Search
Log in
  • Home

  • Categories

  • Audiobooks

  • E-books

  • For kids

  • Top lists

  • Help

  • Download app

  • Use campaign code

  • Redeem gift card

  • Try free now
  • Log in
  • Language

    🇫🇮 Suomi

    • FI
    • EN

    🇧🇪 Belgique

    • FR
    • EN

    🇩🇰 Danmark

    • DK
    • EN

    🇩🇪 Deutschland

    • DE
    • EN

    🇪🇸 España

    • ES
    • EN

    🇫🇷 France

    • FR
    • EN

    🇳🇱 Nederland

    • NL
    • EN

    🇳🇴 Norge

    • NO
    • EN

    🇦🇹 Österreich

    • AT
    • EN

    🇨🇭 Schweiz

    • DE
    • EN

    🇸🇪 Sverige

    • SE
    • EN
  1. Books
  2. History
  3. Great occurrences and events

Read and listen for free for 14 days!

Cancel anytime

Try free now
0.0(0)

The First Strange Place: The Alchemy of Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii

Just as World War I introduced Americans to Europe, making an indelible impression on thousands of farmboys who were changed forever “after they saw Paree,” so World War II was the beginning of America’s encounter with the East – an encounter whose effects are still being felt and absorbed. No single place was more symbolic of this initial encounter than Hawaii, the target of the first unforgettable Japanese attack on American forces, and, as the forward base and staging area for all military operations in the Pacific, the “first strange place” for close to a million soldiers, sailors, and marines on their way to the horrors of war.

But as Beth Bailey and David Farber show in this evocative and timely book, Hawaii was also the first strange place on another kind of journey, toward the new American society that began to emerge in the postwar era. Unlike the largely rigid and static social order of prewar America, this was to be a highly mobile and volatile society of mixed racial and cultural influences, one above all in which women and minorities would increasingly demand and receive equal status. With consummate skill and sensitivity, Bailey and Farber show how these unprecedented changes were tested and explored in the highly charged environment of wartime Hawaii.

Most of the hundreds of thousands of men and women whom war brought to Hawaii were expecting a Hollywood image of “paradise.” What they found instead was vastly different: a complex crucible in which radically diverse elements – social, racial, sexual – were mingled and transmuted in the heat and strain of war. Drawing on the rich and largely untapped reservoir of documents, diaries, memoirs, and interviews with men and women who were there, the authors vividly recreate the dense, lush, atmosphere of wartime Hawaii – an atmosphere that combined the familiar and exotic in a mixture that prefigured the special strangeness of American society today.


Authors:

  • Beth Bailey
  • David Farber

Format:

  • E-book

Duration:

  • 277 pages

Language:

English

Categories:

  • History
  • Great occurrences and events
  • History
  • Military history
  • History
  • World War II

More by Beth Bailey

Skip the list
  1. An Army Afire

    Beth Bailey

    audiobook

Others have also read

Skip the list
  1. Farther Than Any Man : The Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook

    Martin Dugard

    book
  2. VisuaLeadership : Leveraging the Power of Visual Thinking in Leadership and in Life

    Todd Cherches

    audiobook
  3. Genius Kitchen : Over 100 Easy and Delicious Recipes to Make Your Brain Sharp, Body Strong, and Taste Buds Happy

    Max Lugavere

    audiobook
  4. Mental Health Survival Kit and Withdrawal from Psychiatric Drugs

    Peter C. Gotzsche

    book
  5. Jaakko cook in matkat tyynellä merellä

    Antti Fredrik Hassel

    book
  6. Karibian historia

    Pekka Valtonen

    book
  7. Eat for Life : The Breakthrough Nutrient-Rich Program for Longevity, Disease Reversal, and Sustained Weight Loss

    Joel Fuhrman

    audiobook
  8. Stakeholder Capitalism : A Global Economy that Works for Progress, People and Planet

    Klaus Schwab

    audiobook
  9. Virukset : Näkymättömät viholliset

    Matti Vuento

    book
  10. Lasten piirustuskirjat: Kuinka piirtää kasveja

    Tina Sun

    book
  11. Genius Foods : Become Smarter, Happier, and More Productive While Protecting Your Brain for Life

    Max Lugavere, Paul Grewal

    audiobook
  12. Tautitehdas : miten ylidiagnostiikka tekee meistä sairaita

    Iris Pasternack

    book

  • 2 books

    Beth Bailey

    Beth Bailey is a professor of history at Temple University. She is the author of America's Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force (2009), Sex in the Heartland (1999), and From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America (1988).

    Read more

  • 2 books

    David Farber

    David Farber is a professor of history at Temple University. He is the author of The Rise and Fall of Modern American Conservatism: A Short History (2012), among other books.

    Read more

Help and contact


About us

  • Our story
  • Career
  • Press
  • Accessibility
  • Partner with us
  • Investor relations
  • Instagram
  • Facebook

Explore

  • Categories
  • Audiobooks
  • E-books
  • Magazines
  • For kids
  • Top lists

Popular categories

  • Crime
  • Biographies and reportage
  • Fiction
  • Feel-good and romance
  • Personal development
  • Children's books
  • True stories
  • Sleep and relaxation

Nextory

Copyright © 2025 Nextory AB

Privacy Policy · Terms ·
Excellent4.3 out of 5