The Smithsonian at war: Museums in US society during World War II

Abstract

This article describes the Smithsonian Institution’s involvement in World War ii. For a brief (but active) period the Smithsonian assisted the Army, Navy, and other war agencies. Museum staff eagerly shared ideas and information they had spent generations gathering; they were also willing to embrace the war effort as an opportunity to expand collections. While many museum contributions to the war effort were not made public, a book series on natural history and culture published by museum experts came to be known as the War Background Studies. Examining the Smithsonian’s response to ‘total war’, this article argues that the transformations experienced by the museum were largely temporary, with uneven levels of impact; it also explores how numerous significant intellectuals debated the museum’s future role in post-war society.

‘This is a war of science as well as of bullets’.¹

Early in the Second World War, an unusual scene took place in Washington, dc. In the first of several meetings, United States Army and Navy representatives travelled to the nearby Smithsonian Institution. Behind the scenes at the museum, staff members walked alongside government officials, leading them through exhibits to storerooms crammed with artefacts. During the confidential initial meeting, military officers asked to view items originally constructed for seafaring in extreme arctic climates. Museum staff would have gently removed protective coverings from the fragile boats, waiting patiently while government officials examined them in detail, hoping to gather intelligence for modern vessels built for an increasingly mechanized Allied war effort. The boats they unveiled for the Army and Navy were umiaks, originating from Inuit coastal regions across the North American Arctic. Used successfully in extreme climates for centuries, the collective assumption held that these boats might contain ancient secrets that could be combined with modern technologies to be applied to the continuing war effort.²

Examining Inuit boats was only the beginning. During ww ii, museum collections contributed to knowledge construction in an unprecedented manner.³ Museums suddenly found themselves mobilized as agents for making war.⁴ The nation’s largest museum, the Smithsonian Institution, redirected efforts, assisting the Army and Navy by offering answers to hundreds of practical questions about natural history and culture while remaining open to the public.⁵ The Smithsonian’s vast material archive was about to take a temporary wartime turn, distinct in many respects from experiences encountered by other cultural institutions during the same era.⁶

Early in the war, federal agencies realized they faced major problems. Describing Washington immediately before the war, journalist David Brinkley recounted: ‘It was a town and a government entirely unprepared to take on the global responsibilities suddenly thrust upon it.’⁷ Limited knowledge about basic geography related to regions where fighting was certain to take place was disconcerting. Knowledge was sorely lacking on the societies in places now considered strategically important to the war effort.

Responding to the wartime knowledge crisis, staff from war agencies began to visit the Smithsonian with several aims: they borrowed a rare Inuit parka, for example, in order to subject it to heat-loss experiments. Other objects with obvious relevance were studied; recent German radio equipment, poisonous and dangerous fish and snakes, and rare photographs illustrating regional topography. Artefacts less recognizably relevant to modern war also came under scrutiny; medieval helmets, wood samples, and other resources such as lists of meteorological stations around the planet. Put simply, the war agencies suddenly developed a thirst for knowledge to be quenched only by exploring museum collections at the Smithsonian and relying on curators’ unique expertise. In wartime, knowledge previously considered purely academic had suddenly become pragmatic. For the museum, relating knowledge about indigenous societies as well as snakes, insects and geography to war agencies became a civic duty. Included in the rapid transition was the interpretation of detailed measurements and human skeletal remains of Japanese individuals collected by the museum since the nineteenth-century emergence of physical anthropology. Now, these skeletons, as with other ‘specimens’ in the museum, underwent a rapid intellectual metamorphosis, emerging as perceived assets, furthering scientific and pseudoscientific efforts to understand the enemy.⁸ In the wake of ww i, museums had worked to expand their pragmatic efforts to assist the war effort, but not until ww ii did museums in the US experience a complete (albeit temporary) wartime transformation.⁹

Most Smithsonian galleries remained open during the war and both off-duty soldiers and civilians visited the museum. This was not true for all other museums. A pre-war guidebook to San Diego’s Balboa Park proudly declares, ‘The museums function as a miniature Smithsonian Institution for students of anthropology, archaeology, art, and natural history.’¹⁰ But at the start of the war, the US Navy assumed control of Balboa Park and the city’s most popular museums – including the San Diego Museum, Fine Arts Building, and Natural History Museum – were temporarily closed. Collections were packed up and specimens, paintings, and artefacts were temporarily housed in nearby warehouses.¹¹ The museums were thought to occupy a location vulnerable to attack and objects were moved for safekeeping.

