The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 22 (2011)

Is a Japanese Standpoint Useful for Studying about
America?: Child Labor during World War II
Revealed in Comparative Perspective
Natsuki ARUGA*INTRODUCTION: A NEW PHASE OF INTERNATIONALIZATION IN AMERICAN STUDIESIt is an issue of great concern to Japanese students of American society
and culture whether their foreignness might inhibit understanding of thesubjects of their study, because they lack familiarity with myriad aspectsof the United States that are commonly shared by their American-born or-raised colleagues In this presentation I attempt to show how a foreign
perspective, while lacking an ingrained native viewpoint, may neverthelessbe a useful tool for uncovering what has been overlooked in U.S. history
and, moreover, how it may even contribute to comparative and transnational
historiography.
Internationalization has been one of the most important goals in American
studies and history for long time. Americanists on both sides of the Pacific,
one way or the other, have sought to internationalize their academic disciplines. We may say that the internationalization of American studies and history has become the consensus among Americanists worldwide.1 It has been
partly realized through the widening exchange of scholars from different
parts of the world and in articles written by foreign scholars in journals published by academic associations of the United States or other countries. We
even see an example of internationalization here at this meeting of the JapaCopyright © 2011 Natsuki Aruga. All rights reserved. This work may be used, withthis notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work may be
distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without permission fromthe author.
*Professor Emeritus, Saitama University

25

26

NATSUKI ARUGA

nese Association for American Studies. For instance, we just listened to an
address by Professor Kevin Gaines, the president of the American Studies
Association of the United Sates, who was introduced by Professor Eisaku
Kihira, the next president of the Japanese Association for American Studies(JAAS). And tomorrow, at the U.S.-Japan joint workshops, Americanists
from the United States, Korea, and Japan will present their papers andexchange their ideas. Indeed, these international sessions have become an
integral part of the JAAS annual meetings for the past two decades. Nevertheless, these sessions have been planned and prepared mostly by the international committees of the U.S. and Japanese associations, that is, from the
top down, and the other sessions and symposiums have rarely included
scholars from outside of Japan; however, this year we have for the first timea session proposed jointly by American scholars and by Japanese membersof this association.2 Thus, we can see our association moving further toward
internationalization.
Internationalization in American studies itself is not new. We cannot talkabout the development of American studies in Japan without taking into
account such past and present international exchange programs as theFulbright Program, the Stanford University–Tokyo University American
Studies Seminar (1950–56), the Kyoto American Studies Summer Seminar(1951–87), the Sapporo Cool Seminar (1980–95), the Nagoya American
Studies Summer Seminar (2007–2011), and others. However, there is a difference in the interest in internationalization of today’s Americanists fromthat of the past. Until recently, the internationalization of American studies
largely, or often solely, meant that Japanese scholars and students learned
about American history and culture from American scholars, and this may
still be true to a considerable extent today. However, for the past two
decades or so, scholars of American studies and history in the United States
have increasingly felt the need for internationalization, not because they areinterested in spreading knowledge and understanding about American history and culture abroad but because they think it important and necessary intheir own academic pursuits to learn about America from their counterpartsin other countries.
What I have just mentioned is internationalization through the exchangeof scholars and students, or the human exchange. Although this is a vital element of the internationalization of American studies, I do not intend here toelaborate on this kind of internationalization. When we say internationalization of American studies, I believe there are two meanings: one is the aforementioned international exchange of scholars and students, or the exchange

IS A JAPANESE STANDPOINT USEFUL FOR STUDYING ABOUT AMERICA?

27

of humans, and the other is the internationalization of the content of American studies, or the exchange and integration of ideas. While both of these areclosely connected, what I would like to discuss today concerns the lattermeaning, the exchange and integration of ideas.
The new interest of Americanists in the United States in a multi-way, notone-way, exchange—in other words, their interest in learning from nonAmerican scholars about United States history and culture through exchange—comes from a new critical attitude toward the notion that has dominatedin American studies and history: American exceptionalism. In the notion ofAmerican exceptionalism, the American nation is considered different and,indeed, unique in the world, with the implication often being that America issuperior to other nations. This change in ideas about the American nation
has brought about a new kind of international exchange.
During the post–World War II era most Americanists embraced the notionof American exceptionalism as the organizing principle of the study ofAmerican history and culture. At that time the United States had triumphed
as a democratic superpower that was believed to ensure its people and othersin the world liberty, equality, and economic prosperity. However, at the timeof the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements many Americans cameto question the accuracy of this notion, as it was revealed that American
democracy in reality allowed racial inequality, poverty, and an aggressive
war with intolerable brutality. Furthermore, with the influx of immigrants
from non-European backgrounds during the 1970s and after and under the
more recent surge of globalization, Americans became exposed to people
with differing cultures both inside and outside the United States. As American people lost confidence in their government and their national creed, on
which the former was based, and began to be aware of the values of nonand un-American and non-Anglo-Saxon cultures inside and outside theUnited States, Americanists questioned the nation-state framework forstudying history and culture in which the particular nation’s value shaped
the frame of reference. Among Americanists, the notion of American exceptionalism, which during the 1940s and 1950s boasted of the uniqueness, andoften superiority, of the United States, gave way to the multicultural ideathat placed equal value on all cultures and nations inside and outside theUnited States. As a result, the nation-state was no longer considered as thenatural framework for studying American history and culture.3
Thus, during the last two decades, Americanists have considered how they
could go beyond the nation-state boundary in their research and teaching
while purging the notion of American exceptionalism. In their search for

