Kevin Leonard

World War II prompted many Americans to join an ongoing debate about the meaning of "race." Some argued that the United States was fighting against Hitler's racial ideology. Others insisted that a "white" America was fighting a "grasping, cruel and insanely ambitious race," as the Los Angeles Examiner referred to the Japanese. This debate was especially notable in Los Angeles, home to the nation's largest Japanese American and Mexican American communities and to a large and growing African American population. Kevin Leonard follows this verbal "battle for Los Angeles" immediately before, during, and after the war.