When considering ww ii’s global impact on cultural institutions, historians typically – and with good reason – think first of museums in Europe:¹² these faced devastating bombardment and looting, both systematic and random, and continue to this day in their attempts to recover material lost during the war.¹³ Museums take years to rebuild.¹⁴ Despite geographical remoteness from the fighting, the war also affected museums in the US. While the impact proved less devastating, it nevertheless became significant.¹⁵

The war pushed public museums in new directions: secret meetings with military officers took place, publications were amended and museum spaces transformed. Fresh ww i memories, and destruction caused by modern warfare, moved some museum leaders to accept belief in ‘the importance of art and cultural production to the process of democracies’.¹⁶ They gradually began promoting efforts to enhance popular democratic ideals and civic participation through museum-going. Many US cultural institutions reflected a range of powerful influences inherited from the Progressive Movement, both in exhibitions and organizational strategies.¹⁷

Following Pierre Bourdieu and other theorists, it is clear that ideas about art and culture are heavily influenced by the ‘mood of the age’ and ideas ‘in the air’.¹⁸ Other thinkers, including Jurgen Habermas¹⁹ and Hannah Arendt,²⁰ offer relevant frames to better consider the evolving public sphere in the twentieth century. These and other scholars have analyzed the meaning of public spaces and popular opinion for Western societies – arguing that bourgeois tastes were largely organized around models working to reinforce structures in civil society. Influenced by major events and trends in public opinion, institutions such as museums have also been read as central in advancing the ‘public authority’ of the state. This article situates wartime museums against these ideas.

Museums in Washington struggled to find a balance between the dramatically expanding military state and civil enlightenment through popular education.²¹ Bernard Weisberger, a soldier stationed in Washington, recalled in an oral history interview how the Smithsonian and other cultural activities remained open to uniformed servicemen. Although a popular activity for soldiers, other forms of entertainment overshadowed museum-going. Weisberger recalls: ‘It was common to see uniforms everywhere. Probably more soldiers went to the nightclubs than to the museums. [But] you’re dealing with a small segment of about a million guys. You get a pretty good attendance.’²² Soldiers mailed free postcards provided by the museum by the thousands. Both behind the scenes and in the public galleries, the US military was a visible presence at the Smithsonian during ww ii.

Wartime rhetoric encouraged scholars to inform the public about global culture and the natural world. The average American visitor was suddenly thrust into a new geo-political reality and proved more receptive to learning about distant places had become familiar due to recent newspaper headlines. This development may help explain how museums managed to assume a new prominence in post-war US cultural life, corroborated by rising attendance figures. At the same time, new knowledge production had largely shifted away from museums to universities – which benefited enormously from an infusion of federal research dollars during the war. Museums grew only gradually after the war, in both attendance and acquisitions.

The curators at the Smithsonian had long possessed specialized knowledge on subjects ranging from indigenous societies to exotic snakes and fish. Now they opened their vaults, allowing officials from the Army and Navy to view rare artefacts and specimens at first-hand. War agencies also encouraged the publication of a series of informational pamphlets called the War Background Studies.²³ Two individuals at the Smithsonian, the secretary C. G. Abbot and an engineer who became head of a newly created War Committee, Carl W. Mitman, worked especially hard to determine future directions during the war.

The Smithsonian was not the only museum contributing to the war effort. On 21 December 1941, just two weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Association of Art Museum Directors and the American Association of Museums issued a resolution that US museums were ready and willing to help in the war effort. They also promised that museums would stay open and redouble their efforts in educating the public, concluding, ‘they will be the sources of inspiration illuminating the past and vivifying the present . . . they will fortify the spirit on which Victory depends.’²⁴ The Smithsonian’s War Committee was largely forgotten following the war, yet it represents a temporary shift of emphasis in which academic knowledge aimed to serve as an engine for practical knowledge and popular education. Rhetoric surrounding this shift eventually couched the transition in terms of creating healthy democratic or civic societies across the globe. Despite the significance of these developments, museum leaders of the era never critically reflected on the implications of appropriating indigenous artefacts and human remains for making modern global warfare: they simply did not (at least publicly) address the moral implications of transforming the museum into a war-making tool.

