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7 Zoot Suits and Victory Girls † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † In times of stress, young people feel a pressure to grow up, and all their emotions and personal problems are intensified. —“Growing Up in Wartime,” Parents (April 1943) There is something fundamentally wrong with a civilization that regards a sixteen-year-old as an irresponsible child and at eighteen will take him into the army to face the most drastic tests of character. —Anna W. M. Wolf, Our Children Face War (1942) † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † † A small group of fifteen-year-olds had been skipping school, shooting BB guns at little kids, learning how to smoke, playing a “uke” too loudly, disobeying parents, coming home after curfew (sometimes after 2 a.m.), bothering phone operators with foolish questions, “borrowing” other kids’ bicycles, and refusing to do chores. The story sounded fairly familiar for young teenage boys in the early 1940s: occasionally silly, mischievous pranks but sometimes ugly, destructive behavior. The boys were also accused of hanging out in other kids’ barracks, sleeping at night in the rec hall, and being “out of bounds” on fishing trips. These were not just any American boys, however, and this was not just any American community. This was “The Trial of Tom Yamoda” in 1944 at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming with Chairman Doi presiding. Chairman Doi asked a number of direct and harshly phrased questions of the teenagers, Tom in particular, about not obeying their parents and aiming BB guns at little children. “And if you missed the legs,” Doi asked, “and hit the eyes, the child may have been blinded, isn’t that right?” Tom 100 101 Zoot Suits and Victory Girls had also skipped thirty-four days of school the preceding year. The trial continued with the harsh questioning until finally Tom broke down and began crying. The chairman ordered a short recess. When the trial resumed , Doi pronounced his judgment and prescribed Tom’s punishment: carry all the coal for the family that winter and study each night for an hour and a half. Doi also strictly admonished Tom to obey his father and mother. “Do your homework,” the chairman concluded, “and you may play after you have finished your homework, do you understand that?”1 Tom’s situation may have been unusual, but his story of rebelliousness and dangerous disregard became more and more familiar during the course of the Second World War. Wartime was “the perfect ground,” began a Saturday Evening Post article, “for the seeds of juvenile delinquency to grow fast.” The editors did not attempt to diminish the issue of juvenile delinquency while describing the efforts of a rookie policeman, a young black man named Oliver Crowen, who believed there could not be “a bad boy.” In “a horrific neighborhood” in Washington, D.C., with “the dirt and the smells and the squabbling that send children into the streets to find life and amusement,” Officer Crowen remained convinced that these young “hoodlums” and their energy could be directed toward constructive activities rather than culminating inevitably in crime. In his work, Crowen took children who believed they had failed and gave them increasing levels of attention and civic responsibility. “You see,” Crowen explained, “many of these kids never had a chance.” Under his care, the children now participated in various ways, according to their individual talents, as official members of their own newly created Junior Police and Citizens Corps. These children had been given a creative opportunity organized by a caring adult leader, but most children in trouble across the country did not have such an advantage. The Post editors concluded, “Are we raising another Lost Generation? One of the greatest evils of this war is its sinister effect on the behavior and character of America’s children.”2 “Our kids are in trouble,” observed Life magazine, responding to a rise in juvenile delinquency that became a serious concern in 1943 and 1944. Across the country, boys were arrested on a variety of charges—trainwrecking , “hoodlumism,” willful destruction of war materials and other property, arson, assault, rape, murder. “Many specific cases can be traced directly to war excitement,” Life reported, “to a misguided (or rather, unguided ) desire on the part of underage youngsters to do something as thrilling as their big brothers in uniform.” Some boys were becoming “thrill saboteurs” and forming “Commando Gangs.” Movie theaters provided especially dangerous opportunities with dark corners and lack of supervision resulting in “rowdyism,” vandalism, purse-snatching, fires, and sexual assaults. [3.16.83.150] Project...

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