A state of war: Florida from 1939 to 1945

World War II profoundly impacted Florida. The military geography of the State is essential to an understanding the war. The geostrategic concerns of place and space determined that Florida would become a statewide military base. Florida's attributes of place such as climate and topography determined its use as a military academy hosting over two million soldiers, nearly 15 percent of the GI Army, the largest force the US ever raised. One-in-eight Floridians went into uniform. Equally, Florida's space on the planet made it central for both defensive and offensive strategies. The Second World War was a war of movement, and Florida was a major jump off point for US force projection world-wide, especially of air power. Florida's demography facilitated its use as a base camp for the assembly and engagement of this military power. In 1940, less than two percent of the US population lived in Florida, a quiet, barely populated backwater of the United States. But owing to its critical place and space, over the next few years it became a 65,000 square mile training ground, supply dump, and embarkation site vital to the US war effort. Because of its place astride some of the most important sea lanes in the Atlantic World, Florida was the scene of one of the few Western Hemisphere battles of the war. The militarization of Florida began long before Pearl Harbor. The pre-war buildup conformed to the US strategy of the war. The strategy of theUS was then (and remains today) one of forward defense: harden the frontier, then take the battle to the enemy, rather than fight them in North America. The policy of "Europe First," focused the main US war effort on the defeat of Hitler's Germany, evaluated to be the most dangerous enemy. In Florida were established the military forces requiring the longest time to develop, and most needed to defeat the Axis. Those were a naval aviation force for sea-borne hostilities, a heavy bombing force for reducing enemy industrial states, and an aerial logistics train for overseas supply of expeditionary campaigns. The unique Florida coastline made possible the seaborne invasion training demanded for US victory. The civilian population was employed assembling mass-produced first-generation container ships, while Floridahosted casualties, Prisoners-of-War, and transient personnel moving between the Atlantic and Pacific. By the end of hostilities and the lifting of Unlimited Emergency, officially on December 31, 1946, Floridahad become a transportation nexus. Florida accommodated a return of demobilized soldiers, a migration of displaced persons, and evolved into a modern veterans' colonia. It was instrumental in fashioning the modern US military, while remaining a center of the active National Defense establishment. Those are the themes of this work.

The Council on Foreign Relations and the Grand Area: Case Studies on the Origins of the IMF and the Vietnam War

This article examines the role of corporate elites within the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in establishing the framework for the IMF and the rationale for the Vietnam War. Drawing on the CFR's War-Peace Study Groups, established in World War II as a conduit between corporate elites and the U.S. government, the author first analyzes the role of corporate power networks in grand area planning. He shows that such planning provided a framework for postwar foreign and economic policymaking. He then documents the relationship between corporate grand area planning and the creation of the IMF. The analysis concludes with an examination of the relationship between grand area planning and the Vietnam War.

Quiet Violence- The Deep Structure of Violence in the Graphic Arts of War Propaganda pt.1

Dr. Kenneth Johnson, Associate Professor of Arts and Humanities at Florida International University will speak on the nature of violence in the imagery of World War II propaganda material found at the Wolfsonian FIU Museum Archives. Lecture held on March 20, 2013 at the Green Library, Maidique Campus, Florida International University.

Quiet Violence- The Deep Structure of Violence in the Graphic Arts of War Propaganda pt.2

Dr. Kenneth Johnson, Associate Professor of Arts and Humanities at Florida International University will speak on the nature of violence in the imagery of World War II propaganda material found at the Wolfsonian FIU Museum Archives. Lecture held on March 20, 2013 at the Green Library, Maidique Campus, Florida International University.