Museums and the Great Depression

As the economy crumbled after 1929, museums faced dual crises. Not only were public institutions struggling financially, but academic disciplines like anthropology had started to shift their focus away from material culture studies toward more theoretical, university-based research. Historians typically cast museums as struggling through the Great Depression, slogging through challenging economic times and intellectual shifts in academic disciplines toward ww ii. Indeed, economic collapse and the war frustrated efforts by museums to send collecting expeditions across the globe. Compounding these problems, rapidly growing research universities were luring top curators towards academic posts: Franz Boas, for example, left the American Museum of Natural History to teach at Columbia University.

George W. Stocking Jr, historian of museums and anthropology, argues, ‘by the outbreak of the second World War . . . museum anthropology [was] stranded in an institutional, methodological, and theoretical backwater.’²⁵ Paradoxically, however these same museums were given a lift during the Depression by the implementation of New Deal programmes.²⁶ Specifically, the injection of low-cost labour into museums, notably by the Works Progress Administration (wpa), National Youth Administration (nya), and Civil Works Administration (cwa) assisted in reorganizing museum collections and renovating aging exhibition spaces.²⁷ The New Deal era also witnessed the emergence of the wpa’s Museum Extension Project (mep), creating an untold number of dioramas, works of art and small exhibitions for museums around the country.²⁸ Museum historians, however, have largely missed this reading of the archives – which shows flurries of activity taking place within inward-looking museums. The reorganization and remodelling of major exhibitions made possible by New Deal labour were largely forgotten.

The convergence of New Deal programmes and the needs of museums entering the Depression resulted in a successful union. At the University of California Museum of Anthropology (now the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology), for instance, one year alone witnessed the utilization of five wpa employees and another five teenage nya workers. The labour allowed for collections reorganization, research assistance, and new card catalogues.²⁹ New Deal public works projects injected much-needed labour into museums, but the so-called ‘alphabet agencies’ influence at the Smithsonian was uniquely massive. New Deal agency labourers there grew to such numbers as to require a central office to document their activities and balance sheets: they accounted for 248,196 man-hours of work at the museum.³⁰ The Smithsonian not only employed New Deal workers on-site; they also assisted in expeditions, including series of archaeological excavations in twenty-four states over nine years.³¹

Despite the numerous benefits connected to the New Deal for museums in the US, the continuing global economic struggles coupled with the outbreak of war did present obvious challenges: namely, great reductions in museum budgets for new acquisitions, exhibitions and travel. By December 1941, museums were struggling to redefine their role in society. National museum organizations issued a resolution to indicate support, but although the rhetoric was strong, it was unclear what exactly museums intended to do in order to support the war effort.

The War Committee

Early in 1942, the Smithsonian organized a War Committee in order to fulfill the stated promise to support the war effort, mirroring the many other war-related committees and volunteer organizations that began to appear. These boards possessed uneven power and levels of influence, but similar committees were formed at local level to administer rationing, labour, and conscription. An initial problem with Smithsonian’s war committee was that staff remained unclear about how best to proceed in supporting the Allied effort. Despite uncertainty, however, the committee gradually began the process of trawling the museum for specimens and ideas to aid war agencies – a complex and ill-defined project with aims only coming into focus later in the conflict.

In April 1942, Smithsonian leaders agreed to explore ideas for new exhibitions on war-related subjects. The committee immediately provided facility use, specimens, and funds to create new displays. Perhaps more significantly, collections and curatorial knowledge had already quietly begun being placed at the disposal of the war agencies with the aim of answering specific questions.³²

The museum’s secretary, Charles Greely Abbot, was an astronomer and a leading scholar in the study of the sun. Abbot had made his reputation as a scientist in part due to his work in setting up international field stations around the globe, working to measure solar radiation in a consistent fashion.³³ Arriving at the museum in 1895, he rose to the post of assistant secretary in 1918, and by the outbreak of ww ii Abbot had been secretary for over a dozen years.³⁴ He was therefore deeply familiar with museum operations. Even before US entry to the war, Abbot noted an increase in requests for information related to national defence. Following the events at Pearl Harbor, the museum reported, ‘calls upon the Institution for special information relating to the war increased rapidly’. Abbot quickly appointed the new committee, ‘for the special purpose of exploiting every facility of the Institution in aiding the war effort.’ He added:

