might have more need of clergy support, since they may have less family support, but that confiding in the Chaplaincy can prompt a discharge.

In the case of doctors and mental health practitioners, there is no formal pretense of general confidentiality, and gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members incur risk when they speak about their sexual identities to healthcare professionals. One service member, Rhonda Davis, a former non-commissioned officer who was discharged from the Navy for being gay, told us that, “As an E-6, I had become a leader, and as a leader, troops came to me for advice and guidance. I had many gay troops working for me, and some of them I saw suffer a great deal because of this policy. One gay troop had a sexually transmitted disease and he asked what he should do about it. I advised him, of course, to see a doctor, but he called it to my attention that if he did, he could be kicked out of the Navy. Another troop was having a relationship problem with her girlfriend—she threatened committing suicide—and I told her to see a counselor or chaplain, but then I realized that wasn’t a good idea because talking about her girlfriend would violate the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. No matter what I told these troops, nothing was the right answer and I felt like a hypocrite.”

False accusations can also threaten the career or well being of heterosexual service members and can produce a generalized atmosphere of fear and suspicion. “In one remarkable incident in 2001, an Air Force airman sought the assistance of a military psychiatrist after a civilian raped him. The psychiatrist announced that the airman must be gay if he allowed himself to be raped, and he threatened to out the soldier to his command if he spoke about being gay during their therapy session.”

A February 2007 report of the American Psychological Association (APA) called attention to the increasing mental health needs of all military personnel and their families. The report found that many service personnel and their family members are going without mental health care because of the limited availability of such care and because of barriers to accessing that care. According to the APA, more than 30 percent of all service members who have been deployed to the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters meet the criteria for a mental disorder but less than half of those with mental health concerns seek help. According to Col. Thomas Kolditz, a psychologist who chairs the Behavioral Sciences and Leadership Department at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, “Insofar as DADT makes it less likely for gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members to seek treatment, it exacerbates this [existing] problem.” Not only are service members prevented from seeking healthcare, but also health professionals are prohibited from doing their job.

By inhibiting access to religious, medical and psychological services, DADT poses a risk to the well being of some service members. In addition, this denial of confidentially raises serious questions of professional ethics and constitutional protections. Therefore, confidentially for such professional consultations should be returned to gay and lesbian service members.


Finding five: DADT has caused the military to lose some talented service members

To meet President Bush’s goal of adding 95,000 new service members over the next five years, the military needs to add more than 18,000 new troops each year. According to Dr. Jan Laurence, who retired recently from her position as Director of Research in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, personnel shortages are so serious that “We’re looking at converting positions to civilian because we need people.” She emphasized that, “We are in dire straights.” Given Dr. Laurence’s professional background, the Study Group places special emphasis on her conclusions.

In response to such shortages, the number of convicted felons who enlisted in the U.S. military almost doubled in the past three years, rising from 824 felons in fiscal year 2004 to 1,605 in fiscal year 2006. The data indicate that from 2003 through 2006, the military recruited 4,230 convicted felons to enlist under the “moral waivers” program, which enables otherwise unqualified candidates to serve. In addition, 43,977 individuals convicted of serious misdemeanors such as assault were recruited to enlist under the moral waivers program during that period, as were 58,561 illegal drug abusers.

At the same time, according to a report prepared by the Government Accountability Office, nearly 800 people with skills deemed “mission-critical” by the Pentagon have been dismissed under DADT. This figure includes 268 in intelligence, 57 in combat engineering, 331 in medical service delivery, and more than 322 language experts, at least 58 of whom specialized in Arabic. It is counterproductive to military readiness to discharge qualified gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members at the same time that we are filling ranks with service members brought in under the moral waivers program.

A recent UCLA Law School study found that had DADT not been instituted in 1994, approximately 4,000 lesbian, gay and bisexual military personnel would have been retained each year. Of that group, an average of 1,000 men and women were discharged each year as a direct result of the policy and 3,000 would likely have stayed in the military if they could have served openly and without fear of discharge.

By contrast, 2 percent of presumably heterosexual service members who responded to a recent Zogby poll said that they would not have joined the military if gays and lesbians were allowed to serve openly, a total that would amount to about 4,000 lost recruits per year across the fourteen years the policy has been in effect.

If all of these statistics are to be taken at face value, then the repeal of DADT would be a wash in terms of recruiting and retention, with 4,000 heterosexuals refraining from joining the military each year, and 4,000 gays, lesbians, and bisexuals joining and remaining in the force.

These statistics, however, must be read critically. Approximately two-thirds of service members in the Canadian and British forces said that they would not work with gays, but when gay bans were lifted in both of those countries, recruiters reported no mass resignations and no increased difficulties, and even reported slightly enhanced recruiting and retention performance. According to several studies including official Ministry of Defence analyses, less than a handful of service members resigned from the British armed forces after the repeal of the British ban, despite the fact that two-thirds of British service members had previously told survey researchers that they would not work alongside gays. The vast literature on retention and enlistment propensity in the U.S. does not even include the lifting of the gay ban as a potential determinant in its research. However, the Zogby poll, which did include this factor in a list of motives for joining and staying in the military, found that out of ten possible motives, the repeal of DADT was ranked tenth in importance.

In the worst case scenario, if it turns out to be true that the numbers cancel out and 4,000 heterosexuals refrain from enlisting, while 4,000 gays, lesbians, and bisexuals do enlist, the group nevertheless points to the many official military pronouncements about the importance of building and maintaining a diverse force to represent the values of a free, pluralist democracy. Building and maintaining a diverse force is a central component to winning the war on terror because the diversity of the armed forces can serve as a living example to peoples living under authoritarian rule, and demonstrate that pluralism and tolerance offer a better way of life.

Finding six: DADT has compelled some gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members to lie about their identity

“I lied.”
“I did not like lying.”
~ Non-commissioned officer who served for 20 years in the Air Force

The Study Group was concerned to discover that DADT encourages dishonesty for some gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members. While some are able to serve in silence and refrain from saying anything about their sexual orientation, many are forced to assert a false identity. According to Professor Tobias Wolff, an expert in constitutional law who has done extensive research on DADT, “It is impossible to be ‘agnostic’ about one’s sexual identity in the course of normal interaction. Rather, a presumption of heterosexuality pervades most settings.” Imagine, for example, whether it would be realistic for a married, heterosexual service member to never admit that she has a husband. While theoretically possible, in practice such concealment could be a difficult pretense to maintain given the constant banter and genuine concern for loved ones that takes place among service members.

Several non-commissioned officers who met with us confirmed that while they were never officially asked about their sexual orientation, dating was a topic that came up frequently in informal settings. To escape suspicion in such circumstances, they often felt that they had to lie. One non-commissioned officer who served for 20 years in the Air Force, including a tour in Afghanistan, said that whenever he was asked, “I lied.” He added forcefully: “I did not like lying.”

The policy puts some gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members in a quandary and undermines the personal integrity essential to honor and trust.

Finding seven: Many gays, lesbians, and bisexuals are serving openly

Despite the fact that DADT causes many gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members to lie about who they are, many others do serve openly. An estimated 65,000 gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons are currently serving on either active or reserve duty, and it is estimated that there are another one million gay, lesbian, and bisexual veterans. A 2006 Zogby poll of troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan found that nearly one in four U.S. troops (23%) say that they know for sure that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian. Of those who say they know for certain that they serve with a gay or lesbian service member, 59% said they learned about the person’s sexual orientation directly from the individual. More than half (55%) of the troops who know a gay peer said that the presence of gays or lesbians in their unit is well known by others. One of the most distinguished academic experts on the military in the country told us that, “One thing I have been disabused of is that gays survive by being in the closet. If there are large numbers of gays completely in the closet, I haven’t seen it.”

As one non-commissioned officer told us, “Of course, I never walked into a room and announced ‘I’m a lesbian,’ but people aren’t stupid, and they always picked up on the fact I didn’t have a boyfriend or husband or kids–and eventually, when we were all hanging out at the Enlisted club bonding as friends and shipmates—my secret would come out. As my friends spoke casually of their husbands and wives, I often spoke of some girl I was dating at the time.” She concluded, “The reason I could be honest with my Navy friends is because I generally found that people respected me for my work ethic, my integrity, and for my character. I am a good person, and a workaholic—and they could see that.”

Finding eight: DADT has made it harder for some gays, lesbians, and bisexuals to perform their duties

Those who do choose to adhere to the policy and lie about their identity sometimes become the target of suspicion or scorn from their peers and this can impact individual and unit performance. As a non-commissioned officer told us: “I had two gay friends while I was stationed in Spain. One man, E., was very open [about being gay], like me. The other one, T., followed the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy nearly to the letter of the law. T. told me that he was gay, but to his co-workers he lied about having girlfriends. But everyone hated him. I asked the guys at work why they harassed T. when none of them harassed E. or me. They said the problem wasn’t the fact T. was gay, the problem was he was a liar. And to them, that meant he was a coward. They were personally insulted that he lied to them. In this case, DADT is a dual-edged sword: if you follow it, you’re mistrusted; if you don’t, you play Russian roulette every day with your career.” Stories such as this suggest to us that service members may be more disturbed about serving with dishonest peers than about serving alongside gays and lesbians. It places young professionals, homosexual and heterosexual, in an unworkable situation.

For those who are open about their sexual orientation, however, other risks present themselves. One former service member told us that, “‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ had only been around a little more than a year by the time I enlisted…but that didn’t stop me from being honest with most of my fellow shipmates about my sexual orientation.” However, she explained, this meant “the guy in the office down the hall who had asked me out on a date, only to find out later that I’m a lesbian, could have ended my career. My troop whom I yelled at constantly for being late—who knew I’m a lesbian— could have ended my career. Any number of people, at any time, could have had the power to end my career. Even when I felt comfortable with people, it was always in the back of my mind that anyone at anytime could turn on me and turn me in. My Navy career was always somewhat at their mercy, and that was an incredible burden to bear. Many people know you’re gay, but look the other way because they know you’re a good sailor.”

The Study Group finds that the policy can produce an atmosphere of uncertainty and suspicion for all concerned.

Finding nine: Military attitudes towards gays and lesbians are changing.

The existing law and DoD DADT policy on homosexuals serving in the armed forces is based on the attitudes of service members. In 1993, 40 percent of the public supported allowing “openly gay men and lesbian women” to serve in the military. Civilian and military opinion has shifted in the intervening years, indicating much more acceptance for gays and lesbians serving. Recently, national polls have been administered by at least five different polling organizations that have asked members of the public whether gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly. All survey results show that between 58 and 79 percent of the public believe that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly.

One conservative polling organization hired by Fox News found that 64 percent of the public, including 55 percent of Republicans, believe that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly; and other pollsters have confirmed that a majority of Republicans now believe that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly. A majority of regular churchgoers say that gays and lesbians should serve openly.

Gallup found that 91 percent of young adults say that gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly. Of course, as Moskos pointed out in a message to the Study Group, “Public opinion is not what counts. Attitudes of soldiers does.” While it is impossible to know with certainty when change of attitude of “soldiers” will occur, it seems implausible, given where military and public opinion stands, to imagine that DADT will continue in perpetuity.

Finding ten: Evidence shows that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly is unlikely to pose any significant risk to morale, good order, discipline, or cohesion

The justification for DADT is contained in 15 Congressional findings which establish the rationale for the law, and which conclude that, “The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.” While this may have been true in 1993, there are indications that this may no longer be the case. In 1993, the finding of “unacceptable risk” was based on the views of currently serving service members and military leaders, and on the experiences of foreign militaries. However, the group was not able to find any evidence to suggest that the finding of unacceptable risk remains valid.

Colonel Tom Kolditz, Chairman of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, is one of the Army’s top experts on leadership and cohesion. He served 18 years as a Field Artillery officer including two years of battalion command and seven years as a Professor at West Point. From 1995 through 1997, he worked in the Human Resources Directorate of the Army G-1, where Army policy related to DADT is managed. He completed service as one of four doctoral level researchers supporting the Secretary of the Army’s Senior Review Panel on Sexual Harassment following the Aberdeen Proving Ground scandal. And he is the author of a number of well-received studies on leadership and cohesion, including a Strategic Studies Institute monograph titled, “Why they Fight,” and a book released this past June titled, In Extremis Leadership: Leading as if Your Life Depended on It.

Col. Kolditz told us that, “Cohesion is important to Army leaders, especially in combat. Current Army leadership doctrine, FM 6-22 requires Army leaders to ‘build high-performing and cohesive organizations.’ Among the principal issues in cohesion research is the relative contribution of task cohesion (the ability for individuals to work in teams to accomplish tasks) versus social cohesion (personal relationships among team members).” Kolditz emphasized that there is a current emphasis on training cross-cultural skills in concert with a tolerance for diversity among soldiers and leaders to enable U.S. success in current missions around the world. He elaborated that, “I’ve taught a course in cross cultural leadership and diversity for the Eisenhower Leader Development Program, a graduate program taught to Army Captains at West Point in concert with Columbia Teachers’ College, and most recently adapted the course as an extended lecture in the Yale School of Management. A core instructional element of that course is that people can develop cross cultural leadership skills not only by being in foreign cultures, but by practicing their skills and abilities at home, across diversity areas, such as race, gender, class, age, religious affiliation, physical ability, and sexual orientation. I introduce the concept by saying that people who have a hard time communicating and working with, say, Amish people in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, will certainly have a difficult time working with Sunni Muslim police administrators in Baghdad.” He added, “I could just as easily substitute an example based on sexual orientation.” Kolditz emphasized that he is unaware of any evidence suggesting that heterosexuals cannot form bonds of trust with gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

A scholar at the RAND Corporation who is a leading academic expert on unit cohesion confirmed that, “I do not know of any evidence” that suggests that gays undermine cohesion. A heterosexual officer who returned recently from Iraq explained that the friction resulting from the prosecution of service members found to be gay is far greater than the friction that results from simply knowing a gay person. And retired Master Chief Petty Officer Vincent Patton confirmed that service members have told him that, “we had unit cohesion till this [gay] person was kicked out.”

Given the differences between foreign armed forces and the U.S military, the Study Group does not place too much stock in lessons learned from overseas. That having been said, it is worth noting that the British Ministry of Defense has completed two official studies of the repeal of the British gay ban and that while some units did experience minor friction, overall the policy transition posed no serious challenges whatsoever. The Study Group heard testimony from top uniformed and academic experts on gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the Israeli and British militaries who confirmed that they were not aware of any detriment to morale, good order, discipline or cohesion that followed from allowing gays, lesbians, and bisexuals to serve openly. In fact, Britain has recently begun actively recruiting gay, lesbian, and bisexual men and women for service in the Royal Navy.

While polls show that a majority of American service members say that they would prefer that DADT remain in place, only a small minority of those polled say that they are personally uncomfortable interacting and working with gays and lesbians. This represents a major shift from 1993. General Wesley Clark confirms that the “temperature of the issue has changed over the decade. People were much more irate about this issue in the early ‘90s than I found in the late ‘90s, for whatever reason, younger people coming in [to the military]. It just didn’t seem to be the same emotional hot button issue by ’98, ‘99, that it had been in ’92, ‘93.” In 2005, a West Point Cadet received an award for writing the best senior honors thesis in his department for a study arguing that DADT is inconsistent with the military’s emphasis on fairness and equal treatment. And, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili publicly announced that despite his original support for DADT, he no longer believes that the policy serves the military’s interest. In a January, 2007 New York Times op-ed, he noted that, “I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces.”

Finally, a new statistical analysis of 545 service members returning from Iraq and Afghanistan finds that there is no correlation between knowing a gay unit member and the level of readiness or cohesion in the unit.

Recommendations

Recommendation 1. Congress should repeal 10 USC § 654 and return authority for personnel policy under this law to the Department of Defense.

Recommendation 2. The Department of Defense should eliminate “don’t tell” while maintaining current authority under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and service regulations to preclude misconduct prejudicial to good order and discipline and unit cohesion. The prerogative to disclose sexual orientation should be considered a personal and private matter.

Recommendation 3. Remove from Department of Defense directives all references to “bisexual,” “homosexual,” “homosexual conduct,” “homosexual acts,” and “propensity.” Establish in their place uniform standards that are neutral with respect to sexual orientation, such as prohibitions against any inappropriate public bodily contact for the purpose of satisfying sexual desires.