A State of War: Florida from 1939 to 1945

World War II profoundly impacted Florida. The military geography of the State is essential to an understanding the war. The geostrategic concerns of place and space determined that Florida would become a statewide military base. Florida’s attributes of place such as climate and topography determined its use as a military academy hosting over two million soldiers, nearly 15 percent of the GI Army, the largest force theUS ever raised. One-in-eight Floridians went into uniform. Equally,Florida’s space on the planet made it central for both defensive and offensive strategies. The Second World War was a war of movement, and Florida was a major jump off point forUSforce projection world-wide, especially of air power. Florida’s demography facilitated its use as a base camp for the assembly and engagement of this military power. In 1940, less than two percent of the US population lived in Florida, a quiet, barely populated backwater of the United States.[1] But owing to its critical place and space, over the next few years it became a 65,000 square mile training ground, supply dump, and embarkation site vital to the US war effort. Because of its place astride some of the most important sea lanes in the Atlantic World,Florida was the scene of one of the few Western Hemisphere battles of the war. The militarization ofFloridabegan long before Pearl Harbor. The pre-war buildup conformed to theUSstrategy of the war. The strategy of theUS was then (and remains today) one of forward defense: harden the frontier, then take the battle to the enemy, rather than fight them inNorth America. The policy of “Europe First,” focused the main US war effort on the defeat of Hitler’sGermany, evaluated to be the most dangerous enemy. In Florida were established the military forces requiring the longest time to develop, and most needed to defeat the Axis. Those were a naval aviation force for sea-borne hostilities, a heavy bombing force for reducing enemy industrial states, and an aerial logistics train for overseas supply of expeditionary campaigns. The unique Florida coastline made possible the seaborne invasion training demanded for USvictory. The civilian population was employed assembling mass-produced first-generation container ships, while Floridahosted casualties, Prisoners-of-War, and transient personnel moving between the Atlantic and Pacific. By the end of hostilities and the lifting of Unlimited Emergency, officially on December 31, 1946, Floridahad become a transportation nexus. Florida accommodated a return of demobilized soldiers, a migration of displaced persons, and evolved into a modern veterans’ colonia. It was instrumental in fashioning the modern US military, while remaining a center of the active National Defense establishment. Those are the themes of this work. [1] US Census of Florida 1940. Table 4 – Race, By Nativity and Sex, For the State. 14.

The Japanese History Textbook Controversy Amid Post-War Sino-Japanese Relations

The relations between China and Japan are strained and continue to foster negative emotions partly because of China’s grievances about Japan’s actions during World War II and the allegedly false historiographical accounts found in Japanese history textbooks. This study will utilize historical analysis of the events leading up to the Nanjing Massacre in December of 1937, examine the Japanese Ministry of Education’s (MEXT) critical and contentious role in the selection of textbooks, used for primary and secondary schools, and will also juxtapose the controversial 2001 Atarashii rekishi kyōkasho with current Japanese history textbooks. The study will also include a syntactical analysis of key terms through my own original translations of multiple Japanese history textbooks, which are currently used in the Japanese school curriculum, to reveal that the textbook publishers, MEXT, and regulation councils are involved in adjusting the content causing the information to reveal various degrees of whitewashing.

Authority and stratification in the Bahamas: The quest for legitimacy

This longitudinal study provides a detailed description of the transition in the Bahamas from British colony to independent country. It analyzes the ongoing process of legitimation and delegitimation of Bahamian political parties and of the transfer of authority from the white minority to the black majority. It is a story of social and political struggles that take place within the quarter century following World War II. These struggles are analyzed within a theoretical framework which focuses on the meaning of symbols used to support claims to authority, and/or which function to delegitimize alternative claims. Specifically, this study looks at the delegitimization of the institutions of colonialism and the concurrent profession of symbols to support both independence and a fully enfranchised democracy in the Bahamas. ^ The research methodology includes an extensive analysis of official British colonial documents, private governmental dispatches, and contemporaneous newspaper articles. The sources were primarily the Public Records Office of Great Britain; the Archives of the Bahamas; and the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the West Indies. Secondary literature on civil rights, political science, religion, Black Nationalism, corruption, social theory, and popular culture was studied. Two hundred days of participant observation, spread over seven years of study, resulted in notes from which information was gleaned. During that time, seventeen open-ended interviews with a cross section of Bahamians (male and female, black and white) who lived through this period were recorded, information from which was also incorporated. ^ A detailed description of the socio-historical process, and an analysis of data, demonstrates how the black majority's desire for political representation, and future independence, pressured Great Britain to come into line with the desires of the majority of Bahamians. The symbolic universe that had historically divided white from black now urged dramatic social and political change. ^ The documents and testimonials studied demonstrate how symbols and symbolic events supported and/or undercut the claims to legitimacy proffered by different groups in the Bahamas in their respective attempts to solidify their social and political position within the society. ^

