War and Modernization

By Charles Ynfante

War is on the surface devastation and destruction. But war also oontributes to modernizng a region, state or country. War forces the advancement of necessary improvements in social life, industry, technology, and other areas to counter the threat of war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charles Ynfante
• Release date: Jan 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215311684

Charles Ynfante

Charles Ynfante acquired a Ph.D. in history from Northern University Arizona in Flagstaff, Arizona.  He was a Fellow at the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. He has authored numerous books of fiction. He was a participant in Hollywood motion pictures, television, and theater.

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INTRODUCTION

Historian Gerald D. Nash contends that World War II ranks with the coming of the Europeans to the West and with the California gold rush of 1849 as a critical, formative influence on the West. Where Arizona is concerned, it did bring Europeans: Italian and German prisoners-of-war. It yielded a type of gold: vital defense industries with their federal money. Most significantly, the wars in Europe and Asia were the force that helped to accelerate Arizona's development into a modern state. ¹

My work is significant for several reasons. First, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and in China, and Hitler's blitzkrieg in Europe did not catch Arizona off-guard. Arizona's leaders had prepared for the state's involvement in world affairs months before the formal involvement of the United States in the war. The Southwest overall, but Arizona in particular, saw its future etched in global markets and in its local deserts. Arizona was not isolationist. Second, the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the conflict provided an opportunity for many individuals worldwide to reflect upon the legacy of the war, and what it meant to them and to various institutions. That reflection meant no less to Arizonans. Third, the status of various social groups in Arizona was not immediately enhanced, and the relations among those groups not immediately improved, by the global war, revealing the entrenchment of racism or misunderstanding. Finally, my work is part of an evolving body of research on the American home front during the Second World War.

My purpose is to document how and why Arizona made its sudden transformation into a modern state. By a modern state I mean one which no longer relies primarily upon the extractive industries of mining and agriculture but also on technological and service industries. I look at how Arizona reacted, adjusted, and changed—or did not change—because of the hostilities.

The war gave Arizona unprecedented experiences. Military installations and manufacturing industries suddenly took their places next to the state's traditional extractive and agricultural industries. New social groups entered the state or came to new prominence. One group was already in the state in large numbers: Native Americans. Others, whose population numbers were small at the start of the war, significantly increased soon after Pearl Harbor: Japanese Americans, African Americans, and Mexican nationals. The federal government also brought in Italian and German prisoners-of-war. ²

Arizona's economic home front experiences generally mirrored those that occurred throughout the West as a direct result of the war. Generally, profits were made from minerals and crops, and from defense industries and military installations. In a state that had for decades relied upon mining, agriculture, cattle and timber, an infusion of federal money proved significant.  Federal bases with huge budgets came to have a permanent role in the state, helping local economies for decades after the war. Eastern financiers finally gave way to an economically independent West. Trade and air travel involved Arizona more closely in international affairs. Thousands of veterans and industrial workers migrated to the state, helping to make the postwar future a bright one. ³

In other areas, the war clearly provided no crucial dividing point where the activities of politics, the statuses of minorities, or the output of its private interests, especially copper, were concerned.  No major political changes or upheavals occurred in the state during the war. In the November 1942 elections, the turnout was at an all-time low due to concentration on the war effort. Governor Sydney P. Osborn, a Democrat, was the state's only governor during the entire war years, only to die in office while serving his third consecutive two-year term. During the war, Arizona politics remained stable and unchanged. ⁴

No crucial dividing point in the history of the state's private industry during this period emerged. The Phelps-Dodge Corporation, the largest mining company in the state, and one of the largest in the Southwest, generally had excellent production and profits. The Second World War was not a decisive moment where the corporation's balance sheets—its bottom line—were concerned. ⁵

Nash also contends, however, that the war accelerated the integration of minorities into western (and American) society. He argues that the war did much to hasten integration, and it broke down various barriers in the way of racial integration. I disagree. While the standard of living improved, perhaps, for all groups of people, minorities were still on the bottom end of the scale. If the war had served as an impetus to accelerate economic integration, then the United States Congress would not have enacted affirmative action programs in the late 1960s, less than a generation after the war. A half century after the end of the Second World War, debate over whether affirmative action has been a success or a failure is still viable. ⁶

Then how does Arizona, in particular, fit into Nash's argument? Arizona was one of several locations for the internment of the Japanese-Americans. African-American soldiers at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, although extolled for their war efforts in the newspaper reports of the time, generally had a different memory of their status. Mexican nationals who contracted to work in the Arizona cotton fields, among other places, became a not-so-significant source of labor due to conflicting federal regulations and bureaucracies. Arizona, among other places, did not well integrate most of those Mexican nationals into its mainstream. As for Native American soldiers and defense workers, a positive attitude toward them from whites was influenced by the media that portrayed them stereo typically as fighters and heroes. ⁷

Two broad themes extend throughout this study. The first deals with institutions and their development in the state as a direct result of the war. Arizona, before the war, was primarily an extractive and agriculturally-based economy. However, as the worldwide conflict progressed, the state added service and high-technology industries to its economic base. Arizona's wide open spaces, clear skies, and desert isolation helped to attract high technology industry and brought many thousands of people into the state. This new industry and booming immigration added to the state's old and traditional bases of mining and agriculture.