Recommendation 4. Immediately establish and reinforce safeguards for the confidentiality of all conversations between service members and chaplains, doctors, and mental health professionals.

Return Authority to DoD.



Letter from the Palm Center

The General/Flag Officers’ Study Group project emerged out of conversations with a number of offices in Congress, Democratic and Republican, who wanted to be sure, as the Military Readiness Enhancement Act moves forward, that senior military voices were consulted throughout the process. The project also emerged out of a recognition that this may be the time, on the eve of the 15th anniversary of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, to resume an informed civil-military conversation on the issue. The military perspective on the policy’s current contribution to its stated goal, preserving military effectiveness, is of utmost importance.

Therefore, a nonpartisan national study group, comprised of retired General/Flag Officers from different branches of the service, who have the institutional experience and perspective to offer sound recommendations, was assembled to study the effectiveness of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” The Study Group was to review available evidence, consider arguments from all sides, and issue a public report. The goal of the Study Group was to explore two key areas concerning the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy: 1) the “unacceptable risk” standard established in the law and 2) DoD's implementation of the law through implementing regulations. The Study Group would then make recommendations based on their findings about the current state of the policy and its present impact on military personnel, leadership, and effectiveness.

We are grateful to all those who have assisted the Study Group, especially the national and international experts who agreed to share their expertise in person and directly address its questions. We are also grateful to those scholars who could not meet in person, but nevertheless provided the Study Group with taped and written comments. Many of the experts who agreed to speak with the Study Group were centrally involved in the policy conversations that culminated in the passage of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in 1993, and we appreciate their generosity and willingness to return to these issues with the benefit of hindsight and to offer their analysis.

Our further thanks go to Col. Richard Klass and Brant Shalikashvili, both of whom played central roles in the project. Finally, we thank the research scholars at the Palm Center who compiled current information and data for the Study Group’s review, especially Dr. Nathaniel Frank, Senior Research Fellow. Funding for The General/Flag Officers’ Study Group Project has been provided by the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Aaron Belkin, Director
Jeanne Scheper, Research Director
Indra Lusero, Assistant Director



Study Group Members


Brigadier General Hugh Aitken, USMC (Ret.) – Gen. Aitken’s distinguished career spanned five decades, beginning with his enlistment in 1946. He served in Korea, where he was company commander with the 1st Marine Division, and Vietnam, where he joined the 1st Marine Division as the Assistant G-3. He attended the Army War College and served as Deputy Director, Plans Division. In 1975, he became the Executive Assistant to the DC/S for Manpower. Promoted to Brigadier General in March 1978, he became the Director, Manpower Plans and Policy Division. In August 1978, he was assigned as the Assistant Division Commander, 2nd Marine Division. He was assigned duty as the Director, Manpower Plans and Policy Division at Headquarters Marine Corps in September 1979, serving in this capacity until his retirement in 1980.

Lieutenant General Minter Alexander, USAF (Ret.) – Lt. Gen. Minter Alexander retired in 1994 as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Military Personnel Policy after more than 30 years of service. The general is a command pilot with more than 4,000 flying hours, including 800 combat hours. His personnel policy background covered critical issues that included planning and implementing the post cold war drawdown of 500,000 military personnel. His awards and decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal, Silver Star with oak leaf cluster, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit with oak leaf cluster, Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf cluster, Bronze Star Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal with 18 oak leaf clusters, and Air Force Commendation Medal.

Lieutenant General Robert Gard, USA (Ret.) – Lt. Gen. Robert Gard retired in 1981 after serving as President of the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. He started his military education at West Point, graduating in 1950, and earned his PhD in Political Economy and Government from Harvard in 1962. He served in Vietnam, Germany, and Korea, and was the Military Assistant to two Secretaries of Defense. Since retirement from the Army he has been a professor and Director of John’s Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy, and President of the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He currently serves as senior military fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC.


Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, USN (Ret.) Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan retired in 1977 after 35 years of service during which time he served in the Pacific in World War II, in Korea off the coast, and in Vietnam including tours in the Tonkin Gulf and as Commander of the Coastal Surveillance and Interdiction Force. In addition to the standard campaign awards, he holds the Joint Chiefs Commendation Medal (two awards), the Legion of Merit (three awards, one with the Combat V), the Distinguished Service Medal (two awards), the Navy Commendation Medal, and the Navy Combat Action Medal.



Invited Experts

Mark Agrast, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
Graham Beard, Commander, Head of Diversity and Equality in the Royal Navy, UK
Phillip Carter, served as an officer in the United States Army, including nine years of active and reserve service with military police and civil affairs units. In 2005 and 2006, he deployed to Iraq with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division where he served as an adviser to the Iraqi police.
Rhonda Davis, former Petty Officer 1st Class, U.S. Navy, was discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Elaine Donnelly, President, Center for Military Readiness++
Chai Feldblum, Ph.D. Professor at Georgetown University Law School
Jamie Gorelick, former Deputy Attorney General of the United States, served as the General Counsel of the Department of Defense in 1993 and 1994.
John Holum, former Under Secretary of State for International Security & Arms Control and Director of the Arms Control & Disarmament Agency, was in charge of the gays in the military issue for the incoming Clinton administration between the 1992 election and the 1993 inauguration.
Lt. Commander Craig Jones, Royal Navy
Danny Kaplan, Ph.D. is an officer in the Israel Defense Forces and a leading academic expert on gays in the Israeli military.
Col. Thomas Kolditz is Professor and Head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Lawrence Korb, Ph.D. Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, was Assistant Secretary of Defense (Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations and Logistics) during the Reagan administration, from 1981 through 1985.
Dave Lebsack retired recently as Master Sergeant in the U.S. Air Force. His 20-year career included a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
Jan Laurence, Ph.D. served as Director of Research & Analysis in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel & Readiness from 2005 through 2007.
Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis served as Vice President for Policy and Director of the Military Readiness Project at the Family Research Council.*
Eugene R. Milhizer, Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Law, Ave Maria School of Law*
Laura Miller, Ph.D. RAND Corporation and a Member of the Army Science Board as well as the Board of Directors, Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society
Charles Moskos, Ph.D. is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University and was a principal architect of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.*
Dr. Vincent Patton III, MCPOCG United States Coast Guard, served as the Eighth Master Chief Petty Officer of the U.S. Coast Guard.
Ronald Ray was Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan administration.+
David Segal, Ph.D. Director, Center for Research on Military Organization and Professor of Sociology at the University of Maryland
Peter Sprigg is Vice President for Policy at the Family Research Council*
Maj. Melissa Wells-Petry served as Counsel to the Readiness Project at the Family Research Council.*
John Allen Williams, Ph.D. is Professor of Political Science at Loyola University Chicago and Chair and President of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society. He retired as a Captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve with 30 years of commissioned service.++
Tobias Barrington Wolff is a Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading scholar on the constitutionality of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
William Woodruff is Professor of Law at Campbell University, a Christian University in North Carolina+


*Declined invitation to appear or to submit written comment.
++ Declined invitation. Referred Study Group to previously published work.

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July 2008 - A bipartisan study group of senior retired military officers, representing different branches of the service, conducted an in-depth assessment of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.  read more »

Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Debating the Gay Ban in the Military

January 1, 2003
Aaron Belkin, Geoffrey Bateman, editors
Lynne Rienner Publishers

INTRODUCTION || CHAPTER OVERVIEW || REVIEWS || EXCERPT


INTRODUCTION

A definitive edited volume of lively debate, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Debating the Gay Ban in the Military presents the views of the leading scholars on sexual orientation and the military. This new and unprecedented anthology, published on the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, breaks new ground on U.S. military readiness in a time of war. For the first time, this book brings together a critical mass of experts of different points of view to debate whether the U.S. military’s gay ban is based on military necessity or prejudice.


OVERVIEW TO DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL: DEBATING THE GAY BAN IN THE MILITARY

The volume begins with a summary of major arguments for and against allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly and with a discussion of special burdens that conservatives and liberals bear as they advance their claims. In Chapter Two, “History Repeating Itself: A Historical Overview of Gay Men and Lesbians in the Military Before ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’” historian Timothy Haggerty discusses the changing ways in which the U.S. military has addressed the issue of homosexuality in the armed forces and traces major shifts in policy from World War I through President Clinton’s 1993 attempt to lift the ban. Haggerty’s discussion demonstrates how the military’s understanding of homosexual identity has shifted away from criminal and medical models and considers the relationship between the military’s management of sexual identity and the larger political and cultural context in the United States with regard to homosexuality.

The chapters following this historical overview present four debates concerning various aspects of the gay ban that were transcribed from an international conference on the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Held at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco in December 2000, this public debate was the first of its kind and included the presentations of a number of key experts on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” military sociology, and sexuality and gender in the military, including C. Dixon Osburn, Christopher Dandeker, David Segal, and Melissa Sheridan Embser-Herbert. Each scholar gave a short presentation in his or her area of expertise as it related to the larger evaluation of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and after each group of presentations, a moderated and lively discussion followed.

Chapter Three, “Does the Gay Ban Preserve Soldiers’ Privacy?” considers the ban in terms of its ability to preserve soldiers’ privacy, especially the privacy of heterosexual men. Much has been made of the argument that lifting the gay ban would undermine heterosexual privacy in military barracks and showers. Conference participants debate this argument and discuss the need to understand anxieties that privacy concerns represent and why they carry so much rhetorical power.

In Chapter Four, “Does ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Preserve Unit Cohesion?” the conference participants present the most current and relevant data about the impact gay and lesbian service members have on unit cohesion. Panelists survey current attitudes toward homosexuality in the military, summarize the vast literature on cohesion and its relation to homosexuality, and discuss the change in demographics in the U.S. military and the impact this has on unit cohesion as in times of conflict and peace.

Chapter Five, “Are Foreign Military Experiences relevant to the United States?” offers an in-depth discussion of what the U.S. can learn from foreign militaries experiences with lifting their gay bans. High-ranking officials from Australia and New Zealand, as well as active-duty and former military personnel from Israel and the United Kingdom, share their perspectives on the lifting of gay bans in their countries. U.S. and foreign scholars who study these militaries round out the discussion and offer a broad range of opinions on whether the U.S. can look to foreign militaries as examples.

Chapter Six asks “What Does ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Cost?” and presents two ways in which to evaluate the costs of the ban. The first addresses the literal costs in terms of how much money and resources the U.S. military has expended enforcing the policy. This presentation also considers the cost imposed upon the thousands of gay and lesbian personnel who have been dismissed from the military because of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The second part of this section looks to the more general costs to our society with regard to the deference civilian courts have made to military decisions.

In Chapter Seven, two service members narrate their experiences of serving in the military, coming out as a gay, and being dismissed under the policies of the United States and the former policies of the United Kingdom. Steve May and Rob Nunn testify to the realities of being gay in the military and the difficulties the ban presented them.

The final chapter summarizes the day’s debate and probes for topics of research that scholars and students might undertake. Included in the appendix of this volume is the text of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”


REVIEWS

“An important contribution to the literature on lesbians and gays in the military … From beginning to end, it is well written, well organized, and tightly conceived in every way.”

—Craig Rimmerman,
Hobart and William Smith Colleges

“The book has something for almost every reader—a brief history of gays in the military, serious reasoned commentary on the topic, and heartfelt personal testimonials. All in all it is a good read on an increasingly important and relevant topic.”

—Juanita M. Firestone,
University of Texas at San Antonio


EXCERPT: CHRISTOPHER DANDEKER’S DISCUSSES HIS CHANGE OF OPINION

Lynn Eden: … I would like to know, have you changed your mind? I gather you have. How did you change your mind? What was your process? As a serious academic, how did you deal intellectually with making a prediction that did not come true? …

Christopher Dandeker: … I suspect I will not be the first or the last to revise one’s opinion in the light of evidence, argument, and discussion.

Lynn Eden: Most people do not.

Christopher Dandeker: Well, there we are. However, one of the issues in dispute, both then and now, and indeed during the discussions today, is what we mean precisely by open integration. In relation to the result of the European Court of Human Rights decision in the British case, I would have been much more cautious and indeed possibly hostile to the code of conduct had it not included levers within those regulations that legally allow the exclusion of ideologues who wish to place gay identity before professional identity. This crucial point distinguishes varieties of open integration. Once I worked out that particular view, then as a citizen as well as an academic, I was able to feel more relaxed about a policy that the core of the armed services could find acceptable. I do not mean they are waving flags saying, “This is great!” The answer to your first question depends on what open integration means, and in the U.S. the attitudes towards this question will hinge on exactly the same issue.

There are two cross-cutting issues here. The British case showed that you are foolish if you expect a successful policy to be built on regulations or law alone. It is a mistake to do so. If you argue that we have to base our policy on laws and regulations alone, because we are legalistic freaks in the United States, then, fine, but that is your problem. For the moment, the policy in the United Kingdom works because people recognize that commanding officers apply the code with discretion, and gay service members also see the need for discretion or even reticence. If in doubt, do not flaunt it. If in doubt, do not come out. If you do come out, negotiate it successfully, not at the abstract level, but at the concrete level …

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A History of the Service of Ethnic Minorites in the U.S. Armed Forces

June 1, 2003
Rhonda Evans
You can download a PDF version of this report here.

INTRODUCTION

In debates concerning the U.S. military’s ban on the open service of sexual minorities, critics and proponents alike have used the integration of African Americans after World War II in defense of their position. Critics of the ban suggest that both groups have faced similar stigmatization as disparaged minorities, and the success of military integration for African Americans in spite of an absence of civilian support indicates that effective inclusion is possible for gays and lesbians as well. However, for proponents of the ban, perceived differences in the causes of stigmatization and the specific circumstances surrounding Truman’s mandate underline the inappropriateness of removing restrictions against sexual minorities.[1] Because analogies by their nature break down at some point, it is instructive instead to look more broadly at the history of the U.S. military for clues about how to properly contextualize the present debate. The extensive focus on post-war desegregation in some sense overshadows the multiplicity of challenges that the U.S. armed forces has historically faced in managing and attenuating broad socio-cultural differences. While racism against African Americans has been the deepest and most repeated challenge to the U.S. military, we should not underestimate the magnitude of prior struggles and divisions that have created considerable organizational challenges for military leaders.

From this country’s inception, its armed forces has had to create effective and cohesive fighting units from a fractious and heterogeneous population. Successive large waves of European immigrants resulted in military units with mixed English proficiency; the loyalty of immigrants during times of war has repeatedly been a source of considerable anxiety; and the inclusion of racial and religious minorities in the military has occurred against a wider social backdrop of ethnic hostility, harassment and violence.[2] From a more expansive historical perspective, it is clear that the U.S. military has repeatedly been forced to attenuate the divisions, antagonisms and distrust that have troubled American culture more broadly. This necessity has stemmed from the unique position of the armed forces as both a defensive and a “total” institution in American civic life. Military service in defense of the nation has historically been viewed as an essential means for immigrants and other ethnic minorities to prove their loyalty to the U.S. and gain entry into the American mainstream. Drafts that include newly naturalized citizens (as well as those who have declared their intent to become citizens) and high rates of volunteer enlistments among ethnic minorities have led to a military that draws upon service members from a wide variety of racial, religious and national backgrounds. Further, the encompassing nature of the military environment is transformative: in working to mold civilians into soldiers, the military strives to forge a shared sense of purpose and inculcate service members with collective values, norms and culture in the pursuit of common goals.

As with civil society, accommodations of diversity and difference within the military have not occurred without substantial contention, suspicion and even outright hostility. Each war has required adaptation to a distinct combination of manpower needs, enemy characteristics, and broad societal divisions; personnel lessons learned during one war are often discarded once the danger has passed. But two mechanisms have fostered integrative pressures in the U.S. armed forces in spite of ethnic divisions and an often antagonistic military culture. First, the military’s subordinate position to the federal government has necessitated a responsiveness to social pressures for inclusion. The president, Congress and civilian Pentagon leaders have at times officially mandated greater military inclusiveness, and such mandates have often occurred as part of larger efforts to employ war as a means to attain political ends. Demands for greater diversity have been promoted to counteract enemy propaganda, in response to social movement agitation, and in conjunction with larger public policy goals.