Such a highly specialized organization as the Smithsonian obviously can only undertake those things which its staff is trained and equipped to do, but the exploratory investigations of the War Committee revealed a surprisingly wide range of activities in which the Institution could engage that are directly or indirectly of real service in the war efforts.³⁵

The committee appointed by Abbot included a wide array of Smithsonian curators. The chair, Carl W. Mitman, was an engineer and curator who had gained a national reputation as an expert in timekeeping.³⁶ The membership also included William N. Fenton, a young anthropologist and Iroquois expert, and the chief of the Smithsonian’s editorial division, W. P. True.³⁷ For several weeks following its formation, the committee met daily in order to speed up efforts to organize the large museum network. Questionnaires were circulated to museum staff collecting information about expertise and travel experience.³⁸

By May 1942, the Smithsonian committed to publishing the War Background Studies series. The pamphlets were intended to provide war agencies with expert knowledge maintained by Smithsonian curators. Letters soliciting draft manuscripts requested that ‘These papers should include a discussion of the peoples, history, geography, and perhaps something of the natural history of the area concerned.’ The request’s language was notable, in its calling for manuscripts to include background materials outside the realm maintained by anthropologists and scientists at the museum, most concerned with particular disciplines rather than the broad-ranging interdisciplinary overviews sought by the War Committee.³⁹

From knowledge creators to knowledge disseminators

Experts at the Smithsonian quickly turned their attention from creating new knowledge to disseminating expertise to war agencies with a thirst for information. The transition from knowledge production to dissemination was not unfamiliar to those working in museums of this period; emphasis had for some time already been shifting from research to education.⁴⁰ Nevertheless, the manner in which curatorial staff were asked to realign their emphasis in this way proved jarring.

Inventorying available resources began not with specimens, but rather by surveying curators – charting each researcher’s expertise. Following the staff inventory in 1942, the War Committee took its first steps to aid the war effort. A detailed roster was compiled, including nearly 100 scientists who worked in the museum complex, ‘listing their geographic and specialized knowledge’. Following this, the museum began a log registering each request received from war agencies. During the first six months of the war, the museum received 460 requests for information. Half of the inquiries, it was noted, came directly from the War and Navy Departments, with the remainder originating from other agencies. The museum concluded, ‘In short, the Smithsonian is serving as an important source of technical and geographic information.’⁴¹

Though assisting war efforts was a new undertaking, the Smithsonian envisioned its efforts as ‘in line of its normal functions of diffusion of knowledge’.⁴² Existing projects, including their long-running radio programme entitled ‘The World is Yours’, temporarily shifted in emphasis to seemingly more pragmatic and timely subjects.⁴³ Existing exhibition spaces were retrofitted to include special war exhibits and news releases written by the museum. Spaces previously emphasizing the museum’s independent research efforts now served as sites for disseminating war-related information. News releases were temporarily titled ‘War Background Data’.

Despite the clear emphasis toward assisting war agencies, the museum in 1942 noted that only about 10 per cent of its staff was engaged full-time in directly assisting the war effort. Some staff members stayed at the museum, while others moved full-time to war agencies;⁴⁴ by 1943 this number had grown to thirty-three employees.⁴⁵ The Smithsonian made special efforts to articulate how and why its expertise and resources might be used in this way. The annual report for 1943 built on earlier rhetoric justifying museum involvement in the war by stating, ‘the wartime policy of the Institution has been to use all its resources in winning the war, while continuing insofar as possible the recording and publishing of essential scientific observation and such curatorial work as is necessary for the proper care of the National collections.’⁴⁶ Museum leaders used particular language to describe the involvement of the museum in war efforts. Specifically, the museum described ww ii as ‘total war’; hence it was understood that government agencies typically unrelated to warfare were now expected to assist in national defence – a previously unknown form of civic engagement for museums like the Smithsonian. The concept of total war had indeed blanketed the National Mall.⁴⁷

