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ians that was unlike any previous war. After the federal govern
ment mobilized Oregon’s 41st National Guard Division for duty
in the South Pacific, Oregon established the Oregon State Guard
for local emergencies. The federal government also recruited af
special police unit to patrol Bonneville Dam, and hundreds of
civilians in coastal communities organized as volunteer guerrilla
forces. The Selective Service System, which Congress narrowly
approved in 1940 before the United States entered the war,
reduced the military's reliance on volunteers; but thousands
of Oregonians enlisted nevertheless. After its mobilization and
training in the United States and Australia, the 41st “Sunset"
Division, with many troops added from other states, compiled a
distinguished wartime record in the South Pacific. The soldiers
faced extraordinary challenges fighting against the Japanese
in the jungles of New Guinea and other islands, but the stress
of combat, fueled by rage about atrocities real and rumored,
revealed another side of heroic jungle-fighters portrayed in the
American press. The Pacific war was noted for its brutality on
both sides, and the 41st Division acquired a reputation for taking
no prisoners. In her propaganda broadcasts, Tokyo Rose nick
named the 41st “The Butchers," and a postwar article written
by a former Army officer for the Saturday Evening Post gave
credence to the charge that “The 41st Didn’t Take Prisoners.”
The Oregon home front also felt the blows of war.
Oregon and California were the only states to experience direct
attacks by the Japanese (Hawaii and Alaska were still territor
ies). In 1942, a Japanese submarine ineffectively fired shells at
Fort Stevens and launched an airplane that dropped incendiary
bombs in the forests near Coos Bay and Cape Blanco, causing
minor fire damage. The most devastating incident was caused
by an incendiary balloon bomb, one of thousands launched from
Japan and borne across the Pacific Ocean by the prevailing
winds. Toward the end of the war, in 1945, a mother and several
children on a church outing near Bly in southern Oregon died
after a child accidentally exploded one of the devices.
Oregon joined other states in experiencing economic,
social, and cultural changes in response to wartime and postwar
conditions, including massive population shifts, the “baby boom,”
the Gl Bill, suburbia, and greater knowledge of the world abroad.
In addition to massive physical destruction and unimaginable
loss of life, World War 2 displaced millions of people and intro
duced a new period of heightened nationalism and a Cold War
among the victorious allies. The United States responded to
these challenges with a new half-century of military interventions
that included major undeclared wars in Korea and Vietnam;
numerous military and CIA interventions in the Western Hemis
phere, the Middle East, and the Balkans; and a smaller regional
war against Iraq. Oregonians served in each of these conflicts
and added many more names to the state's long list of military
casualties. The economic influences on Oregon were more
difficult to measure, but these wars introduced periods of political
realignment, antiwar protests, and continued rapid growth in
population.
While American foreign policy after World War 2 focused
on the reconstruction of Europe, the containment of the Soviet
Union, and the escalation of nuclear competition, postwar events
in Asia confirmed international polarization and the limitations of
American foreign policy. The postwar collapse of colonialism and
the successful Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949 added to
the international turmoil.The Korean War in 1950-1953 shattered
American complacency, disrupting the transition to a peacetime
economy; and it coincided with another postwar Red Scare
and the early stages of the civil rights movement. Fighting in
the shadow of World War 3 and for limited goals, soldiers and
citizens at home soon grew weary of the conflict. It was a war
characterized initially by rapid retreats and advances. When the
Chinese Communists (People's Republic of China) joined the
North Koreans against the U.S.-led United Nations forces in late
1950, the war entered a new and more dangerous phase of
potential escalation. Often fought in mountainous terrain during
extremes of winter weather, the war soon became a stalemate
and a bloody war of attrition. Ending with only a truce in place,
the war cost nearly 35,000 American battle deaths in three years
— including hundreds from Oregon — and Korea remained
divided.
Typically on the periphery of major national political
events, Oregon nevertheless experienced the travails of the
Second Red Scare. This anti-communist crusade evolved from
wartime tensions with the Soviet Union and gained momentum
after 1950 as the political phenomenon of ‘McCarthyism’. This
movement, which drew its name from Republican senator
Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, reinforced consensus and stifled
political dissent during and after the Korean War. Many Oregon
politicians were susceptible to the appeal of McCarthyism, but
Oregon fell far short of California and Washington in efforts to
purge alleged radicals and radicalism from the public schools,
government agencies, and colleges. Nevertheless, there were
consequences in Oregon. Public school teachers were vulner
able to local pressures, but college campuses in Oregon largely
escaped the attempted faculty purges that plagued the University
of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington. There
were minor exceptions when Oregon State College in Corvallis
and Reed College in Portland caused controversies by dismiss
ing professors of having Communist or radical affiliations. The
end of the war in Korea and the recovery of the shattered Euro
pean economies reduced some of the political tensions in the
United States, but the conservative influences of the Eisenhower
era in the 1950s and the social changes that accompanied the
civil rights struggle seeped into Oregon politics as well.
There were other concerns abroad. The American role
in Vietnam had its roots in the collapse of European colonialism
in Asia and the increasingly volatile Cold War atmosphere of the
1950s. Although there were some similarities with the Korean
for American commitment to the Vietnam War. Republican
senator Mark Hatfield, who had visited Southeast Asia as a Navy
officer during World War 2, took increasingly antiwar positions as
the war in Vietnam dragged on. Although Morse lost his bid for
re-election in 1968, Hatfield gained increasing support for his
principled opposition to the war Together, these two senators
followed a path blazed by Harry Lane in 1917.