Second, manpower shortages due to the mobilization of large forces have propelled military leaders to create a more diverse, inclusive military in times of war. The use of the draft inevitably fosters a more heterogeneous service than a volunteer army. Further, as wars progress, military officers have often been forced to overturn conventions of exclusion or division as a result of the pragmatic logic of numbers. Battlefield attrition has encouraged greater integration of previously segregated or underutilized troops as commanders respond creatively to manpower shortages. The history of the U.S. military attests to its success in overcoming skepticism and suspicion within its own ranks when compelled to do so by political mandate or practical dictates. Despite repeated resistance, the U.S. military has throughout its history created cohesive and effective fighting units out of a fractious and diverse collection of civilians, integrating service members with vast differences in cultural background, religious practices, language and belief systems. In an effort to detail these lessons of successful integration of diverse military personnel, this paper will explore the U.S. armed forces’ personnel policies during the major periods of the Civil War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

THE CIVIL WAR

The Civil War marked a decisive turning point in the development of the young nation; it forged a country ruled by a more powerful federal government out of the ashes of the old collection of states.[3] By the end of the war, after four years of fighting and with casualty rates that approached 30%, service members and civilians alike would find themselves transformed by the dislocations that the war had wrought (World Almanac, 2000).[4] For many, the war took them out of their home states for the first time. The geographic mobility of soldiers worked to lessen their provincialism, and the ethnic diversity of front-line troops would further dampen nativist instincts. It would primarily be a war of volunteers,[5] and the entrepreneurial nature of regiment formation in the early years of the war profoundly shaped both the composition of troops and accommodations to their diversity. The first modern war on U.S. soil[6] brought the incorporation of large numbers of immigrant soldiers, acceptance of the idea of religious pluralism within the military, and the highly visible use of African American troops. Social protest would play a key role in the acceptance of Jewish chaplains in the Union Army. African American inclusion would be promoted by Republican abolitionists for political reasons and encouraged by the on-the-ground realities of the deadly war. And the question of whether former slaves could become competent soldiers would be answered strongly in the affirmative. In the face of devastating losses, even Confederates would be forced to concede the capabilities of black soldiers by the end of the conflict.

Prior to the onset of the war, immigration had already radically transformed the social landscape of the U.S. Between 1820 and 1860, over 5 million immigrants landed on America’s shores – a sum that equaled fully half of the entire U.S. population before the migration wave had begun (Parillo, 1997; Barkan, 1999). Irish and Germans accounted for the largest number of immigrants, with the Irish alone comprising 49% of all immigrants in the 1840s (Parrillo, 1997; see also Bergquist, 1999). This surge of immigration would lead to a bitter nativist backlash. For many native-born Americans, the large influx of immigrants posed a threat to the existing social order, and by the 1830s a “native” American uprising began to coalesce. Advocating violence and destruction of the property of Irish, Germans and African Americans, these outbursts would develop into the Know-Nothing Movement of the 1850s. The movement was sufficiently popular to result in the election of 75 Congress members allied with the movement in 1854, along with a sizeable number of city, county and state officials (Parrillo, 1997).[7] Closely linked to anti-Catholicism, anti-Irish sentiment was particularly strong, and mobs at times torched Catholic churches and convents (Parrillo, 1997; see also Wittke, 1956; Gleeson, 2001; Ignatiev, 1995). Nativists would “speak of the Irish as a separate race, genetically fixed in their ignorance and moral dissolution” (Meagher, 1999, p. 284). They occupied the bottom rung of the employment ladder, and nativism within unions was rampant (Takaki, 1993, Ignatiev, 1995). In response, immigrants in urban communities established ethnic enclaves and sought political access through machine politics. The Democratic party would reject nativism in support of ethnic voters (Ignatiev, 1995). The ethnic identity of national origins, which was understood at the time in racial terms, provided a filter through which Americans made sense of U.S. social life and its divisions.

Against this backdrop of ethic transformation and the rapid absorption of foreign nationals, the Civil War would pit old and new countrymen against countrymen, and it was in the Union Army that foreign nationals maintained a decisive presence.[8] The Union Army has been called “an amalgam of nations” (Wittke, 1956, p. 135) – out of a total of 2.2 million Union soldiers that served during the war, more than 400,000 of them were foreign-born (Wittke, 1956).[9] Immigrants as a whole responded positively to the Union response to secessionist upheaval, and the foreign-born of every nationality enlisted in proportions that exceeded their relative numbers in the population at large (Rippley, 1976; see also White, 1990).[10] The harassment and discrimination that the Irish faced in civilian life did not preclude their enlistment as soldiers. The Union Army went to considerable lengths to attract Irish immigrants in particular, including enrolling eligible men as soon as they disembarked onto American shores. The Union even sent recruiters to Ireland, and the Confederate Army countered by sending special envoys to Ireland to stop the recruiting. The centrality of Irish immigrants would be commented upon in The New York Times in the early stages of the war:

…[W]hile the alacrity with which [the Irish] have rushed to the defense of free institutions, and the valor with which they have illustrated our battles, have done much to extinguish ancient prejudices and teach us what genuine and noble human qualities underlie the surface-characteristics of the fine old Irish stock. (The New York Times, August 11 1861, p 3)

Prior to the war, immigrants in some areas had faced restrictions on their service in militias, and immigrants had formed their own militia companies in response (White, 1999).[11] Every major foreign-born group in America’s larger cities maintained distinct militia units, which were both social in nature and a component of ethnic political organizing. When the Civil War began, many of the ethnic militia companies were transferred directly into the Union Army, and new ethnic regiments were also established (see White, 1999; Burton, 1998; Wittke, 1956; and Kauffman, 1999).[12] The entrepreneurial approach to raising troops through volunteer militias in the first eighteen months of the war encouraged the emergence of ethnically oriented regiments, as potential regiment and company leaders used local networks, ethnic rivalries and rhetorical exhortations of nationalism to form military units with explicitly ethnic identities (Burton, 1998).[13] These included such units as the “Steuben Rifles,” “DeKalb Regiment,” “Ulster Guards,” “Irish Brigade,” “Wild Irish Regiment,” “Irish Rifles,” Corcoran’s “Fighting Irish,” “Cameron Highlanders,” “Garibaldi Guards,” “Swiss Rifles,” “Koerner Regiment,” “First German Rifles,” and “Die Neuner” (Wittke, 1956; Kauffman, 1999).[14]

While service in ethnic regiments stemmed largely from neighborhood or network affiliations, religion and language also played an important role. Among the Irish, ethnic units had access to Catholic priests rather than Protestant ministers (Burton, 1998). Further, such regiments enabled immigrants to serve in regiments dominated by languages other than English. When the War Department declared in July of 1861 that, “In the future, no volunteer will be mustered into the service who is unable to speak the English language,” (cited in Burton, 1998, p. 220) the order met with vehement opposition among immigrant communities and led to a dramatic curtailment of enlistment among the foreign-born. The War Department quickly backed down from its original stand with a clarification that the order did not apply to individuals serving in companies and regiments of foreigners (Burton, 1998). The volunteer nature of service at the outset of the war necessitated that leaders remain responsive to concerns that could dramatically curtail enlistments. Thirty German regiments, in which German was the primary language spoken, participated in the war (Rippley, 1976).

However, while ethnic units were highly visible during the first eighteen months of the Civil War, the majority of immigrants fought in integrated regiments.[15] Out of 216,000 Germans who fought for the Union, only 36,000 served in ethnic units (Kaufmann, 1999; Burton, 1998). Interestingly, New York State fielded the only regiment that was composed entirely of native-born Americans. As an expert on ethnic service has concluded on integrated units, “Problems of bias and prejudice were minimal and relations between the various groups were good” (Burton, 1998, p. 208). But the bloody toll of the war and the need for new bodies would encourage the diffusion and desegregation of even those who initially sought out ethnic units:

Long before the end of the Civil War, however, the many German units were scattered, regrouped, or reorganized out of existence, and in fact they were being reconstituted all along by incoming non-German recruits. […] Diffusion rendered it almost impossible to trace the performance of the Germans in later war records (Rippley, 1976, p. 70).

Saving regiments from destruction through attrition took priority over retaining an ethnic identity as the war proceeded, and unit identities were diluted through the replacement of casualties with native-born soldiers. In the last two years of the war, unique ethnic regiments “were reorganized out of existence” (Burton, 1998, p. 111).[16] That this would further help to foster a common American identity is evident in the words of Carl Shurtz, a German ethnic politician, who noted after the war that, “The German spirit fades away, and the American spirit triumphs” (Burton, 1998, p. 111).[17] Or as Civil War historian Hattaway (1997) explains more generally, “Brave deeds, and above all a shared military experience, bred a potent brotherly affinity” (p. 185).

As a result of greater heterogeneity within units and among the population more generally, the Civil War also marked a change from the Revolutionary War in the need to accommodate individuals from different religions. Because many service members enlisted in their hometowns and with people they knew, units often included multiple members of religious minorities. General Order Number 15 in 1861 provided for chaplains chosen by vote in volunteer regiments. The concentration of Catholics in ethnic regiments and the later segregation of African American troops also therefore promoted the inclusion of minority chaplains. The Civil War would mark the first time that large numbers of Catholic priests served as military chaplains (Slomovitz, 1999; see also U.S. Army Chaplain Center and School, 2003), and the first African American and Native American chaplains also served during the war (U.S. Army Chaplain Center and School, 2003; Brinsfield, 1999). By the end of the war, fourteen African American chaplains and forty Catholic priests served with the Union army. An additional 28 priests served with the Confederates (U.S. Army Chaplain Center and School, 2003; Redkey, 2002).

Congress initially mandated that chaplains for the Union be “regularly ordained ministers of some Christian denomination” (cited in U.S. Army Chaplain Center and School, 2003; see also Herspring, 2001; Budd, 2002). In contrast, the Confederate Congress made no distinction between religions and opened the service of chaplains to “every minister of religion” (cited in Rosen, 2000, p. 209).[18] A Jewish chaplain appointed by the 65th Regiment of the Fifth Pennsylvania Calvary was told to resign due to his non-qualified status (Slomovitz, 1999; Herspring, 2001). In response, a broad-based movement in favor of the inclusion of Jewish chaplains on constitutional grounds supported the test case of the subsequent appointment of Rabbi Fischel to the same 65th Regiment. The movement endeavored to obtain publicity, develop a petition campaign, and employ lobbying efforts, and it gained support from the popular press (Slomovitz, 1999). One editor of the Boston Clipper reminded his readers that a rabbi opened the congressional legislative session with prayer. He asked, “How was it that the same body could deny Jewish soldiers the right to share the prayers of the same clergyman?” (cited in Slomovitz, 1999, p. 16) As a result of these efforts, hundreds of petitions were sent to Congress, and Rabbi Fischel, backed by the Board of Delegates of American Israelites, lobbied the president directly for the inclusion of Jewish chaplains. Lincoln was receptive to his arguments,[19] and in July of 1862 the law limiting service to Christians was amended (Slomovitz, 1999; see also U.S. Army Chaplain Center and School, 2003). The first rabbis entered the chaplaincy through positions at military hospitals; two rabbis served as hospital chaplains during the war.[20] In April of 1863, a third rabbi began serving as the chaplain for the 54th New York Volunteer Regiment (Slomovitz, 1999).[21]

Although African Americans had served during the American Revolution and the War of 1812, [22] their service during the Civil War was authorized only after considerable controversy in both the North and the South. The centrality of slavery to the conflict created political concerns over the use of African American troops. President Lincoln feared the loss of the border states over the issue, and the moral justification for slavery as the benevolent guardianship of an inferior people made black service a threat to the existing Southern social order. As Georgian Howell Cobb argued to the Confederate Secretary of War, “the day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong” (cited in Glatthaas, 1997, p. 203). A New York Times article listed the following reasons given by Union opponents to the use of African American soldiers:

1) That the negro will not fight. … 2) It is said that whites will not fight with them, - that the prejudice against them is so strong that our own citizens will not enlist, or will quit the service, if compelled to fight by their side, - and that we shall thus lose two white soldiers for every black one that we gain … 3) It is said we shall get no negroes – or not enough to prove of any service. … 4) The use of negroes will exasperate the South: and some of our Peace Democrats make that an objection to the measure. (New York Times, February 16 1863, p. 4)[23]

 

However, from the onset of hostilities, African Americans themselves would agitate for the opportunity to fight. Through the first fifteen months of the war, the War Department received a barrage of entreaties for the right to raise black troops or simply for people to fight themselves; editorials in newspapers with a black readership trumpeted the cause, and political leaders pressed for inclusion.

The importance of military service to an African American struggle for enfranchisement informed much of this political activity. As Frederick Douglass stated at the time, “…let [an African American] get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States” (cited in Glatthaar, 1997, p. 211). But it would be with their feet that Southern slaves would create both the greatest pressure and the sharpest incentives for African American military service. The refusal of Major General Butler in May of 1861 to return escaped slaves under the fugitive slave laws was supported by the War Department; Butler put them to work instead as laborers for the Army. [24] In August, Congress passed the First Confiscation Act, which enabled federal officers to seize Confederate property, including slaves, to be used “in aid of the rebellion” (cited in Glatthaar, 1997, p. 204; see also Smith, 2002; Ramold, 2002). The trickle of African Americans to federal encampments soon became a flood,[25] and in July of 1862 Congress awarded freedom to all slaves entering federal lines and made them subject to the draft under the Second Confiscation Act (Smith, 2002). As Glatthaar (1997) notes, “By acting on their own behalf, slaves also challenged Federal authorities to reexamine their approach to the war. The unanticipated black response compelled Northern officials to adapt their policies to meet wartime exigencies” (p. 206; see also Glaathaar, 1990).

Congress also authorized the president to use African Americans in any military service “for which they may be found competent,” and Lincoln used the opportunity of the final[26] Emancipation Proclamation to authorize the general enlistment of black troops in 1863 (Glatthaar, 1997, p. 210; Smith, 2002).[27] Approximately 179,000 African Americans served in segregated units as combat soldiers in the Civil War, and another 20,000 held noncombatant positions. African American soldiers comprised approximately one-tenth of total Union Army forces, while black sailors accounted for approximately 16% of total naval strength[28] (Ramold, 20002; Smith, 2002; see also Walker, 1999; and Young, 1982).[29] Further, 200,000 additional African Americans labored for the Union in other capacities (Walker, 1999; Young, 1982; Glaathaar, 1997; Hattaway, 1997). African American service members participated in 41 major battles and 449 smaller engagements during the Civil War. Higgenson, the Colonel of the 1st South Carolina Colored Volunteers, a unit comprised almost entirely of former slaves, describes the first time he commanded a mix of black and white regiments on regular military duty. While he was originally concerned about mishaps, he explains:

It is almost impossible for us now to remember in what a delicate balance then hung the whole question of negro enlistments, and consequently of Slavery. Fortunately, for my own serenity, I had great faith in the intrinsic power of military discipline, and also knew that a common service would soon produce mutual respect among good soldiers; and so it proved. (Higgenson, 1870, p. 123)

Twenty-three African American service members would win the Congressional Medal of Honor for their efforts during the war (Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Civilian Personnel Policy/Equal Opportunity, 1991; U.S. Army, 2003).[30][31]

The effective, albeit delayed, use of African Americans in the military conflict dealt a harsh blow to the Confederate states. African American soldiers replenished depleted troop strength in the Union military, deprived the Confederacy of needed labor as slaves deserted to Federal lines, and contributed to Southern demoralization by overturning the established racial order. By early 1864, a small number of high-ranking Confederate officers began to view continued slavery as one the South’s primary sources of military weakness. In addition to the diminishment of essential labor power as a result of Union actions, continued support of slavery precluded desperately needed assistance from European nations. While these Confederate officers advocated the arming of African Americans for use as Confederate soldiers, Confederate law at the time precluded black military service (Glatthaar, 1997; see also Smith, 2002). As the situation grew desperate, the Confederate Congress passed legislation allowing for the service of African Americans.[32] However, the war ended before the Confederate Army could raise African American troops for combat (see Glatthaar, 1997; Young, 1982).