During the war, most information requests from the Army related to culture and history and hence went straight to the anthropologists. Questions on topics ranging from West African witchcraft to Hindu caste markings, native means of sustenance in Asia (for stranded aviators) were posed to the museum. Some questions had more obvious implications for war, while other seemed more indirect in practical significance. The Army requested photographs and linguistic information related to the South Pacific, where the fighting with the Japanese was raging, but it also requested a list of references to authority in the language of the Yaqui people of northern Mexico.⁴⁸

Museum collections and war agencies

Many requests to view anthropology collections revolved around challenging troop deployments to cold climates. Boats, canoes, parkas, travois, snowshoes and objects for working animals were all carefully – if sometimes informally – scrutinized. It is unclear to what extent the military utilized the indigenous techniques of Arctic peoples in designing new cold climate equipment, but it is certain that officials took a keen interest in the Smithsonian’s collections for just such a purpose. The military even requested microscopic samples of a wolverine skin traditionally used by Arctic peoples for warm coats.

Similarly, the museum received requests to view either photographs or actual material culture specimens from the Pacific Rim, especially the Pacific Islands where the US military would ultimately beat back the Japanese island by island, occasionally interacting with indigenous peoples caught in the fighting. Complementing requests made by scientists about biological and other natural history material – including poisonous plants – military officials asked to view several man-made objects from the Pacific Islands. In addition to extensive language information, the Smithsonian provided photographs of Burmese houses, as well as information pertaining to indigenous food in the region for stranded military personnel.⁴⁹

Although it is clear from the archival records that US military officials did, on numerous occasions, visit the Smithsonian in order to view material culture collections, it is unclear how much time they spent examining collections behind the scenes in museum storage. No doubt they also examined material on exhibition, but no records detailing these activities were produced since viewing exhibits in this way would not have required formal requests. Given the nature of their approach, it is clear that some military officials remained strikingly open-minded about how traditional material culture might assist thinking in developing modern solutions for effective fighting. Their interest in the collections provides a unique if uneven connection to the war effort, and a new type of participation in civil society for museums.

Compounding the information provided through behind-the-scenes tours were efforts made by the scholars who laboured away at publications intended for somewhat broader consumption. These authors, mostly based within the Smithsonian, would produce publications with varying impact.

The War Background Studies series

The War Committee’s centerpiece was the War Background Studies series, a collection of twenty-one pamphlets which ranged widely in size and scope. The pamphlets examined subjects perceived to be of utility for war agencies, from ancient histories to more practical guides regarding the flora and fauna to be encountered in specific geographical locations. Most pamphlets were assigned titles indicating a geographic region, but the concerns and expertise offered by the various authors meant that they addressed regions interesting to the war agencies from differing perspectives. Staff at the Smithsonian, including archaeologists, linguists, and botanists, each approached distinct regions with a different methodology and concerns. The pamphlets were intended to fill gaps in popular knowledge about these regions and were therefore written for general audiences rather than experts. Anthropologist and historian David Price has described the series as ‘mostly a mixture of geographical and cultural information with no unifying organization of direct military application.’⁵⁰ Indeed, portions of the series – especially texts focusing on specific cultures or geographical regions – possessed obvious utility while those exploring more philosophical questions might have been less valuable for direct application. Furthermore, internal documents at the Smithsonian generally rate the influence of the series as either widely varied or totally unknown. Although the series helped to contextualize various parts of the globe – including, following an example explored by Price, the Suez Canal – they did little to interpret the military or strategic significance of the various locations or populations.

The first pamphlet, Origin of the Far Eastern Civilizations: A brief handbook was published on 10 June 1942. Authored by Smithsonian anthropologist Carl Whiting Bishop, the text begins by briefly laying out a definition for anthropology as a field. The work then moves into outlining the Far East’s ancient history, including an explanation of racial classification theories more popular earlier in the twentieth century.⁵¹ Although the pamphlet seemingly provides some utility for those attempting to gain a background in Far Eastern cultures, discussions of Bronze Age tools were surely of little actual pragmatic value for war agencies.⁵² Pamphlets published in the War Background Studies can be grouped in three major categories. The first grouping, which included Bishop’s handbook on the Far East, described particular regions, broadly considered under anthropology. The second addressed topics on natural history and geography – including detailed flora and fauna descriptions – more in line with the natural history and science of the era. The third group was more philosophical or theoretical in its aim. These works addressed broad themes such as the existence and origins of the nation state and warfare itself.

