The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii. This item is unavailable.The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii

As the forward base and staging area for all US military operations in the Pacific during World War II, Hawaii was the "first strange place" for close to a million soldiers, sailors and marines on their way to the horrors of war. But Hawaii was also the first strange place on another kind of journey, toward the new American society that would begin to emerge in the post-war era. Unlike the rigid and static social order of pre-war 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. Drawing on documents, diaries, memoirs and interviews, Beth Bailey and David Farber show how these unprecedented changes were tested and explored in the highly charged environment of wartime Hawaii.

Beth Bailey teaches American history and is the director of American Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii.

David Farber teaches American history at barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author of Chicago '68 and The Age of Great Dreams: American in the 1960s.