WORLD WAR I

When the U.S. finally entered World War I in April of 1917, its military consisted of a small force of 500,000 (Cooke, 1999).[33] Both the desperate need for assistance at the front lines and President Wilson’s desire to use U.S. military power to enable him to help shape the peace led to rapid mobilization and a dramatic increase in the size of the armed forces (see Weigley, 1999).[34] In May of 1917, Congress passed the Selective Draft Act, which established mandatory conscription, and by the war’s end eighteen months later, the armed forces totaled more than 3.5 million service members.[35] The rapid incorporation of new service personnel forced military leaders to address issues such as the assimilation of large numbers of immigrant soldiers, the professionalization of religious support, and the acceptance of Native American service members. They would successfully handle such concerns despite deeply divisive pre-existing ethnic antagonisms that were exacerbated by “Americanization” campaigns among the civilian population during the war. The U.S. armed forces made a crucial contribution to the defeat of the German army, and in the process it established itself as a truly modern military organization that would emerge as a 20th century global power.

Prior to the war, the U.S. experienced the largest influx of immigrants in its history – the period between 1880 and 1920 ushered 23 million immigrants into the U.S. This wave would draw much more heavily from Southern and Eastern Europe than the previous surge, with approximately 9 million immigrants entering the U.S. from these areas (Enloe, 1980; Ford, 2001; and Barkan, 1999).[36] More than four million Italians and three million Russian immigrants arrived in the U.S. during this period, and approximately 43% of the Russian immigrants were Jewish (Parrillo, 1997; Barkan, 1999).[37] By 1917, the Jewish population in the U.S. had grown to nearly 3.5 million (Fredman and Falk, 1942; see also Shapiro, 1999).

In the years leading up to the war, anti-immigration attitudes once again festered and found expression in the “Americanization” movement (Parrillo, 1997). Anti-Irish sentiment was attenuated by the hostility directed at more recent immigrants, which was legitimated through racialized discourse of the inherent biological superiority of lighter skin and hair.[38] Italians were perceived to have criminal tendencies and be prone to violence (Sensi-Isolani, 1999). “Italians were ‘swarthy’ … and to the eyes of Americans they bore other physical signs of degradation, such as low foreheads” (Alba, 1985, p. 67). In 1911, a former Army Chief of Staff organized the Guardians of Liberty in upstate New York; it was dedicated to keeping Catholics out of office “because they would supposedly take their order from Rome” (Parillo, 1997, p. 447). An anti-Catholic magazine, The Menace, attracted over 5.1 million readers, and a total of 61 anti-Catholic periodicals were in circulation prior to World War I (Parrillo, 1997). Anti-Semitism also became firmly established in mainstream American civilian life. In the early 20th century, newspapers and magazines ran anti-Semitic cartoons and editorials. Life magazine writers called New York City “‘Jew York’ and attacked the ostensible Jewish clannishness, pushiness, and domination of the theater…” (Parillo, 1997, p. 451). Inter-ethnic and inter-religious marriages were rare, as were joint organizational activities (Parrillo, 1997). Responding in part to inter-group tensions, immigrants formed separate ethnic communities, establishing their own churches and synagogues, schools, and community and assistance organizations (Parrillo, 1997).

At the turn of the century, the Army began to transform itself to prepare for the possibility of external conflict and an increased U.S. presence abroad. An Army War College was established, officer education was improved, and the regular forces increased four-fold (Abrahamson, 1999). The Army began to employ managerial leadership practices to promote the establishment of a military organization with rationalized personnel policies. Using newly popularized “scientific management” techniques, leaders sought to create an efficient military bureaucracy out of the more informal organization that preceded it (Ford, 2001, p. 8). Military leaders recruited civilian reformers from the Progressive movement to assist in these efforts, thereby facilitating the rapid growth of a new civilian-military culture (Ford, 2001). Professionalizing developments notwithstanding, military education for officers in the period preceding the war reflected some of the most reactionary elements of the popular discourse on race and immigration. Teachers at West Point preached the racial superiority of the “Nordic race” of northern Europeans and promoted the belief in the “harsh and cruel struggle for survival through racial conquest and domination” of Social Darwinism (Bendersky, 2000, pp. 25-26). Faculty lectured against the amalgamation of “superior” and “inferior” races, for whom “extinction not absorption is the ultimate fate” (Bendersky, 2000, p. 26). Military leaders also expressed doubt about the loyalty of Jews and their willingness to assimilate (Bendersky, 2000).

With the onset of World War I, nativist and racist prejudices were further fueled by antagonism towards German immigrants and their descendents, since Germany was now classified as a state enemy.[39] Considerable skepticism concerning the war’s aims and isolationism among U.S. residents at the outset also led to a second pro-war mobilization on the home front, as the administration attempted to foster public support through the establishment of the first governmental propaganda office (Schaffer, 1999; Nagler, 1999).[40] [41] The propaganda efforts would spiral out of control, leading to a domestic climate that Higham describes as “call[ing] forth the most strenuous nationalism and the most pervasive nativism that the United States had ever known” (cited in Nagler, 1993, p. 191). Prior to U.S. involvement in the war, many domestic German-language papers had espoused the German cause, arguing that the imperial power of Great Britain was more threatening than German action (Bergquist, 1999; see also Wittke, 1936). Even though the vast majority of German-language periodicals immediately pledged support when the U.S. entered the war, German Americans quickly became targets of harassment, business boycotts, violence, and vandalism (Bergquist, 1999; Luebke, 1990).[42][43] State Councils of Defense banned the use of German language in public places and changed German-named street signs. German books and German-language newspapers were burned in multiple cities (Rippley, 1976; see also Nagler, 1997; (Luebke, 1990).[44] In efforts to prove their loyalty to the U.S., many German citizens and businesses anglicized their names and distanced themselves from their cultural institutions and organizations (Luebke, 1990).[45]

However, the demands of war would quickly challenge the generalized anti-immigrant sentiment in the services, as the demand for service members necessitated the broad use of the foreign-born. Unlike during the Civil War, the government recruited most soldiers for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) through the draft.[46] This would result in the conscription of a diverse cross-section of American men that included large numbers of immigrants and other ethnic minorities. The military placed Americans from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds, as well as a number of foreign-born soldiers, into integrated units during World War I. Brigadier General Harvey Jervey would explain that, "It is not the policy of the United States Army to encourage or permit the formation of distinctive brigades, regiments, battalions or other organizations composed exclusively or primarily of members of any race, creed, political or social group" (cited in Canaday, 2001). A French solder in 1917 described the heterogeneous character of American troops in Europe:

You could not imagine a more extraordinary gathering than this american [sic] army, there is a little bit of everything, Greeks, Italians, Turks, Indians, Spanish, also a sizable number of boches.[47] Truthfully, almost half of the officers have German origins. This doesn’t seem to bother them… Among the Americans are sons of emigrated Frenchmen and sons of emigrated boches. I asked one son of a Frenchman if these Germans were coming willingly to fight their brothers and cousins, he squarely answered me: ‘yes!’” (cited in Ford, 2001, p. 3)

With the Selective Draft Act (40 Stat. 76) of May 1917, Congress expanded the draft to include non-enemy residents who were not naturalized but who had declared their intent to become citizens (Enloe, 1980; Cooke, 1999).[48][49] The General Staff estimated that one-fourth of the draftees were either non-English-speaking immigrants or functionally illiterate (White, 1999). Almost 500,000 immigrants would be inducted during World War I, and as many as 75% of them lacked English proficiency (Ford, 2001). However, given the political debates about the draft, naturalized citizens and declared immigrants were expected to serve regardless of language skill. This provided the military with a considerable organizational dilemma given the need to train soldiers quickly for relocation to Europe, and many immigrants initially proved unable to effectively respond to training commands. The military responded by establishing the Foreign-speaking Soldier Subsection (FSS) (Ford, 2001).

While the FSS was established under the Military Intelligence Section for the purpose of handling alien service members, the unit would soon be reorganized under the Military Morale Section to focus on improving the quality of life of foreign-born soldiers more generally. Leaders of the FSS embraced the attitudes of the Progressive movement toward the inclusion of immigrants and worked to adapt military training to better suit immigrants’ needs. The agency helped to create “development” battalions for those without a strong command of English. Training in these battalions included drills in soldiers’ native languages, as well as intensive English classes. The battalions were grouped according to native language, and the army sent promising bilingual or multilingual soldiers to Officers’ Training School so that they could lead the training battalions.[50] The program was such a success that the Italian and Slovak companies at Camp Gordon, which included men that had previously been deemed unfit for combat, exhibited the highest fitness reports in the camp (Ford, 2001). The War Department applauded the “extraordinary” effectiveness of the program, and troops were trained within a six week period to make them “valuable fighting units” (cited in Ford, 2001, pp. 85 and 80).

Once training was complete, immigrants from the development battalions were divided by platoon and sent as replacement troops to the front, preferably with officers from their battalion. While the use of development battalions was driven by the need for efficiency in the creation of an effective fighting force, the division of these groups into platoons stemmed both from a recognition of the negative consequences of isolation for individuals immersed in English-only units and a desire to exert an “Americanizing” influence on recent immigrants.[51] It was believed that sending over larger ethnic battalions would encourage groups to associate only amongst themselves and would erode newly-acquired language skills. Conversely, in the language of a military report on development battalions, an ethnic platoon would act as a “colony” within the larger “melting pot” of the company; they would provide a “foundation” for “Americanization,” while “keep[ing] up [the immigrants’] morale much better than if put among people of entirely different customs” (cited in Ford, 2001, p. 87).[52] Ford (2001) contrasts the nativistism rampant in U.S. civic culture with these efforts by the military:

This new influx of Old World soldiers challenged the cultural, linguistic, and religious traditions of the American Army and forced the military to reexamine its training procedures. The military invited Progressive reformers and leaders of various ethnic groups to assist them in formulating new military policies. As a result, these policies demonstrated a remarkable sensitivity and respect for Old World cultures while laying the foundations for the Americanization of these immigrant soldiers. (Ford, 2001, p. 1)

The U.S. armed forces also coordinated actions with civic social welfare, religious and ethic organizations to facilitate the integration of immigrant soldiers into military life. These efforts were part of broader organizational attempts “designed to socialize and ‘morally uplift’ the soldiers to create an effective military” (Ford, 2001, p. 10). In conjunction with the War Department’s Commission on Training Camp Activities, organizations such as the YMCA,[53] the Salvation Army,[54] the Knights of Columbus and the Jewish Welfare Board established recreational social facilities on military bases. With the help of thousands of social welfare workers, such organizations helped run English, civics and citizenship classes for immigrant service members. They provided books, athletic equipment, music, theater and other entertainment to service members, as well as the services of clergy members and places for religious worship. Ethnic community leaders offered foreign-language newspapers to immigrant service personnel and helped translate war materials and hygiene literature. The YWCA also employed “international hostesses” that could speak the languages of immigrant troops. These secretaries acted as facilitators and counselors in helping foreign soldiers with family and other adjustment problems (Ford, 2001; Budd, 2002; Slomovitz, 1999).

Unlike the voluntarism of the Civil War, the rapid formation of regiments through the military bureaucracy required a more professionalized approach to the appointment of chaplains during World War I. The needs of soldiers during the war would lead to the institutionalization of the chaplaincy within the military for the first time, and a May 1917 act mandated the inclusion of one chaplain per regiment and one chaplain per 1,200 soldiers in coast artillery. The number of chaplains increased five-fold in the Navy and 1500% in the Army during the war (Budd, 2002).[55] The Army established a chaplains’ school at Fort Monroe with five weeks of training that focused on how to minister and function in a military environment (Budd, 2002). The military officially acknowledged the religious diversity of its service personnel and worked to provide access to a wide variety of religious materials and support staff. A Staff Chaplain’s Office was established overseas with Episcopalian, Catholic and Congregationalist leaders. Three umbrella organizations representing the three main religious branches - The Jewish Welfare Board, The National Catholic War Council and the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America – coordinated with the War Department to meet the religious needs of service members. They helped screen and nominate candidates for chaplain, supplied religious items for military personnel, trained civilians for work on military bases and provided religious support (Budd, 2002).[56]

While religious animosity was a staple of civilian life, it did not cause insurmountable problems for the army or its developing chaplaincy. Catholics accounted for approximately 42% of all military personnel, while Jews comprised nearly 6%.[57] Jewish chaplains had not served in the peacetime army, in part because the military argued that there were insufficient numbers of Jewish soldiers.[58] But the large number of Jewish service members enlisted through the draft led to a reconsideration of the policy and the inclusion of Jewish chaplains. Twenty-five rabbis served in active duty during the war, and Chaplain Voorsanger, known as the “Fighting Rabbi,” would be promoted to senior chaplain of the 77th Infantry Division (Slomovitz, 1999; see also Fredman and Falk, 1942; Corby, 1992). Soldiers would not be segregated according to their religion, and chaplains in the field were expected to help soldiers of all religious faiths (Franklin, 2001; Ford, 2001). Rabbi Lee Levinger wrote of the experience of a military rabbi during the war:

He was first of all a Chaplain in the United States Army and second a representative of his own religious body. That means that all welfare work or personal service was rendered equally to men of any faith… Wherever I went I was called upon by Jew and non-Jew alike, for in the service most men took their troubles to the nearest chaplain irrespective of his religion. (cited in Slomovitz, 1999, pp. 55-6)

Unlike African Americans, who continued to serve in segregated units,[59] Native Americans would also be fully integrated into the U.S. military during the war. Despite calls to create separate Indian units to preserve Native American culture and promote the distinct “cult of the warrior”(cited in Britten, 1997, p. 39), the War Department expressed a commitment to the assimilation of Native Americans that was the official policy of the federal government through the Bureau of Indian Affairs.[60] From the classification of Native Americans as wards of the state in 1871, federal officials had become convinced that the key way to resolve the perceived “Indian problem” of continued primary tribal affiliation was through the eradication of distinct tribal cultures. This attitude would be maintained in the deployment of Native American service members:

 

…[O]n the eve of World War I the Chief of the War College Division of the General Staff stated that anything that ‘inclines them to think in Indian terms only and to hold themselves as a class apart with interests distinct from those of other citizens is undesirable and contrary to the object of the institution and to the best interests of the United States’” (White, 1990, p. 78; see also Britten, 1997).[61]

 

While the social motivation behind the military response to Native American inclusion may be questioned, their war service helped to alter popular conceptions to include Native Americans as participants in American life. More than 6,500 Native Americans were drafted and an additional 3,500 enlisted. Approximately 20% of the entire adult Native American male population served in World War I, even though up to one-third were not U.S. citizens at the onset of World War I (Britten, 1997; see also Holm, 1996).[62][63] The Provost General would note that “the ratio of Indian registrants inducted was twice as high as the average of all registrants” (cited in Britten, 1997, p. 59). Native Americans fought in every major offense in the war involving Americans, from Chateau Thierry to Meuse-Argonne, and their participation was often glorified in the national media. As Britten (1997) explains, “Through service in the war, Indian soldiers demonstrated a degree of patriotism and loyalty that surprised many non-Indians” (p. 51). In the last two months of the war, unit commanders began using the special language skills of Native Americans to facilitate protected communications. Multiple units used Choctaw, Osage, Comanche, Cheyenne and Sioux soldiers to transmit messages in their native languages (Britten, 1997; Holm, 1996). At least ten Native Americans won the Croix de Guerre for valor, and 150 other soldiers were decorated for meritorious service (Britten, 1997). Citizenship was conferred on Indian veterans in 1919, and their efforts in the war contributed to the granting of U.S. citizenship to all Native Americans in 1924 (Bernstein, 1991; Holm, 1996).[64] 

WORLD WAR II

While ethnic divisions based on nationality would recede from the levels of hysteria experienced during World War I, racial antagonisms would come to the fore during the Second World War. The threat to the country’s safety evidenced by the attack on Pearl Harbor fomented fears concerning the loyalty of “enemy” aliens and found expression in the internment of those with Japanese heritage. Questions concerning the martial abilities and military divisiveness of African American soldiers would once again be raised, as would doubts about the faithfulness and reliability of Japanese American and Native American service members. But while the unprecedented scale of war mobilization would heighten such concerns, it would also provide powerful evidence that fears concerning the inclusion and loyalty of racial minorities were misplaced. Japanese Americans contributed one of the most effective fighting units of the war, despite experiencing widespread and virulent racism; Native Americans once again enlisted in record numbers; and limited experiments with African American desegregation in the Army and Navy proved successful. The war period would come to reflect divisions within society more generally, as demographic changes and pressures for greater inclusiveness vied with anxieties over loyalty, safety and fighting effectiveness. The successful war mobilization both increased opportunities for racial minorities and laid the groundwork for the broader struggles for full equality that would follow in the coming decades.

