|
|
This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.
Introduction
After more than six decades, the mind still reels at that extraordinary transforming period in American history, albeit from the perspective of a young Italian American teenager. The outbreak of the Second World War was that interval in which the nation metamorphosed from a competing major power to the dominant arbiter of world affairs. It was within the life span of that generation that the United States marshaled together the most destructive engine of war in human history, a display of frightening power that was critical to the defeat of the monster Axis war machine that caused so much havoc and further threatened to harm the world. It was also the ultimate testing period for the nation’s largest immigrant population—I was a product of this group, the Italian Americans—I was one of approximately 6 million Americans of Italian extraction, primarily first and second generation.
To those who question the rationale or necessity of an ethnic viewpoint, I simply aver that it is as legitimate as it is to refer to a John F. Kennedy as emanating from an Irish mold or an Adam C. Powell as speaking from an African American perspective. At particular periods in American history, certain ethnic groups have functioned on the periphery, as it were, wherein their views, feelings, and outlooks were either omitted or largely ignored by mainstream interpretations.