28

NATSUKI ARUGA

internationalizing the study of history on some basis other than the nationstate, Americanists in the early 1990s adopted a concept designated by theterm “transnational.”4 Soon “transnational history” or “transnational American studies” took hold of academia as a new framework for bringing thestudy of history and culture closer to the reality of—and possibly bringing
about the ideal society for—the United States and the world.
THE STATUS OF COMPARATIVE HISTORY IN AMERICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY
In efforts to understand American society in international or crossnational perspective, comparative history for long time has played an important role. Practitioners of comparative studies from Alexis de Tocqueville totoday’s scholars have contributed to a deeper understanding of American
society and its historical transformations in broader international perspective. However, American historians generally seem to have shown only
casual interest in comparative approaches. In 1980 George Fredrickson, oneof the most prominent comparative historians, distinguishing comparative
history from “history that uses the ‘comparative method’ in a relatively brief
or casual fashion,” lamented the sparseness and fragmentation of comparative history in the United States. By 1995 Fredrickson thought that sparseness was no longer a problem but that fragmentation remained because comparative histories in the United States had no connection with one another,with each historian studying separately unrelated topics.5 Fredrickson shared
his misgivings with C. Van Woodward and Carl N. Degler, the eminent historians of the American South, who held a keen interest in comparative
approaches and regretted its near absence in American history.6 RaymondGrew, a leading scholar of comparative history and the editor from 1973 to
1997 of the journal Comparative Studies in Society and History (founded in1958), also wrote with disappointment about the dearth of comparative
approaches in American historiography, pointing out that “preoccupation
with America’s uniqueness reinforced the single most important inhibition
on comparative study.”7 Historians’ assumption of American uniquenessexplains their apathy toward other countries and consequently toward comparative history. In other words, it is American exceptionalism that hindered
comparative history’s growth in the United States.
The receding of American exceptionalism from the dominant place inAmerican historiography after the 1960s did not give comparative history an
opportunity for full development. In 1995 Fredrickson concluded in his historiographical essay, “Now, far more than when I reviewed work in compar-

IS A JAPANESE STANDPOINT USEFUL FOR STUDYING ABOUT AMERICA?

29

ative cross-national history fifteen years ago, it is possible to imagine thefield as a coherent cooperative enterprise.” However, comparative history
was facing a challenge from the rising international trends of transnational
history and postcolonial theories.8 In these recent trends, historians had moreinterest in looking at historical phenomena free from national boundaries
than making comparisons of phenomena in nations delineated by the boundaries. Comparative history and these new trends in historical studies sharedan international perspective, but they were different in their attitudes toward
the nation: while the former had the nation with its boundaries as given, thelatter saw critically the nation as both reality and concept.
It is not my intention here to elaborate on the theoretical and historiographical debates on comparative and transnational histories. Instead, using
an example from my work on American society during World War II, I willattempt to show the usefulness of foreignness in the research and teaching ofAmerican studies and history. However, since I will be arguing that foreignness has some use in the context of comparative and transnational historiography, before going into my work, I need to further clarify what I mean bycomparative and transnational history.
TOWARD A BORADER DEFINITION OF COMPARATIVE HISTORY
Fredrickson stated in 1980 that “there is no firm agreement on what comparative history is or how it should be done.” This still seems to hold true
today. Those interested in establishing comparative history as a disciplinewith a certain method and theory tend to be more rigid in definition thanthose who draw on comparison to broaden their view and deepen theirunderstanding of the subject of their concern. Fredrickson himself takes asomewhat rigid definition, as Grew notes, assuming that “comparative history in the full sense . . . must deal with at least two nations for its entire
length or fall below the desired standard.”9 Despite the absence of consensus
on the definition, it is possible to find a rough agreement on what Marc
Bloch, often hailed as the father of comparative history, meant regarding theuse of comparison in history “as a way to discover either similarities or differences” between two or more societies, which were the appropriate numbers of units for comparison.10 It is also widely accepted that, as Bloch suggested, “a rigorous and critical use of the comparative method is possible
only if we are making comparisons between societies which are geographical neighbors and historical contemporaries.” He believed that comparisonof societies far removed from each other in space and time, which he stig-

