First Strange Place: The Alchemy of Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii

For close to a million soldiers, sailors and marines on their way to participate in World War II, Hawaii was, as the forward base and staging area for all Pacific operations, their first strange place. What they found there was a complex crucible in which radically diverse elements - social, racial and sexual - were mingled and transmuted in the heat and strain of war. Drawing on a reservoir of documents, diaries, memoirs and interviews with men and women who were there, the authors recreate the dense, lush atmosphere of wartime Hawaii in this text.