The second theme of this work deals with the state's wartime social groups. They were apparent even at the time of the war. The Arizona Republic, in a September 1944 editorial, described these groups and their work succinctly. The paper stated,

...

[T]he valley's cotton probably has had more nationalities working   on its harvesting

than any other cotton-growing area ... After

American businessmen and women picked

what they could,  Japanese residents of the

relocation center at Rivers were employed.

The next season Mexican nationals and

Italian prisoners-of-war  were used. Now

Germans. Tomorrow 300 Jamaicans are

due from the Midwest. ⁸

...

While the U.S. Army trained African-Americans at Fort Huachuca in segregated divisions, it dispersed Italians and Germans, who were prisoners-of-war, freely throughout the state. The federal government moved Japanese-Americans much like their Italian and German POW counterparts. However, Arizona's political and civic leaders flatly did not want the Japanese. Consequently, the Japanese were not dispersed throughout Arizona to help on farms or other areas as were Italians and Germans, who formed most of the labor pool. As for Mexican nationals, Arizona's agricultural interests lobbied to have them as field laborers while the state's newly acquired defense industries shunned them. The latter did so for racist reasons. ⁹

The decisions that state and federal political and military leaders made—as dictated by war—influenced the course of history in Arizona for decades to come. Controversy revolving around the internment of Japanese-Americans was not resolved, if at all, until the 1980s. The political and economic main streaming of Arizona's Native Americans is still a debatable issue. Fort Huachuca remains one of the principle military bases in the United States. The wartime experiences of African-Americans, as seen through the eyes of Fort Huachuca's soldiers, still leaves room for analysis over their military and social status during the global conflict. Southwest agribusiness historically has had a fluctuating economic relationship with Mexican nationals from welcoming them to deporting them, depending upon the national or global economic conditions of the time.

To understand the state of Arizona during the war better, we must view the historical circumstances that the state experienced immediately before the conflict.

Arizona, like the rest of the nation, suffered because of the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent depression. Voters across the country demanded federal action to nullify the effects of that economic depression. Newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Democrats initiated a hectic program of unprecedented federal expenditures and regulations, which became known as the New Deal. Politically, the New Deal replaced the conservative and Republican establishments of the 1920s with liberal and Democratic domination. As a region, the West gained far more in federal expenditures per capita than did the nation at large. Consequently, Roosevelt and the Democrats became highly popular in the West. Arizona was no exception. ¹⁰

The New Deal, on a per capita basis, benefitted the West more than other sections of the nation. The government spent about 60 percent more on the Westerner than the Southerner. Roosevelt's program was designed to improve the lot of westerly rather than easterly farmers. New Deal expenditures were relief oriented, not reform oriented. Government invested more per capita in areas where it owned large amounts of land in the West. According to Leonard Arrington, reform was not the result of New Deal programs but relief and recovery were. ¹¹

In Arizona, specifically, the New Deal provided thousands of jobs. The most immediate relief was the program of massive public works, the first and largest of which was the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). The CCC established 28 camps in the state. The Bureau of Public Roads employed from 1,200 to 3,000 individuals each year. The Public Works Administration provided work for a broader segment of the population through loans and grants to build federal, state, and county facilities. The Federal Housing Act of 1934 underwrote nearly 200,000 loans for the Valley National Bank in Phoenix. Additionally, the Farm Credit Association lent about $16 million to Arizona farmers between 1933 and 1939. ¹²

Simultaneously, other groups in Arizona did not fare as well as their Anglo peers during the New Deal. For example, there were glaring inequities in the legal status of Native Americans. In 1938 seven states still refused to let Indians vote—-Arizona included. By the summer of 1940, the New Deal could clearly not erase longstanding imbalances that created and maintained gaps between the Indians' standard of living and that of whites. Throughout Arizona, African-Americans were strictly segregated in every phase of life. The African-American community in southwest Phoenix lived in squalor and neglect. In Phoenix and Tucson, most Mexican-Americans lived in barrios, segregated from the mainstream. As for the New Deal programs, which favored Anglos, few African-Americans were allowed to enroll in the CCC or the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The CCC and WPA did not admit Mexicans in large numbers until the early 1940s.