30

NATSUKI ARUGA

matized as “comparative method in the grand manner,” would not give precise results and not be of much use “from the scientific point of view.”11
My own working definition of the term comprises two meanings: comparative history as subject matter and comparative history as method andperspective. In most cases, comparative history means the former: two or
more societies compared systematically and the results presented in a comparative format. Here I will focus on the second aspect of comparative
perspective. There has been much debate about the method of comparative
history among historians and social scientists from Marc Bloch to the sociologist Theda Skocpol.12 Here again, I am not going into the methodical
matter, but would like to pay special attention to the comparative perspective. All histories, in one way or another, may have comparative perspectives, but I propose that historians use comparative perspectives more consciously. William Sewell, a leading scholar of comparative politics andhistory, stating that “the term comparative history can have other meanings”
than that generally defined by historians and social scientists as studies ofmore than one different societies located not far from each other in space
and time, takes special notice of comparative perspective as another meaning of comparative history: “viewing historical problems in a context
broader than their particular social, geographical, and temporal setting.”13
The comparative perspective is free from rigid rules of the generally
accepted comparative method that, as I just mentioned, prefers comparisons
between spatially and temporally close societies. Sewell does not totallyagree to this rule and, suggesting the validity of comparisons between
distant societies, recommends broader meanings of comparative history,
including the comparative perspective. The comparative perspective, Sewellstates, “provides us not with rules, but with insights. A comparative perspective thus is valuable even to historians who can make no use of the comparative method.” Grew also questions the widely accepted view of the advantage of comparison between similar cultures, stating that “there may even bea general law that the comparison of cases distant in cultural context is more
likely than other comparisons to produce a fresh perspective and thus questions to explore.”14 In this presentation, I would like to give an example ofcomparative history, not in the restricted meaning of a historical methodwith a set of rules, such as rules about the numbers of units for comparison
and those of spatial and temporal proximity,15 but in a broader sense of using
comparative perspectives consciously in historical study.
There is another point I would like to add to my definition of comparative
history. Here again I draw from Sewell’s instructive argument. He also states

IS A JAPANESE STANDPOINT USEFUL FOR STUDYING ABOUT AMERICA?

31

that a history of “a single nation can be comparative history if comparison ismade in formulating problems and if explanations of developments in thatnation are tested by the comparative method.”16 However, since my working
definition of comparative history concerns only comparative perspective—
not necessarily the method—I would just omit from his statement the second “if” clause that limits the meaning of comparative history to a methodically proper comparison.
With this broad definition, my work may be considered within the rangeof comparative history and, I hope, will demonstrate the usefulness of a foreign perspective. Mine is a loosely defined comparative history, but its comparative perspective provides new insights about the single nation of theUnited States and produces new questions and new findings that have been
overlooked by historians operating from domestic American perspectives.
COMPARATIVE HISTORY IN THE RISE OF TRANSNATIONAL HISTORY
If comparative history is so useful for studying about the United States,
why did it not prevail in American historiography that was increasingly internationalized? I mentioned that the challenge to comparative history came fromtransnationalism, which also had an international outlook. Thus approaches
of both comparative and transnational histories being international, what isthe problem with comparative history in the face of transnational history?
Before proceeding to an example from my work, I would like to consider the
relationship between transnational history and comparative history.
In the definition of transnational history, unlike comparative history, there
is some agreement among historians.17 Micol Seigel, who specializes incomparative and transnational studies of race in the Americas, defines theterm “transnational history” in line with the generally agreed meaning anddistinguishes it from international history, stating that while international
history is “the study of nation-states interacting as such, transnational history examines units that spill over and seep through national borders, units
both greater and smaller than the nation-state.”18 As I noted earlier, transnational history emerged in a new phase of internationalization that denied
American exceptionalism and questioned the validity of the nation-state
framework for American studies and history. Advocates of transnational
history tend to disparage comparative history. Seigel calls for a “moratoriumon comparative study” that is tinged with “Orientalist exceptionalism” thatassumes the stereotypes of the backward non-Western world, and she urges
students of race to study in a transnational perspective that is devoid of

32

NATSUKI ARUGA

exceptionalism and West-centered colonialist mentality.19
While not as radical as Seigel, Ian Tyrrell, one of the earliest and mostarticulate advocates of transnational history, is also critical of comparative
history for its link with exceptionalism. He maintains that “comparative history may sometimes be seen simply as a way of making the discipline in the
United States more cosmopolitan” but that this approach is “not necessarily
antagonistic to exceptionalism.” Tyrrell perceives the most obvious problem
of comparative history to reside in its tendency “to take for granted the primacy of the national unit of analysis.”20 Indeed, comparative history’s basic
assumption of the nation-state as a unit for study is likely to give in tonational exceptionalism.
Fredrickson, arguing in support of comparative history, admits the nationbased comparative history has at times embraced and even “strengthened”
American exceptionalism, but he defends nation-based comparative studies,pointing out that use of the nation-state as a unit of analysis “does not byitself commit the historian to historiographic nationalism or to a belief innational exceptionalism.” He states, “Nations and national identities are notfacts of nature; they were socially and historically constructed, but they havebecome potent forces—probably the most salient sources of modern authority and consciousness. Historians, comparative or otherwise, can scarcely
afford to ignore them.” He cautions that “to treat international and crossnational history as mutually exclusive would be a mistake. Nations areaffected by international movements as well as by their own internal dynamics.” And he further asserts, “Acknowledging the international context does
not mean disregarding the nation as a unit of analysis.” He then refers to therise of a new and more malevolent conception of American uniqueness incomparative studies in the 1970s, which concluded that the United States
was exceptional because of its intense racism.21 Fredrickson himself demonstrated such malevolent uniqueness of American racism in his landmark
book of a comparative history of white supremacy in the United States andSouth Africa.22
Tyrrell does not altogether reject comparative history. He makes a distinction between comparative history and transnational “topics,” explainingthat “the former involves discrete geographical units, usually nations, thelatter category reaches across nations and recognizes the interdependence ofpeoples.” He disapproves of the “familiar” comparative history for its use of
the nation as the unit of analysis, but finds its value when a comparison ismade between organizations and activities in different places within one ormore countries, as some works on women’s history have done. He maintains

IS A JAPANESE STANDPOINT USEFUL FOR STUDYING ABOUT AMERICA?