Prior to the war, the racialized discourse of the military colleges fostered an admiration for German military and civilian culture, as well as a belief in the scientific justification for racial hierarchies (Bendersky, 2000, p. 267). As Bendersky (2000) explains, a racialized worldview legitimated by a scientific imprimatur continued to characterize officer education through the 1930s, even though such theories had fallen out of favor among the social science mainstream:

As in WWI, such officers looked askance upon the large percentage of ethnics, recent immigrants as well as second generation as the country mobilized its manpower for war. Where did their loyalties lie? Would they fight? What would be the impact on unit cohesion and effectiveness of the very presence of these heterogeneous groups? (p. 295)

Once the war commenced, however, the officers’ culture of racial hegemony would be opposed by the more liberal ethos of administration officials and the ethnic diversity of draft inductees. The Roosevelt Administration worked on multiple fronts to encourage a more inclusive military. The War Department would oppose the racist ideology of military commanders, instructing officers that “effective command cannot be based upon racial theories” (cited in Bendersky, 2000, p. 300). It further characterized Nazi theories of inferior and superior races as “nonsense” (cited in Bendersky, 2000, p. 300).

In September 1940, the first peacetime draft in American history was established in preparation for possible U.S. participation in the war.[65] The original language for the Selective Service Act would have enabled the president to assign African Americans throughout the Army and induct them in unrestricted numbers. However, the Secretary of War requested that Congress amend the language. The resulting compromise maintained segregated service for African Americans but prohibited explicit racial discrimination against military volunteers and draftees. The legislation stated that, “any person, regardless of race or color, between the ages of 18 and 36, shall be afforded an opportunity to volunteer for induction in to the land or naval forces” (cited in Moore, 1999, pp. 131-2; see also Morehouse, 2000; Nalty and MacGregor, 1981).[66] To meet the requirements of the legislation, the military was expected to induct African Americans in percentages proportionate to their numbers in the general population and to provide opportunities for service in all of the military specialties (Patterson, 1940; Nalty and MacGregor, 1981). While the language of the Selective Service Act was specifically written to promote the service of African Americans, it would affect the treatment of other ethnic minorities in the military as well.

With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the status of Japanese Americans rapidly deteriorated. They became an ambiguous racial category, and all Japanese Americans were classified as enemy aliens (Moore, 1999). More than 110,000 Japanese Americans, many of whom were second or third-generation Americans, were ordered to leave the West Coast and placed in internment camps by the War Relocation Authority.[67] The call for internment occurred even though there had been no acts of Japanese American sabotage and no evidence of saboteurs, and two-thirds of the Japanese residents interned were American citizens (Cashman, 1989; Takaki, 1998; Tateishi, 1984; see also The New York Times, August 16 1942 and Tamura, 1999). The evacuation resulted in financial ruin for many of these families; mortgages were foreclosed, they were forced to sell property at bargain prices, and they lost their savings and their jobs (Parrillo, 1997; Takaki, 2000; Tamura, 1999).[68] The Los Angeles Times opined that, “a viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched – so a Japanese American, born of Japanese parents – grows up to be a Japanese, not an American” (cited in Takaki, 2000: 145-146). The relocation and internment occurred even though the Office of Naval Intelligence found that there was no security need for the mass internment of Japanese Americans. [69] Almost all of the suspected German, Italian and Japanese residents had already been taken into custody, and “the proposed mass evacuation of the Japanese for security reasons could not be justified” (cited in Takakai, 2000, pp. 144-145; see also Tateishi, 1984).[70] FBI Director Hoover argued as well that the internment could not be defended on security grounds and concluded that the claim of military necessity was based “primarily upon public and political pressure rather than factual data” (cited in Takaki, 1993, p. 380).

Prior to the war, the military had maintained a two-tiered racial classification system in which Asian service members were classified as Caucasian and served in units comprised predominately of white Americans (Moore, 1999). In the wake of Pearl Harbor, the classification of all Japanese Americans as enemy aliens precluded their service in the military, and the military stopped inducting Japanese Americans in March of 1942 (see Tamura, 1999; PBS Hawaii, 2003). Because the draft had been instituted before the onset of hostilities, however, the Draft Act’s anti-discrimination provision applied to Japanese Americans who had already been drafted. In Hawaii, 1,500 of the 3,000 residents drafted since 1940 were of Japanese descent; in total, 4,000 Japanese Americans served in the armed forces during the period of military exclusion (Duus, 1987; and Tamura, 1999). When Japanese American citizens were classified as enemy aliens, the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) began agitating to allow Japanese Americans who were not already in the armed forces to volunteer for the war effort. Writing about Japanese Americans in Hawaii, Duus declares, “The nisei[71] students knew that if they did not make clear that they were willing to fight, their position would be very difficult after the war” (1987, p. 51; see also Crost, 1994). In May of 1942, those Japanese Americans serving in the 298th and 299th Hawaiian National Guard regiments were separated out into the Hawaiian Provisional Infantry Battalion, renamed the 100th Battalion and trained for 16 months at Camp McCoy in Wisconsin and Camp Shelby in Mississippi while the military determined what to do with them (Duus, 1987; Hawaii Nikkei History Editorial Board, 1998).[72]

The battle over the full inclusion of Japanese American citizens into the military would pit civilian leaders against military officers, and military officers against each other. In June of 1942, the Secretary of War sent the director of the National Selective Service System a memo indicating that, with the exception of intelligence work,[73] “…the War Department will not accept for service with the armed forces Japanese, or persons of Japanese extraction, regardless of citizenship status or other factors” (cited in Cashman, 1989, p. 54). One month later, an army staff committee, upon receiving conflicting advice from military leaders, determined that the loyalty of Japanese Americans could not be assured and that they were distrusted by others; the committee therefore opposed the inclusion of Japanese Americans into the Army (Duus, 1987).[74] However, leaders of the Japanese American Citizens League continued to press for the inclusion of Japanese American volunteers, and American Civil Liberties Union chapters began sending protests to the War Department (Duus, 1987). Roosevelt asked for a review of the policy, and both the head of the Office of War Information and the Chief of Staff recommended their inclusion for reasons of overarching support to the war effort. The head of the Office of War Information pointed out that Japan had used internment in its propaganda campaign and was calling the war a racial war caused by racial discrimination. Both he and the Chief of Staff concurred that the inclusion of Japanese American troops would help to offset Japanese propaganda and improve America’s image with its allies (Duus, 1987). As a result of pressures from the highest levels of the administration, the War Department capitulated. “The recommendations the staff committee had presented a month before were completely overturned,” and a plan was instituted to form a new Japanese American regiment with the 100th Battalion at its core (Duus, 1987, p. 57).

In calling for volunteers to the new regiment, Roosevelt stressed a non-racial vision of the country and of military service. He declared:

No loyal citizen of the United States should be denied the democratic right to exercise the responsibilities of citizenship, regardless of his ancestry. The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry (cited in Duus, 1987, p. 58).

In Hawaii, where residents had not been interned, rates of volunteers quickly overwhelmed initial estimates. While the military had requested 1,500 volunteers, 10,000 Japanese Americans from Hawaii immediately volunteered. Conversely, rates among internees on the mainland were lower than anticipated; only 5% of men of draft age in internment camps volunteered for service. The large number of Hawaiian volunteers offset the smaller number from the mainland, and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team was established (Duus, 1987; Tamura, 1999; Hawaii Nikkei History Editorial Board, 1998). In January of 1944, the Secretary of War extended the draft to include Japanese American citizens, including those in internment camps.[75] Three thousand six hundred Japanese Americans joined the Army as volunteers or draftees (Tamura, 1999).

In June of 1943, the 100th Battalion was merged with the newly formed 442nd Regimental Combat Team (Takaki, 2000; Tamura, 1999). The battalion was sent to North Africa and then to Europe where, during the invasion of Italy, 300 of the 1,400 men were killed and 650 were wounded. The battalion liberated Bruyeres and Biffontaine, rescued the “lost battalion” of the 141st Infantry and drove the Germans from Italy (Siemieniec, June 5 2000). They became the most decorated unit of their size and length of service in U.S. Army history (Tamura, 1999; White, 1990, p. 253; Takaki, 2000’ Tateishi, 1984; Hawaii Nikkei History Editorial Board, 1998; Siemieniec, June 5 2000). The battalion earned 18,143 individual decorations – including one Congressional Medal of Honor, 7 Presidential Unit Citations, 560 Silver Stars, 4,000 Bronze stars, and 9,486 Purple Hearts (Siemieniec, June 5 2000).[76] The intelligence work of Japanese Americans serving under the Military Intelligence Service was also highly praised. General Charles Willoughby, Chief of Intelligence in the Pacific, “estimated that Japanese-American military contributions shortened the war by two years” (Takaki, 1993, p. 387). As Tamura (1999) posits, “The heroic efforts of Nisei soldiers during World War II transformed public sentiment toward Japanese Americans from hostility to admiration and their status from pariah to model citizen” (Tamura, 1999, p. 326).[77]

While Japanese Americans served in segregated units, Chinese-Americans did not: over 12,000 Chinese-Americans served in integrated units during World War II (Yung, 1999). Prior to the war, Chinese immigrants had faced virulent discrimination on the West Coast. Like Japanese immigrants, every aspect of their lives was restricted. They were prevented from working in the professions and trades; assigned segregated schools; refused service in public places; and prohibited from buying land, residing in white neighborhoods, and bringing their families into the U.S. (Yung, 1999). The war thus constituted a major turning point for Chinese-Americans, “providing them with unprecedented opportunities to improve their socioeconomic and political status and become full participants in an all-American war effort” (Yung, 1999, p. 127). In part, this opportunity would stem from governmental efforts to clearly differentiate between “enemy” aliens and immigrants from an allied nation. United States officials also sought to counter Japanese propaganda about anti-Asian racism in the U.S. (Cashman, 1989). Chinese-American community leaders quickly acted to take advantage of the more favorable political climate, forming the Citizens’ Committee to Repeal Chinese Exclusion to lobby Congress to overturn the law that forbade the naturalization of Chinese immigrants. The 1943 act allowed Chinese immigrants to become naturalized citizens, although it also introduced a restrictive yearly quota of 105 new immigrants (Cashman, 1989; see also Yung, 1999). Following the war, the War Brides Act enabled the wives and children of Chinese immigrants to enter the U.S. as non-quota immigrants (Yung, 1999).

As in World War I, the loyalty of Native Americans in a time of external threat would once again be called into question. In 1943, the Saturday Evening Post reported that a Nazi propaganda broadcast had “predicted an Indian uprising in the United States” should Native Americans be “asked to fight against the Axis” (cited in Holm, 1996, pp. 103-104). The Post reported that the broadcast asked, “How could the American Indians think of bearing arms for their exploiters?” (cited in Holm, 1996, p. 105). Since 1934, the Bureau of Indian Affairs had reversed its previous policies of forced assimilation. It allowed tribes to set up governments, established a revolving loan system, and ended the policy of trying to eradicate tribal cultures (Holm, 1996, p. 109). Nonetheless, formal and informal discrimination against American Indians persisted even as they joined fighting units in the war. Native Americans would serve in integrated units in the military at a time when they experienced intense housing discrimination, were forced to live in “Indian Ghettos,” received lower pay in defense industries than white co-workers, and faced discrimination in public accommodations (Takaki, 2000).

In spite of the severity of discrimination and mistreatment, Native American support for the war was impressive. Native Americans would eventually respond with a one hundred percent registration rate, “setting the standard for the rest of America” (Franco, 1990, p. 1). The Osages, Poncas, and Lakotas declared war independently on the Axis. More than twenty-five thousand Native Americans served during WWII – a higher percentage, per capita, than any other ethnic group (Holm, 1996). Native Americans drew particularly difficult assignments, frequently serving as scouts on long-range reconnaissance missions and in commando-type units. They were also heavily represented in infantry and marine divisions. The War Department continued its policy of avoiding separate units for Native Americans, with the exception of some training platoons (White, 1990).[78] The Marine Corps trained Navajo “Code Talkers” as communications specialists that sent messages pertaining to enemy troop movements in the Navajo language to evade enemy intelligence (Bernstein, 1991). [79] In response to concerns about language difficulties and culture shock, the military also allowed the establishment of several all-Indian training platoons to facilitate adjustment. Once soldiers’ command of English improved, they joined mixed regiments (Bernstein, 1991). In August of 1942, units at reception centers were authorized to teach minimal reading and vocabulary needed for military training, and Native American instructors taught non-English speaking Indians (White, 1990). The high rates of Native American enlistment would eventually lead the Saturday Evening Post editor to write, “We would not need the Selective Service if all volunteered like Indians” (cited in Takaki, 1993, p. 388).

The war would have a monumental effect on Native American life as tribes mobilized for the war effort. It has been estimated that by 1945, nearly 150,000 American Indians participated in the industrial, agricultural, and military aspects of the war, which constitutes more than half of the total Native American population. More than 40,000 left their home communities to work in war-related industries (Holm, 1996). For the first time, many earned decent wages. Average incomes among Native Americans increased by 250% between 1940 and 1944 (Bernstein, 1999). The resulting mobility of Native Americans during the war, for both military service and domestic defense-related work, fostered greater pan-Indian contact and increased interaction with the dominant culture. Among soldiers, wartime experiences promoted respect and ties of friendship between Native American and white soldiers:

Because [Indian and white] soldiers from different worlds shared essentially the same wartime experiences, they came to accept one another as equals and friends. One Indian prisoner of war recalled, ‘I would say that all of us who were in the Japanese prison camps and survived … were closer to each other than even our own brothers could be. The long days of suffering, starving and seeing our buddies die binds us together with bonds of steel’. (Bernstein, 1991: 58)

During the war, Native American soldiers received one Medal of Honor, 30 Distinguished Flying Crosses, and 70 Air Medals. Native American service members were awarded more than 200 medals and citations for meritorious performance (Takaki, 2000; Bernstein, 1991).

For African Americans, the right to fight in the war would constitute another battle in the long struggle for full participation in American life. Prior to the war, A. Philip Randolph[80] established the March-On-Washington Movement and threatened a mass march to protest discrimination against African Americans in the defense industry (see Sitkoff, 1997). In response, the president signed Executive Order 8802, making racial discrimination in defense industries illegal (see Nalty and MacGregor, 1981).[81] Once the war began, African American leaders viewed “military service as an exchange for first-class citizenship” and counseled African Americans to set aside grievances in support of the war (Moore, 1999, p. 133; Sitkoff, 1997). The “Double V” campaign promoted “Democracy at Home and Democracy Abroad,” arguing that active service in the war effort would enhance the status of African Americans at home (cited in Morehouse, 2000, p. 9). President Roosevelt pressured military leaders to include African Americans in all areas of military service, but the “separate but equal” compromise contained in the Selective Service Act created an awkward and unwieldy solution.

Military officials absolutely resisted calls for equal access to all military specialties, and the Army General Staff “warned that social experimentation could undermine the war effort” (Nalty and MacGregor, 1981, p. 103). However, the Secretary of War’s Commission on Negro Affairs pressured branches to accept black infantry and other combat units (Nalty and MavGregor, 1981). President Roosevelt was able to force Army Air Forces (AAF) to include African Americans in all-black air squadrons and non-combat units,[82][83] and he joined with Secretary of the Navy Knox to ask naval officials to prepare a plan for increased inclusion of African Americans (RAND, 1993).[84] The naval experience in particular underlined the supremacy of full inclusion over segregated service. By 1942, the Navy began to allow African Americans to serve in some of the general service positions at ammunition depots and ports, but they were not allowed to serve at sea. This division led to morale problems, as African Americans resented being confined to unskilled labor at the docks and white sailors resented the fact that the African Americans did not have to serve in combat zones (RAND, 1993).[85] The Navy established the Special Programs Unit in 1943 to study the problem, and it concluded that African American sailors should serve aboard twenty-five supply ships to determine the feasibility of a broader desegregation effort. Evaluations on naval supply ships from 1944 and 1945 under wartime conditions found high morale, good performance, and little incidence of racial friction (RAND, 1993, p. 173). The experiment was so effective that the Navy desegregated all supply ships in April of 1945 (RAND, 1993).

