Fighting for America

November 1, 2004
The Allied victory in WWII was a triumph of logistics as well as combat power. Moore (Jubilee: The Emergence of African American Culture
) looks deeply and broadly into those efforts and comes up with a major addition to the literature. He finds African-American units building the lion's share of the logistical infrastructure in Europe and the Pacific, as well as transporting everything from artillery pieces to bottles of plasma. Among combat units, the familiar Tuskegee Airmen and the Black Panthers of the 761st Tank Battalion are here, but so are the 93rd Infantry Division, which never fought as a unit in the Pacific, and the 92nd Infantry, much maligned for one failure in an otherwise respectable record in Italy. African-American WACS saved the European theater's mail system from total chaos. A great many black Americans who served endured incidents of racial discrimination; Moore vividly depicts their coping strategies. The son of two WWII veterans who met in Europe, Moore contributes a somewhat rambling essay on the development of his own racial identity, but scores of letters and photographs counterbalance that minor deficiency. Agent, Charlotte Sheedy.