Anthropology

Anthropological volumes in the series included Bishop’s pamphlet on the Far East, the physical anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička’s The Peoples of the Soviet Union, and Herbert Krieger’s guide to the people inhabiting the Western Pacific islands. The titles included in the anthropological grouping, were as much about defining and explaining to American audiences the nature of their allies as it was attempting to define those inhabiting enemy-controlled territory. In Krieger’s volume on Micronesia and Melanesia, he explains baldly: ‘Until recently Melanesia was to most Americans an area in which they were decidedly not interested. No active contacts were maintained politically, or by traders or missionaries.’ Krieger notes, however, ‘Recent world developments have aroused our curiosity as to the Melanesian way of living. It is as though a number of new neighbors from a foreign land had moved into our block.’⁵³

Hrdlička opens his pamphlet on Russia by noting that available literature on the Soviet Union was badly out of date, the last Smithsonian publication on Russia having been published in 1919. Since that time, the political, sociological, and military reality had changed significantly. Hrdlička utilized first-hand knowledge based on fieldtrips across Siberia and Mongolia. Additionally, he drew on historical records and information provided to him by the Russian embassy in Washington. Hrdlička had last travelled to the Soviet Union to conduct fieldwork in 1939. His own research explored the potential physical linkages between people in Asia and American Indians. Hrdlička was among the scholars interested in the complex question of how people first arrived in the Americas, and as a physical anthropologist, he was particularly interested in any racial vestiges possibly linking the two groups ancestrally.⁵⁴ His pamphlet was therefore focused predominantly on race and prehistory. In June 1942, after reviewing the draft manuscript, the War Committee specifically noted a section in the conclusion, described as, ‘the author’s prophecy as to Russia’s future’: the committee concluded of the passage, ‘such a prediction seems . . . not only out of place in a Smithsonian publication but also very unwise’.⁵⁵ Instead, knowledge deemed to be of direct utility to war-related activities was to be included in the pamphlet series.

Krieger’s pamphlet on the Western Pacific takes a decidedly different approach to introducing untutored Americans to their ‘new neighbours’. The pamphlet gives attention to the more recent political history in the region and illustrates – through both images and text – typical village houses, canoes, and the large stones used as currency. The task of chronicling such wide ranging cultures in the region is approached through varying sections detailing particularities in language, geography, and culture against other sections describing various cultural patterns potentially experienced by visitors to the region as they move across the islands of the Western Pacific. The pamphlet includes some brief vignettes of the peoples in the region in terms relying heavily on the racial science of the era. Despite this fact, Krieger’s pamphlet is far more concerned with patterns of culture and language than Hrdlička’s writings, more focused on the racial science and prehistory.

Natural history

Included in the pamphlet series were publications intended to teach about the natural world. Perhaps the most striking is Poisonous Reptiles of the World: A wartime handbook. After providing a thorough description of each group of poisonous snakes and reptiles from around the globe, the pamphlet details appropriate first aid treatment in the case of a bite from a poisonous animal.⁵⁶

One pamphlet, The Aleutian Islands: Their people and natural history was written by a small team of authors in both anthropology and natural history. Unlike the others, this volume attempted to be a comprehensive guide to a particular region; notably, it was the final edition in the War Background Studies series, appearing only in February of 1945. The author of the anthropological sections of the pamphlet, Henry B. Collins Jr., was gradually working his way up the ranks with the Bureau of American Ethnology – by then closely affiliated with the Smithsonian. One of his advisers, physical anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička, had encouraged Collins to pursue field studies in Alaska. Collins had initially been interested in archaeology in the American South, but eventually he followed the suggestion of his mentor. With the encouragement of Hrdlička, Collins collected both archaeological materials and skeletal remains, but he also observed the living inhabitants of the Arctic. Collins’s contribution to the pamphlet, therefore, focused on history and culture. The pamphlet was jointly authored by Austin H. Clark, a zoologist who focused on marine biology. Although trained as a marine biologist, Clark came to be known as an expert in sea birds. Included in the pamphlet were sections on the birds of the Aleutian Islands as well as a number of corresponding figures depicting bird life in the region. Completing the pamphlet was a section on the flora of Alaska, written by Egbert H. Walker, who would best be remembered as a botanist studying Japan. The collaboration resulted in a pamphlet amounting to 131 pages, significantly larger than many of the other works in the series. It provided a valuable scientific introduction to the region.⁵⁷