In short, the New Deal programs did not confront institutionalized racism in the state. In the end, the war was a strong and immediate catalyst for improving the economic health of Arizona. Yet, New Deal programs proved to minorities that at least there lay hope on the distant horizon for their acceptance by Arizona's Anglo society. ¹³

I contend that the Second World War, one of the most cataclysmic events in the history of the world, did little to improve racial understanding among groups of individuals. The social relationships between Arizona's mainstream and its ethnic and racial minorities were not significantly improved. The magnitude of the conflict did not eradicate racism or prejudices. Suspicion, misunderstanding and, at times, plain hatred among all groups of individuals was intact during and even after the conflict. One may surmise that the intensity of the war should have unified disparate racial groups against a common enemy, providing a common ground for understanding. The war did not.

I maintain that the war sustained the profitability of Arizona's federal military installations for decades after the armistice. Those institutions were, generally, owned and operated by the dominant society of the time: white Anglos. This was at the expense of minorities who were not in control of, or influential over, those very institutions. William O'Neil argues that America, during the war, failed to live up to the highest principles of democracy by discriminating against certain social groups. ¹⁴

In short, this history is both institutional and social. That is, the institutions of government and of private industry, and their economic programs—influential opinions, official policies of state and federal agencies—were the nexus for disparate social groups, for better or for worse. Native Americans, Japanese aliens and Japanese-Americans (Nisei), Mexican-Americans, Mexican nationals and other foreigners, African-Americans, international and local prisoners, children, and whites worked together—voluntarily or not—in the war effort.

CHAPTER 1: THE EVE AND ADVENT OF WAR

Gerald D. Nash argues that World War II ranks with the coming of the Europeans to the West and with the California gold rush of 1849 as a critical, formative influence on the West. Where Arizona is concerned, it did bring Europeans: Italian and German prisoners-of-war. It yielded a type of gold: vital defense industries with their federal money.

On the eve of the war, Arizona found itself preparing for what seemed inevitable war but found itself in the midst of many reactions over the declaration of war and what it meant. The wars in Europe and Asia tested the isolationist mood of the United States. Bernice Cosulich, Tucson reporter, said, Isolationism was an obvious impossibility, for the threads in the cloth of modern living are now woven on a worldwide loom. An Arizona Republic editorial believed the United States should police the world to keep peace. The writer believed isolationism would no longer do. ¹

Congress approved lend-lease to Great Britain in March 1941. Arizona supported that action. Lewis Douglas was a three-term United States congressional representative from Arizona. He was later budget director under President Franklin Roosevelt. Douglas told the President that Arizona was symptomatic of a large part of the United States west of the Mississippi, favoring assistance to the Allies. Douglas said that only a small segment is jelled in the mold of isolationism. Ernest W. McFarland,  Arizona's junior Democratic senator, spoke before the Arizona Department of the American Legion. He declared, We are irrevocably committed to a policy of all out aid to Britain and full speed ahead on our defenses... resolved to dedicate its man power and materials to national security. ²

In June 1940, Douglas appealed to Carl Hayden, senior Democratic senator of Arizona, to support aid to Great Britain. He revealed that the Allies were in desperate need of planes. He explained that planes would turn the tide in Europe where the front lines of defense—and the only defense of the United States—were to be found. Douglas believed that if Germany won it would not wait for America to arm itself. Douglas stressed that Germany would then impose [terms] upon us that will profoundly affect both our position in the world and our traditional social, political and economic structure.  ³

At the time, Douglas also urged President Roosevelt to give planes to the allies as a matter of our own defense . . . before it is too late. Roosevelt's response was enthusiastic: I beat you to it! Very many planes are actually on the way to the Allies...I am glad you found the sentiment right in Arizona. ⁴

The governor who led the state of Arizona through the war years was Sydney Preston Osborn, the seventh governor. Osborn was born May 17, 1884, in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1901, he served as a page in the territorial legislature. After Osborn graduated from high school, John Wilson, Arizona's territorial delegate, took him to Washington, D.C., as his secretary. Osborn became Arizona's delegate to the state's Constitutional Convention of 1910. From 1911 to 1918, he was Arizona's secretary of state. After several attempts, he became Democratic governor of Arizona in January 1941 when he was 56-years-old. He died in office on May 25, 1948, from Lou Gehrigs disease. He had served four consecutive terms as governor. ⁵

During April and May 1940, Germany overran the neutral countries of Denmark, Norway, Holland, and Belgium. By late June, France fell and Britain stood alone against the Nazis. As a result, President Roosevelt, on May 16, 1940, stressed the need for speed in expanding the nation's war capabilities. ⁶

In June 1941, at the time of Adolph Hitler's invasion on Russia, Governor Osborn invited aircraft manufacturing plants to move to Arizona. He also wanted the state to get part of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation's (RFC) one billion dollars to build bomber plants. Osborn pointed out that the state had almost unlimited natural resources, two transcontinental railroads, hydroelectric power, reasonable living costs, and a year-round mild climate.