Essays in open economy macroeconomics

Research macroeconomists have witnessed remarkable methodological developments in mathematical, statistical, and computational tools during the last two decades. The three essays in this dissertation took advantage of these advances to analyze important macroeconomic issues. ^ The first essay, “ Habit Formation, Adjustments Costs, and International Business Cycle Puzzles” analyzes the extent to which incorporating habit formation and adjustment costs in investment in a one-good two-country general equilibrium model would help overcome some of the international business cycle puzzles. Unlike standard results in the literature, the model generates persistent, cyclical adjustment paths in response to shocks. It also yields positive cross-country correlations in consumption, employment, investment, and output. Cross-country correlations in output are higher than the ones in consumption. This is qualitatively consistent with the stylized facts. These results are particularly striking given the predicted negative correlations in investment, employment, and output that are typically found in the literature. ^ The second essay, “Comparison Utility, Endogenous Time Preference, and Economic Growth,” uses World War II as a natural experiment to analyze the degree to which a model where consumers' preferences exhibit comparison-based utility and endogenous discounting is able to improve upon existing models in mimicking the transitional dynamics of an economy after a shock that destroys part of its capital stock. The model outperforms existing ones in replicating the behavior of the saving rate (both on impact and along the transient paths) after this historical event. This result brings additional support to the endogenous rate of time preference being a crucial element in growth models. ^ The last essay, “Monetary Policy under Fear of Floating: Modeling the Dominican Economy,” presents a small scale macroeconomic model for a country (Dominican Republic) characterized by a strong presence of fear of floating (reluctance to have a flexible exchange rate regime) in the conduct of monetary policy. The dynamic responses of this economy to external shocks that are of interest for monetary policy purposes are analyzed under two alternative interest rate policy rules: One being the standard Taylor rule and another that responds explicitly to deviations of the exchange rate with respect to its long-term trend. ^

U.S. Army front line artillery observation during the 1945 Okinawa campaign: An oral history case study

This dissertation explores the role of artillery forward observation teams during the battle of Okinawa (April–June 1945). It addresses a variety of questions associated with this front line artillery support. First, it examines the role of artillery itself in the American victory over the Japanese on Okinawa. Second, it traces the history of the forward observer in the three decades before the end of World War II. Third, it defines the specific role of the forward observation teams during the battle: what they did and how they did it during this three-month duel. Fourth, it deals with the particular problems of the forward observer. These included coordination with the local infantry commander, adjusting to the periodic rotation between the front lines and the artillery battery behind the line of battle, responding to occasional problems with "friendly fire" (American artillery falling on American ground forces), dealing with personnel turnover in the teams (due to death, wounds, and illness), and finally, developing a more informal relationship between officers and enlisted men to accommodate the reality of this recently created combat assignment. Fifth, it explores the experiences of a select group of men who served on (or in proximity to) forward observation teams on Okinawa. Previous scholars and popular historians of the battle have emphasized the role of Marines, infantrymen, and flame-throwing armor. This work offers a different perspective on the battle and it uses new sources as well. A pre-existing archive of interviews with Okinawan campaign forward observer team members conducted in the 1990s forms the core of the oral history component of this research project. The verbal accounts were checked against and supplemented by a review of unit reports obtained from the U.S. National Archives and various secondary sources. The dissertation concludes that an understanding of American artillery observation is critical to a more complete comprehension of the battle of Okinawa. These mid-ranking (and largely middle class) soldiers proved capable of adjusting to the demands of combat conditions. They provide a unique and understudied perspective of the entire battle.

It's not queer to be gay: Miami and the emergence of the gay rights movement, 1945–1995

This work chronicles how queer individuals politicized their same-sex desires from the post-World War II era to the mid-1990s. Using Miami as a site of exploration, this work demonstrates the shift from understanding homosexuality as a same-sex "desire" to a distinct form of "civil rights." It argues that by no means was it inevitable that queer issues entered the American political mainstream. This project pays particular attention to Miami's Cuban exile community, as it managed to garner great socio-political power in the city. Like others in the city's power structure, Miami's Cuban exiles were also fundamentally traditionalists. Together, these phenomena crystallized into a matrix of obstacles that stunted the growth of the gay rights movement. This work demonstrates the historical dynamics of sexuality and politics by contextualizing immigration, ethnicity, race, consumerism, and Cold War domestic and foreign policy.