Philosophy and theory

Most pamphlets focused on particular regions, but those compiled by anthropologist and linguist John R. Swanton were more theoretical or philosophical in nature. The series included The Evolution of Nations and Are Wars Inevitable?.⁵⁸ The pamphlets examined the nation state and international conflict as problems from a theoretical perspective. Coloured by the reality of war, the pamphlets approached the subjects from a dark perspective.

The War Background Studies series varied widely in subject-matter and probable utility to government agencies in wartime. Although it is difficult to gauge the series’ reception, including critical and popular reaction to the pamphlets in anthropology, natural history, and philosophy, the actual contribution they made was mostly minimal to moderate. Nevertheless, contributing to the war effort through scientific knowledge was deemed critical by war agencies.

Intellectuals on museums, war, and peace

At the war’s outset, museum educator Theodore Low published a brief article, ‘What is a museum?’. The essay begins by noting museum curator Francis Henry Taylor’s earlier work and argues that museums had not kept pace with a rapidly changing world. Speaking directly of museums in democratic society, Low contrasts the public museum’s outreach mission with government-run media in fascist nations. Although both were essentially propaganda tools, one was based in truth, the other in falsehoods. He writes:

No one can deny that museums have powers which are of the utmost importance in any war of ideologies. They have the power to make people see the truth, the power to make people recognize the importance of the individual as a member of society, and, of equal importance in combating subversive inroads, the power to keep minds happy and healthy. They have, in short, propaganda powers which should be far more effective in their truth and eternal character than those of the Axis which are based on falsehoods and half truths. Museums with their potentiality of reaching millions of our citizens must not fail to recognize their responsibility.⁵⁹

While Low affirms the museum’s wartime role, he argues ‘the value of the museum in wartime must necessarily be limited to the maintenance of morale.’ He continues: ‘It is the army and navy which will win the war. The museum’s task lies in preparation for the peace time to come.’ While Low in many ways anticipated the discourse regarding the museum’s role in democratic society, he underestimated the role it would come to play in the conflict. His separating of the museum and the military was perhaps logical, but activities at the Smithsonian during the war would complicate matters. Rather than a tool for war making, Low suggested the museum in the future would assume an important role in encouraging world peace.⁶⁰ In order to accomplish this goal, Low argues for the continued expansion of education departments within existing museums and an exploration of new outreach methods, including the radio, to expand the profile of museum programming. He argued that museums should find a way to merge goals in scholarship, preservation, and education in order to become a dynamic force within the modern world – oriented around concern for global peace. He concludes by stating that ‘active public museums are an American creation and as such they can play an exceedingly important role in maintaining and strengthening that thing which we like to call “the American Way of Life”.’⁶¹ Many thinkers concurred with Low’s vision. Museums were to contribute to the war effort through popular, morale-boosting exhibitions. Following the war, museum critics and museum professionals alike called for the promotion of democratic and peaceful societies through (at least in part) popular knowledge acquired in museums. Less than a month after America entered the war, a reporter for the Washington Post noted that ‘This importance of things spiritual has been definitely recognized by the heads of our museums.’⁶² The idyllic portrait of museums proposed by many intellectuals of the era contrasts with the manner in which Smithsonian collections, resources, and knowledge were used to actually make war.

Two years after the publication of Low’s article, the American Museum of Natural History (amnh) in New York began its 1944 annual report by stating, ‘The War has stimulated people’s interest in the whole world of nature, including the various peoples inhabiting the earth.’⁶³ The amnh accurately predicted the post-war political climate would bring changes to museums in the United States:

. . . it seems quite clear that the new role our country must play in international affairs will call for an expansion of our anthropological activities into foreign as well as domestic fields. It also seems certain that the return of peace must lead to a revival of our concern with the nature of our own country, since there has been no permanent settlement of the domestic problems and difficulties which beset our nation in its relations to the environment before the war.⁶⁴