The Army engaged in a similar experiment of desegregation of African American troops out of military necessity. In the winter of 1944-1945, infantry troops based in Europe were so short-handed that Eisenhower reassigned black soldiers out of non-combat units and trained them as riflemen. [86] Forty-five hundred African Americans volunteered and twenty-five hundred were accepted for the assignment, serving as members of black platoons working with white platoons with the First and Seventh Army until the conclusion of the war with Germany. Field reports indicated that black platoons performed well and worked closely with whites in combat and garrison duties. The field reports revealed that “No incidents of racial violence or non-cooperation between white and black soldiers occurred in combat situations” (RAND, 1993, p. 174). Although occasional tensions did flare up in recreational situations, “… other reports pointed to examples of blacks and whites voluntarily sharing work assignments and participating on the same sports teams” (RAND, 1993, p. 174). In July of 1945, the Army surveyed 250 white officers and non-commissioned officers who had served with integrated companies during the war. Seventy-nine percent of officers and 60% of NCOs characterized race relations as good or very good in these units; 62% of officers and 89% of NCOs recommended the continued use of racially mixed companies. The survey further indicated that race relations were best in those companies that faced the heaviest combat. Successful performance under difficult circumstances improved cohesion in integrated companies (RAND, 1993).

Korea, Vietnam and Beyond

The Cold War era would be marked by efforts to contain communism through military engagement abroad and by the struggle for racial desegregation and full equality at home. The U.S. armed forces during this period operated at the intersection of these two broad endeavors, foreign and domestic. The military became the first federal organization to be officially desegregated under Truman’s executive order in 1948 (White, 1999a). However, initial antagonism and foot-dragging by military officials extended the actual process of integration, and complete desegregation would not occur until after the close of the Korean War. Army leaders in particular believed that the successful integration of combat units at the end of World War II provided insufficient data to warrant implementing desegregation policies without safeguards (see RAND, 1993). However, once again, manpower necessities would provide on-the-ground evidence of the benefits of integration, as shortages during the Korean War led to the successful integration of African Americans into previously segregated units. Evidence from the war finally proved definitive, and leaders from all branches of the armed forces came to accept that segregation was costly, inefficient and a waste of the talent and potential of its service members.

As with civilian society, the official embrace of desegregation in the military was not sufficient to ensure equal opportunities for African Americans and other racial minorities in job placement and career advancement; more work beyond desegregation remained to fulfill the promise of inclusion at all levels of the military. As the Vietnam War was fought, civilians and military personnel alike struggled over the unfulfilled promise of full equality. And as in U.S. culture more generally, the civil rights demands for African Americans would be taken up and extended by Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans in their own efforts to promote racial equality in the military. After the war’s conclusion, the armed forces would make supporting the needs of a ethnically diverse work force a high priority. The demands of attracting a skilled workforce for a voluntary army has heightened the importance of effectively addressing the challenges posed by increasing diversity in the armed forces. Debates have moved beyond questions of inclusion and exclusion to embrace the goal of parity in retention, promotion and military career opportunities. The U.S. military has been widely commended as a workplace leader for its active promotion of diversity and efforts to eradicate systematic discrimination within its ranks.

KOREA

In November 1947, A. Philip Randolph and Grant Reynolds, with the support of other prominent black civil rights leaders, founded the Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training. They developed a three-point plan for desegregating the military: 1) encourage young black men to refuse military registration; 2) retain lawyers to defend men against charges of draft evasion; and 3) establish a marketing campaign around the slogan, “Don’t Join a Jim Crow Army!” (Coleman, 2000, p. 11). The two leaders met with President Truman and testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March of 1948. Supported by the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, they pressed for Truman to desegregate the military. Truman responded with Executive Order 9981 in 1948, which mandated “equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin (cited in Geselbracht, 2003).[87] While the executive order was aimed at African Americans, it would have profound effects for other minorities as well. In issuing the executive order, the president committed the armed forces to an ethos of ethnic integration at all levels (see Enloe, 1980).

Even before Truman issued his order, Navy and Air Force leaders had concluded that segregation imposed undue administrative burdens and decreased combat efficiency. Post-war evaluations of naval policies concluded that desegregation promoted smooth-functioning units, based on the successful integration of supply ships during World War II. In February of 1946, the Chief of the Bureau of Naval Personnel mandated the eradication of all racial restrictions in job assignments, housing and mess facilities. However, the Navy continued to maintain a ceiling on the number of African Americans who could serve (Mershon and Schlossman, 1998). The post-war Air Force contained one all-black tactical unit, the 332nd Fighter Wing, which faced chronic shortages of pilots and specialists. It was viewed as cost-ineffective, and Air Force leaders considered integrating pilots into other units. A planning group was formed in 1948 to investigate this option, although many Air Force officials opposed the desegregation proposal; Truman’s 1948 order broke the stalemate (RAND, 1993). The Air Force moved in 1949 to screen all African American service members for re-assignment to formerly all-white units or discharge, although some African American units would be retained. The Acting Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel reported that the first year of the program proceeded “rapidly, smoothly and virtually without incident,” and the success of the program created its own impetus for further integration (cited in MacGregor, 1981, p. 405). The initial integration attempt was closely monitored, and “the frequent progress reports that Air Force headquarters insisted upon revealed no serious incidents” (RAND, 1993, p. 169; MacGregor, 1981, p. 405). The naval desegregation process was complete by 1952.

In contrast to the leadership support within the Navy when Truman’s order was announced, the Army lacked an internal coalition that advocated integration. In response to the executive order, Army staff officers announced to the press that the policy did not officially preclude segregation. The Army Chief of Staff further reported that desegregation in the Army would occur only when it happened in American society more generally (Geselbracht, 2003). In March of 1949, the Secretary of the Army testified before the Fahy Committee[88] that the Army “was not an instrument for social evolution,” while the Secretaries of the Navy and Air Force pledged their support for integration at the same hearings (cited in Geselbracht, 2003). Over eight months, the Fahy Committee, which was in charge of overseeing the desegregation plans, struggled against the Army’s insistence on “protective measures,” such as quotas and special assignments (cited in Coleman, 2000, p. 13). By March of 1950, the Fahy Committee, the Department of Defense and the armed forces reached a tentative agreement on plans for the elimination of the formal legal structure of segregation, including the removal of all Army quotas on the service of African Americans. Prior to the removal of restrictions, black recruits comprised 8.2% of the Army trainees. By July of 1950, 25% of the trainees were African American. It thus became effectively impossible to continue segregation (Coleman, 2000; Geselbracht, 2003).[89]

With the onset of the Korean War in 1950, the size of the Army doubled in five months.[90] By June of 1951, the service included 1.6 million military personnel (MacGregor, 1981). In contrast to the segregated service of Japanese Americans during World War II, Korean Americans served in integrated units during the war; there was no serious opposition to their inclusion, or to the integrated service of Asian Americans more generally. For African Americans, on-the-ground integration would emerge more gradually. The all-black units of the 25th Infantry Division’s 24th Regiment; the 2nd Infantry Division’s 3rd Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment; the 3rd Infantry Division’s 15th Infantry Regiment; and the 64th Tank Battalion would all serve in Korea (Coleman, 2000).[91] When faced with severe personnel shortages during the war in 1950 and 1951, several field officers integrated troops and found that they functioned well. On the ground, commanders assigned individual black soldiers to white units that had faced heavy casualty losses. Military leaders deemed the performance of these individual units “praiseworthy, with no report of racial friction” (cited in MacGregor, 1981, p. 434).

The existence of segregated and integrated units operating under nearly identical conditions during the war provided an opportunity for academic researchers to study the use of black troops in Korea under circumstances as close as possible to a controlled scientific experiment (see RAND, 1993). The researchers determined that integration “had no discernible detrimental effects on task performance, including combat effectiveness” (RAND, 1993, p. 175). Eighty-nine percent of the officers serving with integrated units reported levels of teamwork equal to or greater than white units. Racial integration was shown to enhance combat effectiveness for African Americans, since they displayed greater morale and combat behavior in mixed units. Eighty-four percent of the officers stated that the integrated units were as aggressive or more aggressive than white units during attacks. Further, the researchers found no evidence that white soldiers were resistant or unwilling to taking orders from African American officers (RAND, 1993).

The study also found that sixty-nine percent of white officers who had served with integrated units during combat felt that African Americans and whites made equally good soldiers, while only thirty-four percent of those who had served with all-white units agreed with that view. Shared experience in the performance of military tasks enhanced mutual trust and respect among racial groups that previously had experienced little interaction. The researchers concluded, as had the earlier 1945 Army study of integrated infantry companies, that there was a strong correlation for white soldiers between experience with racial integration and an acceptance of it (RAND, 1993). By the late 1950s, Army leaders had gradually come to accept, as had Air Force and Navy leaders before them, that racial integration positively influenced morale and performance, rather than endangering them. Segregation was costly, wasted human talent, and fostered destructive social dynamics and racial conflict, because it prevented members of different races from developing mutual understanding and trust (RAND 1993).[92]

VIETNAM AND BEYOND

In 1961, the same year that Kennedy sent 2,000 military advisors to Vietnam,[93] the Administration began to focus on desegregation beyond the limits of military bases and on racial discrimination more generally (Anderson, 1999; United States Army Research, 1988).[94] In an effort to address continued segregation of off-base housing and recreation facilities, President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara forbade civilian organizations that practiced racial discrimination from using military property. In 1963, the Department of Defense issued its first equal opportunity directives, which declared that racial discrimination damaged morale and unit effectiveness. The directives made base commanders responsible for the off-base discrimination against African American service members and mandated that commanders apply off-limits sanctions to civilian organizations that practiced segregation. The Department of Defense also established civil rights offices to monitor the treatment of minorities and to implement more equitable treatment (Mershon and Schlossman, 1998; United States Army Research, 1988; Nalty and MacGregor, 1981).[95] These policies signaled a shift in both the commitment of the military to racial equality and its role in the civil rights debate:

It gave the military a limited but significant role in the bitter national struggle over ending racial discrimination in privately owned public accommodations – at a time when no federal law or court decision had yet determined such discrimination illegal, and when many southern states were strenuously and sometimes violently opposing desegregation. (Mershon and Schlossman, 1998, p. 295)

However, efforts of the Administration would be outstripped by the racial unrest and polarization that washed over American society more generally, as civilians and soldiers alike came to acknowledge that desegregation did not inevitably lead to full social equality. The Vietnam era, which was “rife with domestic factionalism, conflict, and extreme politicization,” was one of the most turbulent in American history (Holm, 1996, p. 113).[96] The years of 1964 and 1965 were marred by urban riots. In 1964, midsummer riots that began in Harlem spread to Brooklyn, Rochester, Chicago and Philadelphia (Walker, 1999). In 1965, the largest uprising occurred in the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles, in which 34 people died and 900 more were injured. The National Guard had to be called in by local officials, and 3,500 people were arrested. In 1967, the year in which Martin Luther King announced his opposition to the Vietnam War, the United States experienced the worst summer of racial riots in modern U.S. history. More than 40 riots and 100 incidents occurred nationwide in cities such as Newark, New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Cleveland and Chicago. Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968 incited a further week of riots in 125 cities (Walker, 1999). The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (1968), which was established to determine the cause of the civil unrest, concluded that, “White racism is essentially responsible for this explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities…” (p. 203). They cited continued widespread discrimination, segregation, and the exodus of white Americans from cities (The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968).

As the rest of society was confronted with race riots and protest, so too was the military subject to racial tension. African American and white soldiers exhibited increased racial sensitivity, resulting in voluntary social segregation, as a result of the extreme racial polarization in American society more generally (RAND, 1993).[97][98] There were clashes at Marine installations in 1969, uprisings on Navy ships in the early 1970s, and a riot at the Travis Air Force base in 1971 (RAND, 1993; see also Katzenstein and Reppy, 1999; Astor, 1998). Admiral Zumwalt, the Chief of Naval Operations, came to recognize that desegregation had not precluded “personal slights, affronts, and indignities of a peculiarly humiliating kind,” and he viewed the lack of minority-oriented personal products, books and records at naval exchanges and libraries as “symbolic of the Navy’s pervasive uncaringness for its minority people” (cited in Astor, 1998, p. 450). In Vietnam, the disproportionate service of minorities became a political issue, particularly as the war itself came to be viewed in racialized terms (see Holm, 1996). During the war, 23% of combat soldiers were African American, more than twice their representative numbers in the general population, and minority men in general were more likely to enter the military, see duty in Vietnam and directly participate in combat than their white counterparts (DEOMI, 2002; Holm, 1996).[99]

While serious racial discord in the military occurred, researchers and veterans emphasize that tensions primarily flared away from Vietnam combat zones in rear areas, bases and civilian communities (see Astor, 1998; RAND, 1993). As the Commander of the 101st Airborne in Vietnam explains, “It is often said, ‘there are no atheists in foxholes.’ Almost the same can be said about ‘no racists in foxholes’” (cited in Astor, 1998, p. 430). Under conditions of danger, “… war with its common purpose has a way of bringing people together” (Admiral Zumwalt, cited in Astor, p. 445). Under more relaxed conditions, protests occurred over job assignments, perceived differences in risk, housing conditions and official bias; friction also arose over ethnic differences in music, hair styles, and displays of the Confederate flag (see Astor, 1998; RAND, 1993; Mershon and Schlossman, 1998; Nalty and MacGregor, 1981). One African American soldier explained:

The racial incidents didn’t happen in the field. Just when we went to the back. It wasn’t so much that they were against us. It was just that we felt we were being taken advantage of, ‘cause it seemed like [sic] more blacks in the field than in the rear (cited in Nalty, 1986, p. 301)

Throughout the difficult period of extreme racial hostility the U.S., soldiers continued to operate effectively in integrated units under the heaviest combat conditions (see Astor, 1998; RAND, 1993; Mershon and Schlossman, 1998; Nalty and MacGregor, 1981). The RAND researchers conclude in their review of race relations in Vietnam:

Even this heightened level of tension, however, did not interfere greatly with actual combat operations. … For all the fears expressed at the time about the potential impact of racial tensions on military performance, task cohesion under conditions of combat does not appear to have been a serious problem. (pp. 181-2)[100]

In response to divisions, the military acted with a renewed commitment to racial equality and established programs to foster improved race relations. In 1970, the Department of Defense committed itself to equal opportunity and treatment for all personnel, regardless of race, national origin or sex (United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1988). Under Directive 1322.11 in 1971, the Department of Defense established the Race Relations Education Board to develop a race relations educational program and the Defense Race Relations Institute to train instructors. A core curriculum on race relations was developed in 1971, and the Army mandated that every unit attend 18 hours of training. Each service member was required to attend one session of the course each year. “The implementation of the program constituted the largest effort in terms of numbers of people and hours of training ever made by an organization to provide race relations instruction” (United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1988, p. 36).

Further, the Navy enacted 200 programs related to race relations in a 3-year period. These programs ranged from the symbolic (such as naming ships after African American icons) to the substantive (such as requiring every base, station and ship to appoint a special assistant for minority matters). The Navy also set aside 10% of NROTC units for historically black colleges (Astor, 1998). In 1973, the Department of Defense mandated an annual Equal Opportunity report and an on-going race relations education program in the Department of Defense (United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1988). While the programs could not change long-held attitudes overnight, they did signal an awareness of racial problems and a commitment to improvement. “In this respect, the military now stepped out ahead of the civilian sector” (Astor, 1998, p. 479).

The military continued to press for greater social equity even as the situation improved (see Astor, 1998). In 1974, the Army Research Institute established an operational definition of institutional racial discrimination and applied it to the Army environment. The effects, rather than the intent, of discrimination would be studied; rather than trying to determine the cause of differential retention and promotion rates, the military would take the existence of differential rates as prima facie evidence of institutional discrimination.[101] This definition allowed researchers to avoid the subjective intent of military commanders and focus instead on the undisputable statistics of placement (U.S. Army Research Institute for Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1988). The statistical information also expanded official awareness of inequalities for other minorities, as relative rates of Latino, Asian American and Native American service members began to be tracked as well. The military would scrupulously catalogue the occupational breakdown, pay grades, promotions, and officer pools by race, providing bench marks for racial parity among officers and enlisted soldiers (see U.S. Army Research Institute for Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1988; DEOMI, June 2000).

