Still Potentially Dangerous in Some Quarters
The charges that led Gen. John L. DeWitt to deport Sylvester Andriano from the Western
Defense Region in 1942 were bogus, the product of an anti-Catholic campaign by
Communist Party activists, Masonic anti-Catholics in the Italian community, and
recent Italian anti-Fascist exiles (fuorusciti). This wartime abuse of civil rights in
the name of national security grew from a discourse of demonizing the religious, not
solely the racial and ethnic, Other. The article makes several arguments about ethnicity
and religion on the Pacific Coast: Faith-based political activism played a significant
role in the region9s urban political culture, as did cultural politics between
Catholics and anti-Catholics. Irish American Catholic clergy welcomed, rather than
excluded, Italian American laymen into the Church9s highest councils in San Francisco,
where the Irish had long dominated civic life. However, Italian Americans were
bitterly divided between devout Catholics and disaffected anti-clericals.
Constructing a Radical Identity: History, Memory, and the Seafaring Stories of Harry Bridges
From 1934 onward Harry Bridges personiÞed militant, left-wing unionism on the Pacific Coast. Born Alfred Renton Bridges in 1901 in Australia, he began calling himself Harry when he went to sea at age sixteen. By 1922 he was working on the San Francisco docks as a longshoreman. In 1933 the International LongshoremenOs Association (ILA) chartered Local 38Ð79 in San Francisco, and Bridges emerged as leader of its left-wing caucus. In May 1934 ILA members went on strike from Bellingham, Washington, to San Diego, California, in an effort to secure union recognition, a union hiring hall, and improvements in wages and hours. Bridges became a leadingNand uncompromisingNÞgure in the strike. After the strike, he won the presidency of Local 38-79 and then of the ILAOs Pacific Coast
War and Society: The United States, 1941-1945
A discussion of the radical alteration of the character of American society caused by World War II. The war redefined the relationship of government to the individual and of individuals to each other, and it posed questions about the relationship between civilians and the military, between liberty and security, between special interests and national purpose.