33

that “neither transnational nor comparative history is illegitimate, and thetwo can, perhaps should, be used together where possible, while recognizingthat purely national comparisons often legitimate existing assumptions
within particular national historiographies,”23 as exemplified in American
exceptionalism.
THE COMMON VIEW OF THE U.S. HOME FRONT DURING WORLD WAR II
We have had an overview of definitions of comparative history in its rigid
and loose meanings. We also have seen some of its criticisms by exponentsof transnational history. From these arguments it may be concluded that,
despite their differences, comparative and transnational histories are notmutually exclusive and that comparative history might even contribute to theburgeoning field of transnational history.
Now, adopting the loose definition of comparative history I turn to thequestion of how comparative perspective can help raise new questions andbroaden understanding of American history and culture. I will draw from my
own work and look at some aspects of American society during World War
II that can be uncovered, or recognized, if we use a comparative perspective.
The generally accepted view of American society during the war is thefollowing. After Pearl Harbor the American people became united throughpatriotism and worked together to win the war. Men fought in the war either
by being drafted or by volunteering, while women went to work in factories,
offices, and stores out of patriotism or for money, with all contributing to thewar effort. People saved such materials as metal, rubber, and petroleum. Suchfood items as meat and sugar were rationed. To make up for the shortage offood, people grew vegetables in their own yards. The American people wereencouraged to buy war bonds. Women provided military men on furloughwith recreational services at the United Service Organizations, or invitedthem to their homes. “Victory” was the prefix to anything that was contributing to the war effort: there were Victory Gardens that grew vegetables, Victory War Bonds, Victory Cakes that used less or no sugar, and Victory Girls
who offered companionship to servicemen. “Rosie the Riveter,” the archetypal female worker in the war plant, became the symbol of women working
for victory. World War II was a total war that mobilized and affected thelives of the American people more than any war in American history.24
This picture of American society during World War II has been advancedby historians and in the contemporary media and government. The government in its attempt to mobilize the entire nation for the war carried out pro-

34

NATSUKI ARUGA

paganda on a large scale, and the media assisted the government’s effort.
Most people responded to the call of the government and media to work for
the war, and some of them wrote in their diaries or letters about their efforts.
Historians, using as their historical sources government documents andmedia records and, to a lesser extent, people’s written materials, described
American society as it was shown in these sources. Furthermore, historians
naturally interpreted these historical sources by way of their own thoughts
and values, which were formed by various factors including their own time
period. Most historians writing about the American home front of WorldWar II lived in the 1960s and ‘70s when second-wave feminism was at thepeak and when married women increasingly worked outside the home. It isthus no wonder they were drawn to the image of Rosie the Riveter andchose the working women as a major subject of historical studies on wartime America. Many significant works on the wartime employment of
women have been published in American women’s history, American laborhistory, and the history of the American home front during World War II. We
can learn from these studies about the experiences and lives of working
women in detail and the effect their lives had on women in general as wellas the American economy and society during and after the war.25
Another aspect of national mobilization was the rationing and saving ofdaily necessities by the population. This also has been much studied by historians. Relying on these studies about mobilization, we characterize theUnited States during World War II as a nation where women took the placeof men in the workplace and people saved, not wasted, essential materials.
To put it in another way, it was production not consumption that occupied
the greatest place in people’s lives, and women were producers and savers
rather than consumers and squanderers. And, most important, the nation was
united and committed to the war effort because of patriotism.
This sketch requires revision when we look at American society during
the war from a different perspective, as I did in my study. First, let me startwith wartime mobilization. My focus will be on working children andyouths, rather than working women.
CHILD LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES DURING WORLD WAR II“Contrary to general belief, the early withdrawal of boys and girls fromschool was a greater factor in the expansion of the labor force than was theincrease in the number of women working,” reported the Department ofLabor in August 1943 on the nation’s labor force since the outbreak of theIS A JAPANESE STANDPOINT USEFUL FOR STUDYING ABOUT AMERICA?

35

war.26 The expanded labor market in the war pulled many women out of
their homes, but it also took many teenagers out of school and brought theminto the workplace. Between 1940 and 1944, school enrollment for those
aged fifteen through eighteen fell by 1.2 million, or 24 percent, while thenumber of employed youths of ages fourteen through seventeen increased byover two million: an increase of over 200 percent.27 The estimated increasein the labor force in 1944 was the largest for those between ages fourteen
and seventeen (see graph 1).
Graph 1.