In 1979, the mandate of the Defense Race Relations Institute was expanded to encompass the improvement of leadership and readiness in a military that was diverse in terms of gender, race, ethnicity and religion, and its name was changed to the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI) to reflect its broader mandate (see DEOMI, 2003). DEOMI initiated an intense six-week training program that taught minority history, contributions to the armed forces, and the social, psychological and cultural factors affecting race relations. It also taught problem-solving techniques. In the 1980s, the training was expanded to sixteen weeks and information on cross-cultural differences, sexism and anti-Semitism were added (see DEOMI, 2003; U.S. Army Research Institute for Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1988). The military has embraced an activist effort to promote equal opportunities for its service members: “The definitive message is that the military must not be nondiscriminatory; it must be actively anti-discriminatory to protect the Constitutional rights of all citizens.” (DEOMI, February 2002, p. 23)[102]

The present U.S. military is a highly racially diverse institution. African Americans, Latinos, Asian/Pacific Island and Native American soldiers comprised nearly 40% of the armed forces in 2002 (Becton et al., 2003; see also McNelis, 1999)[103] While prejudice has not been eradicated, the armed forces officially maintains zero tolerance policies against overt racism and racial discrimination (Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Personnel and Readiness, 2002; DEOMI, 2002). A recent survey on career progression found no substantial racial differences in respondents’ expressions of satisfaction with military life, as well as similar career tenures for African American and white male service members. The study further found that “Officers who felt they had been discriminated against generally believed that the act was committed by an individual rather than by the institution” (Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Personnel and Readiness, 2002, p. ix; see also DEOMI, 2002). As the report noted, the record of the military in promoting minority personnel has widely been perceived as often “exceed[ing] the progress of civilian society.” (Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Personnel and Readiness, p. v, 2002).

While the proportion of minority enlisted personnel to officers has remained disproportionate, the U.S. military’s commitment to improving leadership opportunities for minorities places it at the forefront of workplace leadership diversity efforts. A number of programs exist throughout the armed forces to identify minority candidates with officer potential and assist them in obtaining their commission (Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Personnel and Readiness, 2002). Minority representation among active duty commissioned officers more than doubled between 1977 and 1997, from 7.0% to 15.3%, and percentages of officers have increased for all underrepresented groups. Such increases occurred despite a general contraction of the size of the armed forces from 1987 to 1997 (Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Personnel and Readiness, 2002; DEOMI, June 2000). Minority midshipmen presently account for approximately 20% of the entering class at the Naval Academy (Tomblin, 1999). The armed forces has accessed African American officer candidates in greater proportion than their presence among the college educated national population; African American males accounted for 7.2% of the college graduates between 21 and 35 in 1997, while they comprised 8.5% of military officer accessions (Office of the Under Secretary of Defense Personnel and Readiness, 2002). The military presently has a higher percentage of African American generals and admirals than corporate America does of comparable black executives (White, 1999).

CONCLUSION

Marginalized groups have repeatedly used political pressure for the right to prove their loyalty to the nation through military service, and they have used such service in turn to press for greater social and political legitimacy. As the sociologist Morris Janowitz writes, “… participation in the national army has been an integral aspect of the normative definition of citizenship” (cited in Horner and Anderson, 1994, p. 250; see also Holm, 1996). While ethnic groups have not always realized the gains that they sought from service, as old antagonisms reassert themselves once the demands for troops have died down and the danger has passed, military service has nonetheless been a key component in successive ethnic struggles for social equality. Participation in the military indicates an acceptance into the mainstream of American life, and it provides a way of signaling that members are willing to bear the responsibilities that accompany full citizenship. Because the U.S. military both draws its members from a heterogeneous society and serves in defense of that society, it inevitably reflects the nation’s diversity and its collective challenges.

As American culture has acclimated to successive waves of immigration and become more accepting of certain types of diversity, so too have the personnel challenges of the military been transformed. An ecumenical approach to religious service in the armed forces is broadly embraced, white foreign nationals have been widely accepted, and the military has moved beyond the issue of the integration of racial minorities to active efforts for recruitment and advancement. The willingness of individuals from marginalized or disparaged ethnic groups to risk their lives for a society that has not fully embraced them has a poignant parallel in the effect of that risk on the forging of unit cohesion and loyalty. Regardless of why they serve, participants in combat units throughout U.S. history have remarked on the unifying effects of shared hardship and danger under combat conditions. In speaking of World War II, Bendersky (2000) notes, “Jewish soldiers frequently attested that ‘there were no anti-semites at the frontline’,” while a prisoner of war commented that Native American and white soldiers in camps “were closer to each other than even [their] own brothers could be.” (Bendersky, 2000, p. 299; and Bernstein, 1991, p. 58). The external political pressures of a democratic society and the internal force of increased manpower needs during war have repeatedly spurred military officials, often against their own fervent wishes, to create more inclusive units than general social mores or official military culture deem appropriate. It is just and fitting that they have done so, for history reflects both the military benefits of inclusion and the strengthening of U.S. civic culture that results.

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[1] These proponents argue that the military undertook desegregation for reasons of manpower and efficiency rather than to singularly promote social equity. In contrast, a removal of the ban on sexual minorities would occur as a result of political mobilization alone and would force the military to engage in potentially damaging social experimentation. Some advocates of the ban also suggest that differences in sexual orientation are both more fundamental and more rooted in behavior than those of skin color; enforcing interaction between heterosexuals and homosexuals would therefore create greater hostility than occurred during desegregation. Conversely, others suggest that the prejudice experienced historically by African Americans has exceeded that directed at sexual minorities, and that drawing a direct analogy between African Americans and homosexuals both trivializes the long struggle of African Americans and misses the unique legacy that necessitated Truman’s act of desegregation. For overviews of comparisons between African American and homosexual military experience, see Rolison and Nakayama (1994) and RAND (1993).

[2] I shall use the broad definition of ethnicity employed by Barkan (1999), which includes racial, religious and nationality groups.

[3] For an early account of the concentration of federal power during the war, see Kettell (1866). For a more recent overview, see Reidy (1999).

[4] Approximately 2.2 million Americans served in the Union Army and between 600,000 and 1.5 million fought for the Confederacy out of a total population among the states of 31.5 million (World Almanac, 2002).

[5] Despite the unpopular draft of 1863, volunteers for the Union would comprise 93% of all service members. Four federal drafts contributed 46,000 conscripts and 118,000 substitutes out of a total of 2.2 million troops. Nevertheless, the draft, along with $600 million offered in enlistment bounties, was credited with spurring higher levels of voluntary enlistment and re-enlistment (Chambers, 1999; World Almanac, 2002).

[6] For a discussion of modern war, which is shaped by the twin forces of industrialization and bureaucratization, see Forster and Nagler (1997). However, Forster and Nagler prefer the term “total war,” which includes the complete mobilization of national resources, unrestricted use of force against both the military and civilian populations, and organization by a large military bureaucracy. See also Hattaway (1997) and Reidy (1999).

[7] The popularity of the party would quickly wane, and by 1860 it existed only in name (Gleeson, 2001). However, as Alba notes, the nativist concerns would remain in the wake of the party’s decline. U.S. ambivalence over immigration policy and the effects of immigrants on American culture has continued in response to subsequent waves of immigration (Alba, 1985).

[8] Less than 10% of immigrants in the U.S. at the time of the Civil War resided in the South (Burton, 1998).

[9] Of these, approximately 200,000 were German-born. An additional 500,000 sons of German immigrants would also serve in the Union Army (Bergquist, 1999; see also Kauffman, 1999).

[10] British hostility toward the Union at the onset of the fighting in particular contributed to support for the Union among Irish Americans and Irish immigrants. For newspaper accounts of efforts to bring Britain into the war on the side of the Confederacy, see The New York Times (January 26 1962); The New York Times (February 2 1862); and The New York Times (February 9 1862). For an analysis of Union efforts to neutralize British sympathy for the Confederacy, see Monaghan (1997).

[11] An 1825 regulation had banned the foreign-born from military service, but the regulation was not enforced due to a lack of volunteers and high immigration rates. By the 1850s, the foreign-born comprised a majority of the Army’s enlisted men (White, 1999). For a more in-depth discussion of immigrant militias, see also Burton (1998) and Samito (1998).

[12] Burton (1998) defines ethnic regiments as units that contained a large majority of foreign-born or second-generation members, included members who identified the regiment as an ethnic regiment, and was regarded by others outside the unit as an ethnic regiment.

[13] Regiments comprised of a narrow segment of the population were not uncommon at the commencement of the war; occupational units such as the Teachers’ Regiment and the Lead Miners’ regiment competed with neighborhood and congressional district regiments for recruits. For discussions of the volunteer militias and the professionalization of the military during the Civil War, see Forster and Nagler (1997); Hattaway (1997); and Glatthaar (1997).

[14] For examples of newspaper accounts of the activity of ethnic military units, see The New York Times (September 2 1861); The New York Times (August 25 1861); and The New York Times (August 5 1861). For a first-person account of service in an Irish regiment, see the letters of Colonel Patrick Guiney (Samito, 1998).

[15] For a first-person account of the service of an Irish soldiers in an integrated unit, see James Sullivan’s memoirs of the 6th Wisconsin Volunteers (Beaudot and Herdegen, 1993).

[16] Burton (1998) is explicitly discussing German regiments in this statement, but he goes on to make the same point about the other ethnic regiments as well.

[17] Burton (1998) paraphrases Schurtz’s comments.

[18] During the war, the Confederacy made no serious or systematic effort to establish a formally functioning chaplaincy. The North would be more structured in their efforts ( Slomovitz, 1999).

[19] After their meeting, President Lincoln wrote to the Rabbi, “I shall try to have a new law broad enough to cover what is desired by you in [sic] behalf of the Israelites” (cited in Slomovitz, 1999, p. 18).

[20] President Lincoln would again come to the aid of Jews later in the war. General Grant endeavored unsuccessfully to remove all Jews from his Military Department in response to prejudicial rumors of profiteering; the president overturned the order. See The New York Times (January 5 1863) and The New York Times (January 18 1863).

[21] However, it is unclear if he served specifically as a rabbi or as a general chaplain. While he had completed rabbinical studies and served as a congregational rabbi prior to his service with the 54th Regiment, his military papers do not mention his rabbinical ordination and refer to the Lutheran Church (Slomovitz, 1999).

[22] African Americans served in the earliest days of the Revolutionary War. When the Continental Congress formed an army in 1775, calls to limit service to whites began. However, restrictions would once again give way to the reality of manpower shortages and state quotas for recruitment. After the war, federal law officially prohibited the service of African Americans in 1792, but restrictions were not always followed, and state laws varied. Segregated troops would serve under Andrew Jackson in the War of 1812 (see Smith, 2002; Rolison and Nakayama, 1994; Nalty, 1986; Astor, 1998). The Marine Corps officially prohibited the inclusion of African Americans in 1798; that ban would remain in place until 1942 (DEOMI, February 2002).

[23] For further discussion of debates on the service of African Americans, see Smith (2002).

[24] For letters between Major General Butler and the War Department on the matter, see Butler (1917).

[25] At the onset of the war, approximately four million African Americans were slaves, out of a total African American population of 4.5 million (Marden, Meyer and Engel, 1992; Glaathaar, 1997; Walker, 1999).

[26] The Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, issued on September 22, 1862, warned seceded states that slaves from the Confederacy would be freed on January 1, 1863 unless they voluntarily rejoined the Union. It did not include the issue of African American service in the armed forces (Hillstrom and Hillstrom, 2000; Smith, 2002). However, the final draft of January 1, 1863 stated, “And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service” (Lincoln, January 1, 1863). For further discussion of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, see Weigley (2000).

[27] The first African American troops were the First, Second and Third Louisiana Native Guards, under the command of Major General Butler. These troops were comprised mostly of free blacks and included African American officers. However, the War Department decided to put African American soldiers under white officers to make the service of African Americans more acceptable to whites. By 1864, all of the black officers had been removed from the Butler regiments (Glatthaar, 1997).

[28] Accurate figures on African American service are not available – they may have comprised as much as 25% of the Navy’s sailors (see Nalty and MacGregor, 1981).

[29] For a press account of the first African American regiment, see The New York Times (February 15 1863). For an account of the ill-treatment of African American crews by Confederates, see The New York Times (January 5 1863a and January 18 1863). For an in-depth analysis of African American naval service, see Ramold (2002).

[30] For an in-depth analysis of the lives of African American soldiers, see Wilson (2002).

[31] However, the right to serve would not remain the sole political struggle that African Americans had to wage in the pursuit of equality during the war. African American combat soldiers continued to be paid laborers’ wages instead of rates comparable to white soldiers. Black privates were paid $10 each month, with $3 deducted for clothing, while white privates earned $14 each month, with $3.50 paid additionally for clothing (Hillstrom and Hillstrom, 2000; Wilson, 2002; and Redkey, 2002). Pay differentials had serious effects on the morale of African American soldiers, and soldiers of the 55th Massachusetts, 54th Massachusetts and 1st South Carolina protested the discrepancy by refusing their (lower) pay. Soldiers also wrote letters of protest and petitions to politicians and newspapers, and they took their grievances to their commanding officers; prominent Northerners also took up the cause of equalizing pay (Wilson, 2002; Redkey, 2002; Hillstrom and Hillstrom, 2000). In response to continued outcries, pay equalization was legislated in the Army Appropriation Act of June of 1864 (Young, 1982).

[32] General Lee supported the effort to raise black troops and argued that they would make “efficient soldiers” (cited in Gatthaar, 1997, p. 214; see also excerpts of Lee’s letter to Honorable Andrew Hunter

in Nalty and MacGregor, 1981).

[33] For a discussion of efforts to prepare the U.S. military for needs of the war, see Weigley (1999). For an assessment of the preparedness of the armed forces at the onset of U.S. involvement, see Grotelueschen (2001).

[34] For analyses of the causes of U.S. entry into the war, and by Wilson’s efforts to mediate the peace, see Chambers (1999) and Woodward (1999).

[35] The army consisted of 3,623,000 soldiers, of which approximately 1,932,000 served with the American Expeditionary Forces (Historical Division, Department of the Army, 1948; see also Weigley, 1999). The U.S. armed forces would also have to adapt to revolutionary advances in war technology, such as magazine-loading rifles, belt-fed machine guns, and improved artillery. It lacked modern weaponry and fought primarily with foreign weapons (Chambers, 1999; Weigley, 1999). For first-person assessments of the new technology, see Evans (2001).

[36] The 9 million immigrants from southern and eastern Europe entered the country between 1873 and 1910 (Enloe, 1980).

[37] For a detailed break-down of the composition of immigrants to the U.S., see Barkan (1999).

[38] Madison Grant’s 1916 work “The Passing of the Great Race” typified the synthesis of nativist and racist thinking and argued that intermarriage inevitably led to a degeneration to the “lower type.” Grant’s book influenced popular writers, scholars and political leaders (Parrillo, 1997).

[39] Those born in enemy countries who had not been naturalized were classified as “enemy aliens.” In 1917, seven million residents out of a total U.S. population in excess of 92 million had been born within the borders of the Central Powers (Nagler, 1993).

[40] For an example of the propaganda work of the Committee on Public Information, see Committee on Public Information (June 15 1917).

[41] The massive mobilization on the home front would include elements of the pre-war Progressive movement transferred to a war context (Schaffer, 1999). Schaffer (1999) explains:

From women suffragists to civil rights leaders, from union officials to corporate executives, American civilians sought to turn the war to their advantage or to the advantage of the groups to which they belonged. Their political leaders and representatives did the same. (p. 816)

This led to what has been termed the “wartime welfare state,” which included disability benefits for soldiers and occupational health and safety standards for war workers. With some exceptions, the components of the war welfare state were dismantled following the conclusion of the war (Schaffer, 1999).

[42] For press accounts of the lynching of Robert Prager, a victim of anti-German sentiment, see Ott (1995).