The discursive construction of Japanese identity and its haunting others

This dissertation examined the formation of Japanese identity politics after World War II. Since World War II, Japan has had to deal with a contradictory image of its national self. On the one hand, as a nation responsible for colonizing fellow Asian countries in the 1930s and 1940s, Japan has struggled with an image/identity as a regional aggressor. On the other hand, having faced the harsh realities of defeat after the war, Japan has seen itself depicted as a victim. By employing the technique of discourse analysis as a way to study identity formation through official foreign policy documents and news media narratives, this study reconceptualized Japanese foreign policy as a set of discursive practices that attempt to produce renewed images of Japan's national self. The dissertation employed case studies to analyze two key sites of Japanese postwar identity formation: (1) the case of Okinawa, an island/territory integral to postwar relations between Japan and the United States and marked by a series of US military rapes of native Okinawan girls; and (2) the case of comfort women in Japan and East Asia, which has led to Japan being blamed for its wartime sexual enslavement of Asian women. These case studies found that it was through coping with the haunting ghost of its wartime past that Japan sought to produce "postwar Japan" as an identity distinct from "wartime imperial Japan" or from "defeated, emasculated Japan" and, thus, hoped to emerge as a "reborn" moral and pacifist nation. The research showed that Japan struggled to invent a new self in a way that mobilized gendered dichotomies and, furthermore, created "others" who were not just spatially located (the United States, Asian neighboring nations) but also temporally marked ("old Japan"). The dissertation concluded that Japanese foreign policy is an ongoing struggle to define the Japanese national self vis-à-vis both spatial and historical "others," and that, consequently, postwar Japan has always been haunted by its past self, no matter how much Japan's foreign policy discourses were trying to make this past self into a distant or forgotten other.

Toward A Better Understanding of the Evolution of Hotel Development: A Discussion of Product-specific Lodging Demand

In his essay - Toward a Better Understanding of the Evolution of Hotel Development: A Discussion of Product-Specific Lodging Demand - by John A. Carnella, Consultant, Laventhol & Horwath, cpas, New York, Carnella initially describes his piece by stating: “The diversified hotel product in the united states lodging market has Resulted in latent room-night demand, or supply-driven demand resulting from the introduction of a lodging product which caters to a specific set of hotel patrons. The subject has become significant as the lodging market has moved toward segmentation with regard to guest room offerings. The author proposes that latent demand is a tangible, measurable phenomenon best understood in light of the history of the guest room product from its infancy to its present state.” The article opens with an ephemeral depiction of hotel development in the United States, both pre’ and post World War II. To put it succinctly, the author wants you to know that the advent of the inter-state highway system changed the complexion of the hotel industry in the U.S. “Two essential ingredients were necessary for the next phase of hotel development in this country. First was the establishment of the magnificently intricate infrastructure which facilitated motor vehicle transportation in and around the then 48 states of the nation,” says Carnella. “The second event…was the introduction of affordable highway travel. Carnella goes on to say that the next – big thing – in hotel evolution was the introduction of affordable air travel. “With the airways filled with potential lodging guests, developers moved next to erect a new genre of hotel, the airport hotel,” Carnella advances his picture. Growth progressed with the arrival of the suburban hotel concept, which wasn’t fueled by developments in transportation, but by changes in people’s living habits, i.e. suburban affiliations as opposed to urban and city population aggregates. The author explores the distinctions between full-service and limited service lodging operations. “The market of interest with consideration to the extended-stay facility is one dominated by corporate office parks,” Carnella proceeds. These evolutional states speak to latent demand, and even further to segmentation of the market. “Latent demand… is a product-generated phenomenon in which the number of potential hotel guests increases as the direct result of the introduction of a new lodging facility,” Carnella brings his unique insight to the table with regard to the specialization process. The demand is already there; just waiting to be tapped. In closing, “…there must be a consideration of the unique attributes of a lodging facility relative to its ability to attract guests to a subject market, just as there must be an examination of the property's ability to draw guests from within the subject market,” Carnella proposes.

