Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

foreign country. " (29)
The patriotic Amerikan war spirit congealed itself
into the usual racist forms. Chinese were encouraged to
wear self-protective placards or buttons reading "I'm No
Jap" to avoid being lynched. The Kuomintang-dominated
Chinese communities were lauded by the settlers as now
"good" Asians. Life ran an article on "How To Tell Your
Friends From The Japs": "...the Chinese expression is
likely to be more placid, kindly, open; the Japanese more
positive, dogmatic, arrogant.. . Japanese walk stiffly
erect .. .Chinese more relaxed, sometimes shuffle.. . " (30)
Of course, these imaginary differences only expressed
the settler code wherein hostile or just victimized
Asians were "bad," where as those they thought more submissive
(who "shuffle") were temporarily "good." Every
effort was made to whip up settler chauvinism and hatred
(an easy task). The famous war indoctrination film "My
Japan," produced by the Defense Department, opens to
an actor portraying a Japanese soldier bayoneting a baby
- with the commentary that all Japanese "like" to kill
babies. German fascist propaganda about the "racial
crimes" of the Jews was no more bizzarre than Amerikan
propaganda for its own war effort.
The Euro-Amerikan working class, now reinforced
by unions and the New Deal, brought the war "home"
themselves in their massive wave of "hate strikes." These
were strikes whose only demand was the blocking of
Afrikan employment or promotion. They were a major
feature of militant industrial life in the the war period; a
reaction to increased wartime employment of Afrikans by
U.S. imperialism.
In the auto industry (which were the heart of war
production) the "hate strikes" started in October, 1941.
There were twelve major such strikes in auto plants just in
the first six months of 1943. Dodge, Hudson, Packard,
Curtis-Wright, Timken Axle and many other plants
witnessed these settler working class offensives. The
UAW-CIO and the Detroit NAACP held a
"brotherhood" rally in Detroit's Cadillac Square to
counteract the openly segregationist movement. That rally
drew 10,000 people. But shortly thereafter 25,000 Packard
workers went out on "hate strike" for five days. An even
bigger strike staged by UAW Local 190 brought out 39,000
settler auto workers to stop the threatened promotion of
four Afrikans. (3 1).
These "hate strikes" took place coast-to-coast, in
a wave that hit all industries. In Baltimore, Bethlehem
Steel's Sparrows Point plant went out in July, 1943. In that
same area a major Western Electric plant was so solidly
closed down by its December, 1943 "hate strike" that the
U.S. Army finally had to take it over. The same thing happened
when Philadelphia municipal transit workers closed
down the city for six days in August, 1944, to block the hiring
of eight Afrikan motormen. 5,000 U.S. Army troops
were needed to get transit going again. The U.S. Government
calculated that just in the three Spring months of
1943 alone, some 2.5 million man hours of industrial production
were lost in "hate strikes." (32)
Mob violence against the oppressed was another
war phenomenon, particularly by Euro-Amerikan ser-
vicemen. They now constituted an important temporary
stratum in settler life, drawn together by the millions and
organized into large units and bases. Attacks by settler
97 sailors, marines and soldiers on Chicano-Mexicanos,