Estimated Excess of April 1944 Labor Force by Sex

Source: Monthly Labor Review 60 (Jan. 1945): 7 (table 1)

36

NATSUKI ARUGAThis meant that a considerable number of teenage middle school and highschool students went to work instead of going to school, as the drop in
school enrollment indicated. The sudden drop in school enrollment and the
sharp rise in the number of working children with the coming of war (seegraph 2) surprised and troubled many Americans, who believed that AmeriGraph 2. Trends of School Attendance and Child Labor 1910–1944① Population 14–15 years
attending school② Population 14–15 years
gainfully employed③ Population 16–17 years
attending school④ Population 16–17 years
gainfully employed

Sources: “Young Workers in the Wartime Labor Market,” The Child 9(Nov. 1944): 73; “The Changing Picture of Child Labor,” Annals of theAmerican Academy of Political and Social Science 236 (Nov. 1944): 86.

IS A JAPANESE STANDPOINT USEFUL FOR STUDYING ABOUT AMERICA?

37

can children should be in school until they finished high school and not atwork. Moreover, thousands of children under the age of fourteen entered thewartime workforce illegally, and thus their numbers were not recorded. Thissituation upset educators, reformers, government officials, and journalists.
They were dismayed with newspaper reports about a return of “child labor,”which they believed to have disappeared decades before.28
One of those reports tells of the following episode: One morning in
Cleveland, Ohio, after forty students in a single school fell asleep in class,an investigation revealed that all of them had been setting up pins inbowling alleys the night before. Among the variety of workplaces that hired
children, bowling alleys were one of the chief employers of younger boys
because most boys sixteen and older were working in war plants or serving
in the armed forces.29 Here is another example. Mervyn, an African American boy of sixteen living in Berkeley, California, worked throughout thesummer of 1944 at the naval base at Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay.
He worked nine hours a day mixing up paint, and the job carried the hazardof lead poisoning. Nevertheless, he enjoyed the job because it allowed him
to be in the company of six teenage boys—and fellow workers—from hishigh school.30
The experiences of the students at bowling alleys and Mervyn at the naval
base could have been cited as “child labor” by government leaders andmedia reporters. These people were so upset by the sudden increase in thenumber of working youths of school age that they felt the need for someaction. To bring students back from workplaces to classrooms, the federal
government launched the “Back-to-School” and “National Go-to-School”
campaigns in the summers of 1943, 1944, and 1945, but these did not resultin much success. Children and teenagers kept working during the war.31
Work by children and youths was considered a problem and attacked bygovernment officials and the media during the war, but work by women elicited their highest praise and recommendation. While the wartime working
women have enjoyed the attention of historians, the phenomenon of childand youth wartime employment in the United States has been buried under
the glorious record of Rosie the Riveter. However, this history can be uncovered if we apply a comparative or foreign perspective to the employment of
women in the United States.

38

NATSUKI ARUGAUNCOVERING CHILD LABOR IN WARTIME AMERICA
BY LOOKING FROM A COMPARATIVE/JAPANESE PERSPECTIVE
In Japan during World War II, women were not mobilized for work to thesame extent as in the United States. There was an increase in the number offemale workers, but the number of male workers also increased about asmuch. However, in contrast to the modest mobilization of women, students
were fully mobilized in Japan. After 1944 students above the fifth gradewere called to work, and those in the sixth grade of elementary school, middle school, high school, and college were all mobilized for war either as soldiers or workers. In February 1945 all classes from the seventh grade to theuniversity level were suspended. By March 1945, 3.11 million students, or
60 percent of the total student population, worked in industries. In addition,
many, including some elementary school children, served the nation’s war
effort on farms.32
From the American standpoint, we may see the wartime employment of
women as the norm and ask, “Why weren’t Japanese women mobilized?”
Then we might investigate the mobilization of the United States and Japan
during the war and try to explain the reasons for the under-mobilization of
women in Japan. However, if we reverse our position and look at America
from the Japanese scene, we will ask, “Why were women, not children, in
the United States a target for mobilization?” In my own research this veryquestion enabled me to uncover the problem of child labor and youth
employment in American society during World War II.
Having found the problematic employment of children and youths during
the war, we will reconsider the meaning of a war that has widely been seen
as “the good war” that brought the nation economic prosperity, and presumably, improved the status of women and minorities in society. Beginningwith the fact of more women going to work on the home front as a consequence of prodding by the government and media, we may conclude that the
war changed gender roles and advanced the historical trend toward greater
participation by women in the labor force—and presumably more equality.
However, if one’s point of departure is increased child labor, the war may nolonger appear so “good” retarding the education and welfare of children andyouths.
The existence of child labor in the United States during World War II perhaps would have remained unnoticed were it not for a new question posedfrom a Japanese standpoint. This is the kind of question that can be formulated when American society is looked at from the outside. I previously

IS A JAPANESE STANDPOINT USEFUL FOR STUDYING ABOUT AMERICA?