Catholic student movements in Latin America: Cuba and Brazil, 1920s to 1960s

This dissertation examines the ideological development of the Catholic University Student (JUC) movements in Cuba and Brazil during the Cold War and their organizational predecessors and intellectual influences in interwar Europe. Transnational Catholicism prioritized the attempt to influence youth and in particular, university students, within the context of Catholic nations within Atlantic civilization in the middle of the twentieth century. This dissertation argues that the Catholic university movements achieved a relatively high level of social and political influence in a number of countries in Latin America and that the experience of the Catholic student activists led them to experience ideological conflict and in some cases, rupture, with the conservative ideology of the Catholic hierarchy. Catholic student movements flourished after World War II in the context of an emerging youth culture. The proliferation of student organizations became part of the ideological battlefield of the Cold War. Catholic university students also played key roles in the Cuban Revolution (1957-1959) and in the attempted political and social reforms in Brazil under President João Goulart (1961-1964). ^ The JUC, under the guidance of the Church hierarchy, attempted to avoid aligning itself with either ideological camp in the Cold War, but rather to chart a Third Way between materialistic capitalism and atheistic socialism. Thousands of students in over 70 nations were intensively trained to think critically about pressing social issues. This paper will to place the Catholic Student movement in Cuba in the larger context of transnational Catholic university movements using archival evidence, newspaper accounts and secondary sources. Despite the hierarchy's attempt to utilize students as a tool of influence, the actual lived experience of students equipped them to think critically about social issues, and helped lay a foundation for the progressive student politics of the late 1960s and the rise of liberation theology in the 1970s. ^

Is the Corporate Elite Fractured, or is there Continuing Corporate Dominance? Two Contrasting Views

This article compares two recent analyses of continuity and change in the American power structure since 1900, with a main focus on the years after World War II. The first analysis asserts that the “corporate elite” has fractured and fragmented in recent decades and no longer has the unity to have a collective impact on public policy. The second analysis claims that corporate leaders remain united, albeit with moderate-conservative and ultra-conservative differences on several issues, and continue to have a dominant collective impact on public policies that involve their major goals. After comparing the two perspectives on key issues from 1900 to 1945, the article analyzes the fractured-elite theory’s three claims about the postwar era: an activist government constrained the corporate elite, the union movement negotiated a capital-labor accord; and bank boards created policy cohesion among corporations. Finally, it compares the two perspectives on tax issues, health-care policies, and trade expansion between 1990 and 2010.

Essays in Open Economy Macroeconomics

Research macroeconomists have witnessed remarkable methodological developments in mathematical, statistical, and computational tools during the last two decades. The three essays in this dissertation took advantage of these advances to analyze important macroeconomic issues. The first essay, “ Habit Formation, Adjustments Costs, and International Business Cycle Puzzles” analyzes the extent to which incorporating habit formation and adjustment costs in investment in a one-good two-country general equilibrium model would help overcome some of the international business cycle puzzles. Unlike standard results in the literature, the model generates persistent, cyclical adjustment paths in response to shocks. It also yields positive cross-country correlations in consumption, employment, investment, and output. Cross-country correlations in output are higher than the ones in consumption. This is qualitatively consistent with the stylized facts. These results are particularly striking given the predicted negative correlations in investment, employment, and output that are typically found in the literature. The second essay, “Comparison Utility, Endogenous Time Preference, and Economic Growth,” uses World War II as a natural experiment to analyze the degree to which a model where consumers' preferences exhibit comparison-based utility and endogenous discounting is able to improve upon existing models in mimicking the transitional dynamics of an economy after a shock that destroys part of its capital stock. The model outperforms existing ones in replicating the behavior of the saving rate (both on impact and along the transient paths) after this historical event. This result brings additional support to the endogenous rate of time preference being a crucial element in growth models. The last essay, “Monetary Policy under Fear of Floating: Modeling the Dominican Economy,” presents a small scale macroeconomic model for a country (Dominican Republic) characterized by a strong presence of fear of floating (reluctance to have a flexible exchange rate regime) in the conduct of monetary policy. The dynamic responses of this economy to external shocks that are of interest for monetary policy purposes are analyzed under two alternative interest rate policy rules: One being the standard Taylor rule and another that responds explicitly to deviations of the exchange rate with respect to its long-term trend.