[43] Severe restrictions were placed on the movement and place of residence of German nationals during the war; they were required to carry registration cards and to routinely report to authorities. During the war 260,000 enemy alien men registered with the government. The alien registration act was extended to women in April 1918; 220,00 women were subsequently registered as well. After the declaration of war against Austria-Hungary in December 1917, approximately two million residents born within the borders of that empire also became enemy aliens. However, a large percentage were already involved in the war effort through work at munitions factories and other industrial plants relevant to the war. Industrial leaders lobbied the administration for looser restrictions to prevent severe labor disruptions, and residents born in Austria-Hungary avoided the more severe restrictions experienced by German immigrants. They would be prevented only from leaving or subsequently re-entering the country (Nagler, 1993).

[44] For a thorough discussion of anti-German sentiment during the war, see Nagler (1997).

[45] By the end of the war, the number of German-language newspapers had shrunk by 75%, and ethnic institutions had either closed or sustained substantial losses in membership (Parrillo, 1997).

[46] Sixty-seven percent of service members who served in World War I were conscripts, compared to 7% in the Civil War (Ford, 2001; Chambers, 1999). The draft had been hugely unpopular during the Civil War, and administration officials feared that reintroduction of the draft would be met with resistance and violence. To avoid such problems, the Selective Draft Act did not include the paid exemptions or substitutions that had been so unpopular during the Civil War (Ford, 2001). For a discussion of draft resistance during the Civil War, see Cashin (2002).

[47] “Boches” is a French pejorative term for Germans.

[48] There was immediate popular discontent about the perceived injustice of not drafting nondeclarant aliens. The onus of proof of status was also placed upon the immigrant, leading to much confusion in the draft process. Enemy aliens comprised almost 10% of the 82nd division at training camp. Enemy aliens who were inadvertently drafted and who were close to naturalization were allowed to remain with their units if their commanding officers determined they were loyal (Ford, 2001).

[49] Once the U.S. declared war on the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Slovaks, Croatians, Serbians and Poles technically became enemy aliens. However, confusion proliferated among local draft boards about how to handle these groups. Leaders of the Czech and Slovak communities pressured for a change in status so that they could fight in the U.S. armed forces. In July of 1918, Congress approved the formation of the “Slavic Legion,” which was comprised of nonnaturalized immigrants and attached to the U.S. Army. Once the independent nation of Czechoslovakia was recognized in September 1918, the U.S. lifted the injunction against Czech and Slovak soldiers, and the Armistice prevented the full organization of the Slavak Legion. A similar Polish Legion was officially connected to the French military, but volunteers signed joint loyalty statements to a free Poland and to the United States. Approximately 20,000 soldiers served (Ford, 2001; see also Enloe, 1980).

[50] While non-native speakers were included, the FSS preferred to promote those first- or second-generation soldiers who had grown up in an environment of linguistic immersion (Ford, 2001). Ford highlights the counsel provided to those non-native speakers: “To stem tensions, the military warned native-born officers to avoid prejudice against or stereotyping officers with accents by reminding them that may of these nonnative men had been ‘successful in civilian life as members of the professions or in business’” (2000, p. 78).

[51] In May of 1918, Congress passed legislation that facilitated the naturalization of immigrant soldiers; the act waived the five-year residency requirement and the declaration of intention. It also made it easier for foreign soldiers oversees to become naturalized, as they did not have to appear in court. Between May and November of 1918, 155,246 immigrant soldiers became U.S. citizens (Ford, 2000).

[52] See also Cooke (1999) for discussions of Americanization efforts and English-language training.

[53] For examples of work conducted by the YMCA during the war, see Shay (2002).

[54] For a post-war account of the activities of the Salvation Army during the war, see Booth and Hill (1919).

[55] The army would include 2,363 chaplains by the end of the war (U.S. Army Chaplain Center and School, 2003a).

[56] For a discussion of the National Catholic War Counsel, see Piper (1985). For a first-person account of life as a Catholic chaplain during the war, see Duffy (1919). For a discussion of the service of Jewish chaplains during the war, see Slomovitz (1999).

[57] During World War I, approximately 3.4 million Jews lived in the U.S. (Fredman and Falk, 1942). Jewish soldiers won 3 Congressional Medals of Honor, 147 Distinguished Service Medals and Crosses, and 982 other citations and awards during the war (Fredman and Falk, 1942).

[58] For a press account of initial efforts to enable Jewish Chaplains to serve with troops abroad, see The New York Times (August 13 1917).

[59] African Americans would serve in disproportionately large numbers during the war, with 367,710 inductees, despite early efforts by the War Department to limit black service. See Enloe (1980) for a discussion of efforts to restrict African American enlistment. For discussions about the segregated service of African Americans during the war, see Harris (2002); Ellis (2001); Britten (1997); and Enloe (1980). For a first-person account of segregated service during World War I, see Little (1986).

[60] In 1871, Congress ended official recognition of Native American tribes as independent, sovereign nations and changed their status to wards of the federal government. Full assimilation into American civil culture became the goal. The result was the abolition of tribal organizations, the prohibition of religious and tribal ceremonies, the forced separation of Native American children from their families and attendance of boarding schools, and the suppression of tribal languages in schools (Parrillo, 1997; Marden, Meyer, Engel, 1992).

[61] As the New York Times would report at the time, “For the most part separate Indian units are frowned upon, as it is the wish of the Government to merge the aborigines upon an equal footing with our white soldiers.” (The New York Times, August 4 1918, p. 1) Ironically, one of the reasons for the preference by military officials for Native American integration in World War I was the problems of unrest among African American soldiers that were associated with their service in segregated units. Earlier segregation of Native American soldiers was also considered to be a failure (see Britten, 1997).

[62] All Native American men were required to register to determine their citizenship status, but non-citizens were not included in the draft (Britten, 1997).

[63] Company E of the 142nd Infantry was nonetheless composed entirely of Native Americans; units like the 358th Infantry, 90th Division; the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 42 “Rainbow” Division, particularly the 142nd Infantry Regiment; and the 36th Panther Division included large numbers of Native Americans (Britten, 1997; Holm, 1996). For a press account of Company E of the 142nd Infantry, and of enlisted Native Americans more generally, see The New York Times (August 4 1918).

[64] However, Holm (1996) argues that the granting of citizenship to Native Americans was not necessarily a reward for loyalty, but was instead an acknowledgement that Native Americans no longer constituted a threat to the nation.

[65] The Burke-Wadsworth Selective Service Act established conscription for men between the ages of 20 and 36. After Pearl Harbor, the draft was extended to include men aged 37 to 44; service age would later be further lowered to 18 in 1942. Thirty million men participated in selective service and 15 million men and women served (Cashman, 1989).

[66] In 1939, the NAACP demanded that Roosevelt issue an executive order banning all racial discrimination in the armed forces (Takaki, 2000). White House aide General Edwin Watson stated that desegregation “was not part of the President’s policy …. And for practical reasons it would be impossible to put into operation.” (Takaki, 2000) Leaders of the NAACP and other groups would respond strongly to the decision, arguing that white Americans could not “expect to have a tolerant world after this was when there is racial prejudice within the ranks of those who are fighting” and that “our war is not to defend democracy, but to get a democracy we have never had (cited in Takaki, 2000, p. 24).

[67] The racism against those of Japanese descent would be exacerbated both by fears of a West Coast attack and the perception early in the war that Japan was winning the war (Cashman, 1989). For more details on the history of anti-Japanese racism on the West Coast, see Tateishi (1984) and Tamura (1999). Earl Warren, the attorney-general of California, would write that the “opinion among law enforcement officers in this state is that there is more potential danger among the group of Japanese who were born in this country than from the alien Japanese” (cited in Cashman, 1989, p. 276).

[68] For first-person accounts of the internment camps, see Tateishi (1984) and Harth (2001).

[69] Six days after Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 establishing the internment camps, government officials proposed enlisting Japanese Americans in the military (Tamura, 1999).

[70] The popularity at the time of this deprivation of liberty was readily apparent to the president. Even though the perceived threat had abated by 1944, Roosevelt would not release Japanese Americans from the internment camps until after he had been re-elected (Cashman, 1999). The War Department acknowledged that it could not justify internment as a military necessity by early 1943; a February 1983 congressional commission later suggested that Roosevelt’s re-election campaign was likely a strong factor in the continued running of the camps (Tateishi, 1984).

[71] “Nisei” is a term used to describe second-generation Japanese Americans. While the parents of the nisei of this generation were excluded from becoming American citizens due to naturalization restrictions against non-white immigrants, the nisei were born in the U.S. were therefore American citizens (see Barkan, 1999 and Tamura, 1999).

[72] The 100th Infantry Battalion was orphaned; it was originally not assigned to a regiment or division (Duus, 1987).

[73] Several thousand Japanese American soldiers were assigned to the Military Intelligence Service as early as June 1942, where they translated documents, interrogated Japanese prisoners and monitored communications on the Pacific Front (Takaki, 2000; Tamura, 1999; Crost, 1994; Harrington, 1979).

[74] The staff committee estimated that 36,000 Japanese Americans were eligible for service, and that 18,000 of those would meet the criteria for induction. Four thousand were already in service (Duus, 1987).

[75] For legal analysis of the Korematsu and Ex parte Endo court cases relating to the issue of the constitutionality of the internment, see Dembitz (1945); see also the amicus curiae brief filed by the Japanese American Citizens League (October 1944).

[76] For first-person accounts of service in the 100th Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team, see Hawaii Nikkei History Editorial Board (1998); Crost (1994); and Matsuo (1992).

[77] Tamura (1999) adds that neither stereotype accurately reflects the diversity and complexity of the Japanese and Japanese American experience in the United States.

[78] The 45th Army Infantry Division had the highest percentage of Native American soldiers, with Native Americans constituting approximately 20% of its troop strength. The division, whose symbol was an Indian image, fought in North Africa, Italy and France, and it would experience 511 days of combat -- some of the heaviest fighting of the war. It suffered greater than 100% casualties – 3,747 died, 4,401 were listed as missing, and 19,403 were wounded. (Takaki, 2000; Bernstein, 1991).

[79] While the Code Talkers were trained separately, they were not segregated in the field. The communications specialists were assigned to each of the corps’ divisions in the Pacific (Bernstein, 1991). The Army’s use of Native Americans as communications specialists actually exceeded the Marine’s use of Navajos in the South Pacific (White, 1990).

[80] A. Philip Randolph was the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a civil rights leader during World War II and the 1950s.

[81] As Sitkoff (1997) notes, African American activism against discrimination in the military predominately occurred prior to U.S. involvement in the war. Once the U.S. entered World War II, African American organizations overwhelmingly supported the war effort and refused to promote protest efforts.

[82] For examples of press accounts of African American service during the war, see The New York Times (August 16 1942a and b). For a first-person account of the Tuskegee Airmen, see Dryden (1997). For press accounts of the African American 92nd Division of the Fifth Army, see The New York Times (August 28 1944b); for a complete account of the 92nd Division, see Hargrove (1985). For a first-person description of the 761st Tank Battalion, see Wilson (1999).

[83] For examples of press accounts of racial tension between African Americans and whites during the war, see The New York Times (August 3 1942a); The New York Times (August 8 1943a); The New York Times (August 16 1943); and The New York Times (August 28 1944).

[84] At the beginning of World War II, the only African Americans serving in the Navy did so in the Steward’s Branch; the Marine Corps had no African American service members at all (RAND, 1993).

[85] More than 200 racial confrontation occurred in the military between 1942 and 1945; military officials determined that segregated service was at the source of the disruptions (Katzenstein and Reppy, 1999; RAND, 1993; see also McCloy, July 3 1943).

[86] Two units would receive citations from General Eisenhower. An anti-aircraft battalion landed under artillery fire. The other, a quartermaster company, also went ashore under fire and salvaged most of its equipment (The New York Times, August 28 1944)

[87] Truman’s action was widely unpopular with the general public. In a 1948 Gallup poll, 63% favored maintaining racial segregation in the military, and only 26% supported integration (RAND, 1993).

[88] The Fahy Committee was a seven-member civilian committee appointed by the president to provide guidance and monitoring in the military efforts to implement a policy of integration. The committee carried no enforcement power, but instead derived its authority from its legitimacy as the president’s representative in the preparation of desegregation plans (RAND, 1993).

[89] The Army lifted its quota on African Americans in April of 1950. Within nine months of the commencement of the Korean War’s, African Americans comprised 18% of first-term enlistments (MacGregor, 1981, p. 430). By June of 1951, African Americans were being assigned to combat branches in approximately the same percentage as whites, although they were still being assigned to segregated units (MacGregor, 1981).

[90] For press accounts of military manpower needs and shortages, see The New York Times (August 27 1950a and b); The New York Times (August 7 1950); and The New York Times (August 6 1950).

[91] For first-person accounts of life in segregated units during the Korean War, see Morrow (1997); Bowers, Hammond and MacGarrigle (1996); and Rishell (1993).

[92] For press accounts of parallel efforts to desegregate civilian institutions during the Korean War, see The New York Times (August 3 1952); The New York Times (August 24 1952); The New York Times (August 17 1952); The New York Times (August 27 1950); and The New York Times (August 7 1950).

[93] Unlike prior wars, no single event or congressional resolution of war signals the onset of the Vietnam War. The U.S. incrementally increased its participation in Vietnam between 1950 and 1965, but Kennedy’s troop commitments in 1961 marks a decisive point in U.S. involvement (Rotter, 1999). The Vietnam War consisted of the longest combat deployment of American troops in its history (Anderson, 1999).

[94] For a discussion of the initial phases of the Vietnam War, see Anderson (1999) and Rotter (1999).

[95] By 1965, the Department of Defense was served by the Central Civil Rights Office. Monitoring agencies in the other branches included: the Equal Rights Branch in the Army, the Equal Opportunity Group in the Air Force, and an ad hoc group in the Navy (Mershon and Schlossman, 1998).

[96] The Vietnam anti-war movement was the “largest and most effective antiwar movement in American history,” and opposition to the draft reached levels not seen since the Civil War (Small, 1999, pp. 763-4). For discussions of protest over the war, see Wells (1999) and Small (1999).

[97] For examples of press accounts of heightened societal antagonisms and struggles for racial equality, see The New York Times (August 22 1966); The New York Times (August 29 1966); The New York Times (August 4 1968); The New York Times (August 8 1968); The New York Times (August 30 1970); The New York Times (August 10 1970); The New York Times (August 31 1970a); The New York Times (August 24 1970); The New York Times (August 19 1968); and The New York Times (August 18 1968).

[98] Such tensions would be exacerbated by growing signs of the ineffectiveness of U.S. involvement in the war. As Anderson (1999) explains:

The morale and discipline of U.S. troops declined in 1969 as the futility of the ground war and the beginning of U.S. withdrawal became more obvious. … Incidents of insubordination, mutiny, fatal assaults on officers, drug use, racial tensions, and other serious problems increased (p. 762).

[99] Forty-two thousand Native Americans served in the Vietnam war, which constituted three times the number per capita of non-Native American soldiers relative to the general population. Approximately one out of four eligible Native Americans served in military forces in Vietnam, compared to one out of twelve in the general American population (Holm, 1996, p. 123). And while Latinos comprised approximately 11% of the Southwest population, they would account for 20% of the region’s military dead during the Vietnam War. Latinos accounted for 27% of New Mexico’s population and 69% of its draftees in 1970 (Gonzales, 1999).

[100] The RAND (1993) authors emphasize caution on this matter, however, since this finding was largely anecdotal and not subject to rigid social scientific scrutiny.

[101] The Army Research Institute employed the concept of the “expected number” for given positions, or the number proportional to the total number that one would expect if race had no impact. The formula in determining the discrimination indicator is the actual number /expected number x 100 – 100 (U.S. Army Research Institute for Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1988).

[102] For the mission, guiding principles and work of the DEOMI, see DEOMI (2003, 2003a, 2003b).

[103] In 2002, 22% of service members were African American, 10% were Latinos, 4% were Asian-American, and 1% were Native American (Becton et al., 2003).

U.S. military has repeatedly been forced to
attenuate the divisions, antagonisms and distrust that have troubled American
culture more broadly. This necessity
has stemmed from the unique position of the armed forces as both a defensive
and a “total” institution in American civic life.  read more »

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