39

noted Grew’s suggestion that the comparison of distant cultures might produce new questions to explore new problems. Jürgen Kocka the German
historian remarks on the possibility of comparative approaches allowing one
to “identify questions and problems that one might miss, neglect, or just notinvent otherwise.” He cites an example from Marc Bloch’s research. Bloch,
Kocha writes, had an assumption developed from his understanding of the
English enclosures of the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries that something analogous should have taken place in France, though such a similar
experience remained as yet undiscovered. According to Kocka, “Startingwith this question Bloch revealed for fifteenth-, sixteenth-, and seventeencentury Provence corresponding though not identical changes in the structure of landownership.” Bloch, Kocka continues, contributed in this way to“a far-reaching revision of the history of the region.”33
To some extent these comments may apply to my study of American
society during World War II. I started my exploration of wartime American
society with a question derived from my understanding of the mobilizationof school-age children and youths in support of the war effort in Japan. This
led to a “discovery” of the corresponding, though different in nature, phenomenon of child labor during the war in the United States, something that
had been unnoticed and that might contribute to some revision—even if not“far-reaching”—of the history of the American home front.
RECOGNITION OF CONSUMERISM IN WARTIME AMERICA
The discovery of child labor in the wartime mobilization in the UnitedStates led to my recognition of consumerism in American society during
World War II. The idea of consumerism is at odds with the common viewof wartime American society, as I outlined, characterized by saving andrationing of essential materials. But this view had to be reconsidered when I
queried the motivation of children and youths at work. Among their possible
motives, besides patriotism, family economy, and work ethic, there was thepossibility of materialist acquisition. From this possibility I asked, “In wartime America, how did youths develop a materialist orientation?” As we
explore further we will become aware that wartime American society was infact a prosperous consumer society, and that recognition of this had been
overlooked in the commonly accepted history of the American home front.
As a consequence of asking this question, we will become more attentive tohistorical sources that illustrate this consumerist aspect of wartime society.
As I studied Berkeley, California, during the war, I found that most

40

NATSUKI ARUGA

youths took jobs out of a desire to have more money to spend on items thatwere extraneous to their basic needs. In wartime America, there was a resurgence of the 1920s consumerism that had been stifled by the Great Depression. During the war—and as an outcome of the war—Americans had moremoney to buy food, clothes, and other consumer goods, and despite rationing food was abundant and consumer goods flooded stores. Despite rationing of items such as meat, sugar, and gasoline and a need to conserve metal,
rubber, and other materials for the war, Americans were able to maintain oreven to raise their prewar standards of living.34
During the war, easier access to money made possible by the expanded
economy stimulated the shopping impulses of Americans who had struggled
through shortages during the Great Depression. We may note what John
Kenneth Galbraith recalled about the American home front: “In the war
years, consumption of consumer goods doubled. Never in the history ofhuman conflict has there been so much talk of sacrifice and so little sacrifice.”35 During 1942 Americans spent $20 million more on pharmaceuticals
alone than during the previous year simply because people had “moremoney to spend.” Jewelry sales also increased, depending on local circumstances, between 20 and 100 percent. One store manager was reported tohave said, “People want to spend money, and if they don’t spend it on textiles they’ll spend it on furniture; or we’ll find something else for them.” In
the first six months of 1944 overall retail sales went up 8 percent comparedwith 1943. The average individual purchase in department stores increased
to ten dollars from two dollars before the war. This trend was bolstered by
the advertising industry, which in the war years saw its largest expendituresin history and enticed the public to buy various goods.36 Newspapers andmagazines filled their pages with advertisements for fashionable clothes,handy and stylish household goods, and other attractive merchandise.
In Berkeley, two teenage brothers were saving money alongside theirfather, an unskilled machinist sometimes on welfare, to buy their mother a
fur coat.37 A fur coat once had been, and perhaps still was, worn only by
upper-class or some upper-middle-class women, and it may seem unrealistic
for a working-class mother to want to possess one, but this episode gives agood picture of the working-class family in America during World War II,
overwhelmed with visions of luxuries that the booming consumer society
offered.
Wartime consumerism prevailed among teenagers as well. At Berkeley
High School, cashmere sweaters and saddle shoes were in vogue among
middle-class girls to prove their status. For boys, easier access to a large

IS A JAPANESE STANDPOINT USEFUL FOR STUDYING ABOUT AMERICA?

41

amount of money made it no longer unrealistic to have a car of their own orother expensive items. Although there was some difference in the items thatgirls and boys wanted, they were all interested in buying things.38 The war,by creating more job opportunities for teenagers, made it easier, not harder,
for them to satisfy their materialistic desires.
Some historians have recognized the consumerism in the booming economy of the American home front, but the image of producing, saving, andrationing outweighs that of spending in the history of the American homefront as generally known. Rosie the Riveter still represents American
women during World War II, yet in reality more wives were consumers thanfactory workers.39
If we only look at American society from within the confines of thenational boundary, we may only see the prevailing image of a society totallycommitted to the war effort, but if we see it with a view from the outside in,we may perceive another aspect of society with people enjoying consumerism within a nation at war. From what we know about other countries at thetime, the United States was unique and exceptional on this point, but can weconclude that this unique wartime consumerism constitutes a praiseworthy
example of American superiority? How we evaluate it depends on how we
explain the causes of this consumerism by considering structural, economic,
political, and cultural factors. While the United States by comparison may
often turn out unique and exceptional, this does not necessarily mean its
excellence.
IN CONCLUSION: LOOKING AT AMERICAN SOCIETY FROM THE OUTSIDE IN
Some historians like William Sewell, Raymond Grew, and Jürgen Kocka
suggested potentialities of comparative history for uncovering what has been
neglected in historical study. My study of American society during WorldWar II from a comparative perspective shows such case. Now, in concluding, I would like to state that this perspective is also transnational and thatboth comparative and transnational perspectives applied to my study expand
the meanings of comparative and transnational histories.
As I already mentioned, my study is a loosely defined comparative history, using comparative perspective from a country distant in space and culture and focusing on the subject in one single nation of the United Sates.
Yet, without a perspective that is foreign this study on child labor would nothave been produced. Though implicit, here is a case of comparative perspective applied to history.