Yet, several aircraft manufacturers refused to move or to expand into Arizona. For example, Robert E. Gross of the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation in Burbank, California, wrote to Osborn that the company was not interested in taking advantage of Osborn's offer. Edgar N. Gott of Consolidated Aircraft Corporation in San Diego, California, sent a letter to Osborn that his company would not be expanding. John P. Gaty of Beech Aircraft Corporation wrote that his company did not intend to build any additional plants in other locations. Carl A. Cover of Douglas Aircraft Corporation in Santa Monica, California, suggested similarly. J. Carlton Ward, Jr., of Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corporation in New York, informed Osborn that his company already had several government contracts. ⁷

About this time, William S. Knudsen, who had resigned the presidency of General Motors when Roosevelt appointed him to head the National Defense Advisory Commission, wanted more aircraft parts from Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company for the national defense effort. Paul W. Litchfield, chair of the company, remembered Osborn's appeal. Litchfield suggested to Knudsen a factory site near Phoenix, Arizona. Knudsen was skeptical about the labor supply there, but finally agreed to it. Litchfield told Osborn that the Defense Plant Corporation (DPC) would help him build a plant near Phoenix and that Goodyear would invest one-half to three-quarters of a million dollars, and employ 1,000 to 1,200 men. Osborn thanked him, saying, The new plant will mark Arizona's first real entry into the industrial field and means a great deal to the state... supplementing and rounding out the agriculture and mining industries on which we have in the past wholly relied. ⁸

Osborn, stimulated by the Litchfield agreement, wanted the Office of Production Management (OPM) to declare the entire state of Arizona a defense area. This was a designation adopted by the OPM for areas to which the uninterrupted flow of materials was necessary in the interest of national defense. He also sought to spread defense subcontracts throughout Arizona industry to prevent small manufacturers from having to close their doors for lack of priorities on raw materials. ⁹

A year and half later, Osborn was still at it. He and Carl Hayden held a series of conferences with heads of several states’ large industries, particularly the war plants, to decide what could be done, from a governmental standpoint, to encourage expansion. Other aircraft manufacturers followed Litchfield's lead to Arizona: The AiResearch Manufacturing Company took possession of a DPC manufacturing facility south of Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix. ¹⁰

The Consolidated-Vultee Aircraft Corporation also followed Litchfield's lead. In Arizona, it manufactured four-motored B-24 Liberators. In 1943, Consolidated turned out thousands of airplanes—the nation's largest output from a single plant and a world record. ¹¹

The Aluminum Company of America was another major employer in Phoenix. Alcoa's largest extrusion mill was built in Phoenix. The main task of the plant was the extrusion, or shaping and tubing, of aluminum. Because the American warplane of the Second World War was 90 percent aluminum by weight, the importance of the plant could hardly be overestimated. The plant in Phoenix was one of the largest and most modern among some 40 plants built or were being built in the nation's aluminum expansion program. ¹²

Historian Francis Walton described this interstate movement of industry: Like flotsam on flood waters suddenly beyond the power of dikes and dams, American industry was wafted to new locations. It was a tidal movement, he says, into the midlands. He points out that this industrial upheaval went largely unnoticed among the global changes of war but, for extent and kind, it was without precedent. ¹³

Arizona benefitted from that flotsam. The state was on its way to having a permanent manufacturing industry, beyond the extractive industries of agriculture and mines. This development strongly supports the arguments by Gerald D. Nash that the West, at least where Arizona was concerned, benefitted accordingly.

To cope with the multitude of problems facing the state about the national defense effort, Osborn named an Arizona Civilian Defense Coordinating Council (ACDCC) in June 1941 with several functions. It served as a center for the coordination of all federal and state activities that involved the relationships between federal, state and local governments. The council dealt with emergency problems arising in local communities because of the defense program. It studied and planned measures to effect adequate protection of life and property in case of actual wartime emergency, including recruiting and training civilian auxiliaries. The ACDCC promoted community and state morale. It maintained a clearing house for information on state and local defense activities. ¹⁴

The importance of this council was paramount for Osborn. Speaking for the governor on June 12, 1941,  about six months before Pearl Harbor, Hal Mitchell, the governor's executive secretary, stated: This country is at war, despite when, or if, the guns start firing. Under emergency conditions, Mitchell hinted, the defense council might even almost be the state government. He explained that the council would coordinate the state's resources, directing them into channels to serve the national defense effort. ¹⁵

Yet, for all the reaction and the rapid mobilization by officials and volunteers, apathy and complacency threatened to overshadow them.