Suchergebnisse

The surprising alliance between Japan and pro-Tokyo African Americans during World War II In November 1942 in East St. Louis, Illinois a group of African Americans engaged in military drills were eagerly awaiting a Japanese invasion of the U.S.-- an invasion that they planned to join. Since the rise of Japan as a superpower less than a century earlier, African Americans across class and ideological lines had saluted the Asian nation, not least because they thought its very existence undermined the pervasive notion of "white supremacy." The list of supporters included Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and particularly W.E.B. Du Bois. Facing the Rising Sun tells the story of the widespread pro-Tokyo sentiment among African Americans during World War II, arguing that the solidarity between the two groups was significantly corrosive to the U.S. war effort. Gerald Horne demonstrates that Black Nationalists of various stripes were the vanguard of this trend--including followers of Garvey and the precursor of the Nation of Islam. Indeed, many of them called themselves "Asiatic", not African. Following World War II, Japanese-influenced "Afro-Asian" solidarity did not die, but rather foreshadowed Dr. Martin Luther King's tie to Gandhi's India and Black Nationalists' post-1970s fascination with Maoist China and Ho's Vietnam. Based upon exhaustive research, including the trial transcripts of the pro-Tokyo African Americans who were tried during the war, congressional archives and records of the Negro press, this book also provides essential background for what many analysts consider the coming "Asian Century." An insightful glimpse into the Black Nationalists' struggle for global leverage and new allies, Facing the Rising Sun provides a complex, holistic perspective on a painful period in African American history, and a unique glimpse into the meaning of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Abstract
Across 1950s Afro-Asia, the ongoing process of political decolonization occurred in tandem with increased connection between the local, the regional, and the global. A variety of internationalist movements emerged, much more polyphonic than the voices of the political leaders who had gathered at the Bandung Conference. Trade union networks played a particularly important role not just in organizing labor but in connecting local unions to regional and global ones. These networks were held together by exchanges between local African and Asian trade unions and large international federations such as the World Federation of Trade Unions and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. But they were held together at least as much by more horizontal connections in pursuit of Afro-Asian solidarity. Many of the latter built on anti-imperialist alliances, revived or reconstituted, dating back to the interwar years. A focus on the trade-union internationalism of the period can recover a "chronology of possibility" in early Cold War Afro-Asia that has since become obscured by the internationalist failings of the 1960s. It also demonstrates the limited analytical value of the term "non-alignment" for the broader Afro-Asian moment during the early years of the Cold War. Instead, it recasts the 1950s as a global moment for Afro-Asia, in which internationalists built networks that were elastic enough to encompass a wide variety of actors and ideas and resistant enough to withstand the pressure of bodies larger and more powerful.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- 1. Japan Rises/Negroes Cheer -- 2. Harlem, Addis Ababa— and Tokyo -- 3. Japan Establishes a Foothold in Black America -- 4. White Supremacy Loses "Face" -- 5. Pro- Tokyo Negroes Convicted and Imprisoned -- 6. Japanese Americans Interned, U.S. Negroes Next? -- 7. "Brown Americans" Fight "Brown Japanese" in the Pacific War? -- 8. Aftermath -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author