42

NATSUKI ARUGAThe perspective is also transnational in an extended sense, and the transnational perspective in this study suggests a new and additional meaning forwhat is generally meant by transnational history. The definition of transnational history usually centers on the “subject” of study that moves from one
nation to others—“the movement of peoples, institutions and ideas acrossand through national boundaries.”40 In this familiar mode of transnational
history, a historian follows the subject as it moves across national boundaries, thus the study becoming transnational. In my comparative, and transnational, history the subjects of the research, Americans during World War II,
stay within their national boundary. Nevertheless I would consider this study
transnational because the perspective crosses the national border from Japanto the United States. Here, it is not necessarily the subject of study but thehistorian’s perspective that moves across national boundaries, looking into
American society from the outside in.
There is another unconventionality to call this study transnational history.
In transnational history as well as in comparative history we usually deal
with two or more nations, but in this case I only focus on one nation. However, I characterize this study as transnational as well as comparative
because of its viewpoint that is placed outside the national border and looks
across the border into American society. From this angle, or more concretelyfrom a Japanese perspective, even a study involving the one nation of theUnited States might contribute to both comparative and transnational historiographies. Through intellectual exchange in the forms of comparative andtransnational history and via human exchange, as we see at this meeting andother venues, we will be able to realize truly internationalized American
studies.
NOTES
This is a slightly revised version of my presidential speech given at the 44th Annual Meetingof the JAAS held on June 5 and 6, 2010. I thank my colleague Roger Brown for his invaluable comments on my draft of the speech.
1
Akira Iriye, “The Internationalization of History,” American Historical Review 94, no. 1(February 1989): 1–10; “Toward the Internationalization of American History: A Round
Table,” Journal of American History 79, no. 2 (September 1992), 432–542.
2
Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro applied from the United States for participation in the
44th Annual Meeting of the JAAS with the proposal of a panel titled “People of Color during
World War II.”
3
Thomas Bender, Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2002); John Carlos Rowe, Post-Nationalist American Studies (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2000). Janice Radway in her presidential address to theAmerican Studies Association in 1998 questioned the approprietness of using the word
“American” for American studies as it was in fact studies about the United States not otherIS A JAPANESE STANDPOINT USEFUL FOR STUDYING ABOUT AMERICA?

43“American” nations yet increasingly becoming international and transnational and proposed
renaming the American Studies Association “Inter-American Studies” or “International Studies of the United States” or the “Society of Intercultural Studies” so as to move from the U.S.
center and reflect its real, and ideal, content. Radway, “What’s in a Name?: Presidential
Address to the American Studies Association, 20 November 1998,” American Quarterly 51
no. 1 ( March 1999): 1–32.
4
Ian Tyrrell, “American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History,” American
Historical Review 96, no. 4 (October 1991): 1031–55; Michael McGerr, “The Price of the‘New Transnational History,’ ” American Historical Review 96, no. 4 (October 1991), 1056–
67; David Thelen, “The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives on United States
History,” Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (December 1999): 965–75; Ian Tyrrell,“Making Nations/Making States: American Historians in the Context of Empire,” Journal of
American History 86, no. 3 (December 1999): 1015–44. See also articles in the Journal of
American History 85, no. 4 and 86, nos. 2 and 3, the special issues on internationalization andtransnationalism.
5
See George M. Fredrickson’s “Comparative History,” in The Past before Us: Contemporary Historical Writing in the United States, ed. Michael Kammen (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 1980), 457–59; and “From Exceptionalism to Variability: Recent Developments in Cross-National Comparative History,” Journal of American History 82, no. 2 (September 1995): 587–604.
6
C. Vann Woodward, ed., The Comparative Approach to American History (New York:
Basic Books, 1968); Carl N. Degler, “Comparative History: An Essay Review,” Journal ofSouthern History 34, no. 3 (August 1968): 426, 428–29.
7Raymond Grew, “The Comparative Weakness of American History,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 16, no. 1 (Summer 1985): 93.
8
Fredrickson, “From Exceptionalism,” 604; Jürgen Kocka, “Comparison and Beyond,”
History and Theory 42, no. 1 (February 2003): 42; Micol Seigel, “Beyond Compare: Comparative Method after the Transnational Turn,” Radical History Review, no. 91 (Winter 2005):
65.
9Grew, “Comparative Weakness,” 95; Fredrickson, “Comparative History,” 457.
10
Alette Olin Hill and Boyd H. Hill, Jr. “Marc Bloch and Comparative History,” American
Historical Review 85, no. 4 (October 1980): 828–46; William H. Sewell, Jr. and Sylvia L.
Thrupp, “Comments,” American Historical Review 85, no. 4 (October 1980), 847–53; Theda
Skocpol and Margaret Somers, “The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry,”Comparative Studies in Society and History 22, no. 2 (April 1980): 174–97; Michael Kammen, “The Problem of American Exceptionalism: A Reconsideration,” American Quarterly
45, no. 1 (March 1993): 19; William H. Sewell, Jr., “Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History,” History and Theory 6, no. 2 (1967): 208–18. Jürgen Kocka, one of the important comparative historians today, also describes the meaning of comparison in history as
discussing “two or more historical phenomena systematically with respect to their similarities
and differences in order to reach certain intellectual aims.” See Kocka, “Comparison and
Beyond,” 39.
11
William H. Sewell, Jr., “Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History,” 214–15;
Marc Bloch, “Toward a Comparative History of European Societies,” in Enterprise and Secular Change, ed. Frederic C. Lane and Jelle C. Riemersma (Homewood, Ill.: R. D. Irwin,
1953), 496–98.
12Skocpol and Somers, “Uses of Comparative History,” 174–97.
13
Sewell, “Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History,” 218.
14
Sewell, 218; Grew “Comparative Weakness,” 95.
15
Sewell, 213–15.