BARRIE MAGUIRE
War, there were also marked differences. In large measure, the
war in Vietnam was a civil war, and the subtropical weather and
jungle terrain were notably different from the wintry and mount
ainous hell of North Korea. U S. forces suffered more battle
casualties in Vietnam, but over a much longer period of time,
and this war also had a different conclusion. North Vietnam and
its Viet Cong and Communist allies won the struggle in 1975.
As the first televised war, the Vietnam conflict had a
dramatic impact on political protests and popular culture in the
United States and other countries. Oregon, however, was much
less affected by protests than either Washington or California
was during the 1960s and 1970s. While Oregonians mourned
the hundreds of Oregon service personnel lost in battle in Viet
nam, political issues related to the war gained increasing signifi
cance in Oregon during the presidencies of Lyndon B. Johnson
and Richard M. Nixon. Democratic senator Wayne Morse, long
considered a political maverick, was one of only two senators
who voted against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 1964 (Ernest
Gruening of Alaska was the other senator), a major turning point
S.Î-7 W -5 W
At the state level in the 1960s and 1970s, Republican
governor Tom McCall pursued a delicate balancing act. He
supported the war effort in Vietnam and simultaneously tried
to reduce the potential for violent antiwar demonstrations.
Dismayed by the antiwar positions of Morse and his fellow
Republican and former friend Hatfield, a bitter McCall wrote
Lyndon Johnson: “I have supported your policy every step of
the way in Southeast Asia." McCall even served Johnson by
traveling to South Vietnam as an observer for elections. In
Oregon, as elsewhere in the country, public support for the
war waned, and demonstrations — particularly in Eugene and
Portland — grew in intensity and violence after the summer of
1968. McCall doggedly maintained his support for the military
personnel fighting the war; but in the early 1970s, when violent
demonstrations erupted at the University of Oregon and in
Portland and police responded in kind, the governor grew
depressed and felt that he had somehow lost control of his
state. He would take solace in environmental issues.
In the decades since the end of the war in Vietnam,
Americans have learned much about geography, but have they
learned anything about international relations? American troops
have served and sometimes died in Lebanon, Panama,Granada,
Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Most of
these conflicts were small; but together, their consequences are
great. We have been forced to consider our national purpose
in unsettled times and have been exposed to great suffering in
other parts of the world. The legacies of war are haunting and
permanent. Death, disfigurement, disease and mental illness
are among the human costs; and on former battlefields through
out the world, land mines, unexploded shells and bombs, and
lingering economic devastation threaten current and future
generations. Oregon, too, faces the military detritus of past
generations as the toxic plumes of the Hanford Nuclear Reser
vation seep into the Columbia River and the chemical agents
stored at the Umatilla Ordnance Depot threaten the environment
and neighboring communities. For decades, farmers on the site
of former Camp Adair have plowed up unexploded artillery shells
dating from World War 2.
As this brief history of earlier wars suggests, the desire
for peace has consistently succumbed to the demands for war.
But there is another perspective to consider. Historically, Oregon
had few military installations than Washington or California; and
Wayne Morse wanted to keep things that way, believing that
Oregon would be less vulnerable to the economic vagaries of
Congressional politics. Is this relative lack of military installations
an indicator of Oregon’s exceptionalism? Measured another way,
Portland is the headquarters for Mercy Corps International and
Northwest Medical Teams International, humanitarian agencies
providing emergency aid throughout the world. Do these organi
zations make Oregon more cosmopolitan and more inclined
toward peace? In this context, it can be argued that Oregon’s
increasing ethnic and racial diversity and the influx of population
from other states have broadened our cultural understanding and
political interests. Do these factors contribute to Oregon except
ionalism? Perhaps, as Bob Dylan sang, “The answer is blowing
in the wind.”
Answers to these questions about Oregon’s exception
alism are uncertain, but there is one thing Oregonians must
remember. The state is divided in many ways by geography,
political and economic factors, social classes, race, and ethnicity.
The events of September 11 have created circumstances that
could turn those differences into deep fissures or, perhaps, add
to our historical understanding and enrich our culture. What will
determine our attitudes toward Muslims and Arab Americans?
How will we respond to federal policies establishing military
tribunals and requesting local police to question aliens and
students from other countries? Answers to those questions
are also “blowing in the wind.”
The 20th century, or what Life and Time publisher Henry
Luce called the “American Century,” began with conflicts in Asia
and the Pacific Islands and ended with wars in the Persian Gulf
and the Balkans. Military units and individuals from Oregon
served in each of those wars, and Oregonians are again over
seas in a new and unique war. How will we respond to this
unfinished chapter in American history? Historians will attempt
to reconcile the vivid images and soundbites of television with
the historical realities of the past. They must also try to reconcile
competing versions of history. While historians seek answers to
basic questions, public memory revives and celebrates the past
with parades, colorful pageants, commemorations, and solemn
memorials. Historians often disagree about the causes and
consequences of events; public memory thrives on myths and
strives for consensus. How will historians in the future interpret
current events, and how will public memory celebrate or memor
ialize our history? We might view these differing perspectives
as a continuing war between versions of history, and we must
decide which side to be on.
Eckard Toy taught at several universities and colleges in
the Midwest, California, Washington and Oregon before retiring
to Parkdale, Oregon. He received a Ph D. in history from the
University of Oregon and has focused his writing and research
on the Ku Klux Kian and the Radical Right. He wrote this article
for the Oregon Historical Quarterly, Winter 2001, published by
the Oregon Historical Society.
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