44
16

NATSUKI ARUGA

Ibid., 214.
Deborah Cohen and Maura O’Connor, “Introduction: Comparative History, CrossNational History, Transnational History-Definitions,” in Comparison and Cross-National
Perspective, ed. Deborah Cohen and Maura O’Connor (New York: Routledge, 2004), xxii.
http://www.questia.com/reader/printPaginator/1028 (accessed May 15, 2010).
18
Seigel, “Beyond Compare,” 63.
19
Ibid., 78.
20
Tyrrell, “American Exceptionalism,” 1035.
21
Fredrickson, “From Exceptionalism,” 589–91, 594. Here we see Fredrickson use the term
“international” to mean transnational, and “cross-national history” to mean nation-based
comparative history.
22
George Fredrickson, White Supremacy: A Comparative Study of American and South
African History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).
23
Ian Tyrrell, “New Comparisons, International Worlds: Transnational and Comparative
Perspectives,” Australian Feminist Studies 16, no. 36 (2001): 356.
24
Karen Anderson, Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women
during World War II (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981); Michael C. C. Adams, TheBest War Ever: America and World War II, The American Moment (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1994); John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture during World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976); David M. Kennedy,
Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999).
25
For example, Anderson, Wartime Women; Susan M. Hartmann, The Home Front and
Beyond: American Women in the 1940s (Boston: Twayne, 1982); D’Ann Campbell, Women at
War with America: Private Lives in a Patriotic Era (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1984); Sherna Berger Gluck, Rosie the Riveter Revisited: Women, the War, and Social Change(Boston: Twayne, 1987); Leila J. Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War: German and American
Propaganda, 1939–1945 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978); and William H.
Chafe, The Paradox of Change: American Women in the 20th Century (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991).
26“Sources of Labor Supply for the War,” U.S. Department of Labor, Monthly Labor
Review, 57 (August 1943): 212.
27
Elizabeth Magee, “Impact of the War on Child Labor,” Annals of the American Academyof Political and Social Science 236 (November 1944): 103, 101; Monthly Labor Review 59(November 1944): 1034.
28
Natsuki Aruga, “ ‘An’ Finish School’: Child Labor during World War II” Labor History
29, no. 4 (1988): 498–99.
29“Pin Boys for Victory,” American Child 26 (May 1944): 1, 4; American Child 24 (March
1942): 2; New York Times, May 8, 9, 11, August 28 and September 3, 1944.
30
Case file on Mervyn, Berkeley Guidance Study, Institute of Human Development, University of California–Berkeley.
31
Aruga, “ ‘An’ Finish School’,” 498–530; Natsuki Aruga, “The Mobilization of Womenand Child Labor during World War II in the United Sates: Women’s Roles Reconsidered,”
Reports of Saitama University 18 (1982): 1–16; also in Crow Working Papers no. 13 (Center
for Research on Women, Stanford University).
32
Aruga, “Mobilization of Women and Child Labor,” 5.
33
Grew, “Comparative Weakness,” 95; Kocka, “Comparison and Beyond,” 40; Skocpol andSomers, “Uses of Comparative History,” 181–82.
34
Natsuki Aruga, “Patriots or Hard-Working Young Consumers?: Teenage Employment
during World War II in Berkeley, California,” Saitama University Review 36 no. 1 (2000): 45,
17

IS A JAPANESE STANDPOINT USEFUL FOR STUDYING ABOUT AMERICA?

45

originally a paper presented at the 93rd Annual Meeting of the Organization of American
Historians, March 31, 2000.
35
Studs Terkel, “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War Two (New York: Ballantine, 1984), 320.
36
Blum, V Was for Victory, 100.
37
Aruga, “Patriots or Hard-Working Young Consumers?,” 53.
38
Ibid., 50.
39
Natsuki Aruga, “Private Rosies and Public Housewives: The Employment of Women during World War II in Berkeley, California,” in The Public and the Private in the United States,
ed. Hitoshi Abe, Hiroko Sato, and Chieko Kitagawa-Otsuru, International Area Studies Conference 5, JCAS Symposium Series 12 (Suita: Japan Center Studies, National Museum of
Ethnology, 1999), 165–84.
40
Ian Tyrrell, “Comparative and Transnational History,” Australian Feminist Studies 22,
no. 52 (March 2007): 49.