Indeed, countless media reports and first-hand accounts about seemingly distant corners of the globe stimulated a popular interest in museums following ww ii. Somewhat echoing war agency sentiments at the conflict’s outset, many individuals in the US were moved to learn about the shifting geo-political landscape as well as the natural environment. Some utilized a visit to the natural history or art museum as escapist relief from the war anxieties, but others embraced it as an opportunity to learn about cultures, environments, and events they were now made curious about. As the war concluded, the Los Angeles County Museum, for example, featured a war-related and a mostly non-war-related photography exhibition running concurrently. The museum marketed the competing exhibitions to those seeking to learn about the war and those who sought relief from wartime anxieties.⁶⁵

Not all museums were as fortunate as the Smithsonian or amnh in benefiting from wartime interest in global culture and the natural world. In San Diego, where displays and collections were temporarily packed up, the production of scientific publications was also slowed or was halted, and museum leaders were concerned that their non-profit institutions would be forced to become more business-oriented when the Navy finally relinquished the buildings and office space that had ben requisitioned. Despite the wartime setbacks, museum leaders in San Diego felt optimistic, as did those in New York and Washington, that post-war tourism dollars would return to help revitalize and modernize exhibitions and programmes.⁶⁶

In 1945, A. E. Parr returned to amnh after a five-year leave of absence. Parr embodied many utopian ideals maintained by museums and public intellectuals during the post-war period. In returning to his post in New York, Parr made observations on the state of the museum. He believed that the end of ww ii was a tipping point in museum history. All scientific and educational institutions, he argued, faced a critical transition. Parr was fearful that his museum would lose the ground gained during the war years. He hoped this momentum might be continued by initiating new programmes following the war. New Deal programmes had allowed collections to be reorganized during the Great Depression and the war; curatorial staff, often eager to build new collections through fieldwork, were forced to turn inward for research, and rising attendance figures had led to increasing budgets and new exhibitions and facilities. Parr argued that the worst thing to befall natural history museums in the post-war years would be to succumb to the temptation to forget everything that had happened during the period of conflict. He wrote: ‘to see as the goal of reconversion only a reversal to an earlier state of happier memory, and to seek mainly the reestablishment of previous contacts with fellow sufferers rather than attempt to reenter the turbulent main stream which left them on its shores for a while. This is the deepest pitfall across the path of the natural history museums today.’⁶⁷

Parr stopped short of claiming that museums could guide the world into permanent peace and harmony – both between differing cultures and between man and nature. His focus was more pragmatic and realistic. Natural history museums, rather, should stick to what they knew best. For Parr, natural history museums knew how to contribute to the scientific understanding of the world and educating the public about this understanding. He wrote: ‘The world will truly be at peace only when the peaceful arts and sciences have fully returned to their rightful place in the thoughts and actions of the people’, and it was the museum that would guide people to these peaceful thoughts.

Two years earlier, when Chicago’s natural history museum was celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, Stanley Field, the museum’s director, had predicted:

our soldiers and sailors who are now having the exciting experience of seeing strange and exotic regions and races will, on their return, retain their world-wide interest . . . thinking people will turn more and more to the natural history museums in their quest for knowledge about races, regions, accustoms . . . Field Museum is a microcosm of the basic realities of this world. Embraced within the scope of the four great natural sciences to which it is devoted – anthropology, botany, geology, and zoology – are the fundamental elements of everything in life, and the causative factors that make people and other living things what they are.⁶⁸

Museum-based intellectuals recognized both the power and the problem in the museum idea. Francis Henry Taylor argued that, ‘If the term “museum” strikes terror to the heart of the average layman, it is nothing compared with the sense of panic which its sound produces in the poor innocents who spend their lives rationalizing its very existence.’⁶⁹ Taylor argued that museum methods had grown tiresome for the average museum visitor. Despite this, he argued, museum audiences continued to grow, and to continue this positive development museums needed to embrace science and liberal arts in a manner enhancing democratic society. Taylor argued: ‘Here then is the final and basic justification for the museum . . . to be the midwife of democracy.’⁷⁰ He concludes, ‘We must look to the study of man himself, and we must recognize that education is no longer the prerogative of an initiated few, but the vital concern of the community at large.’⁷¹

In 1948, The Atlantic published a talk by syndicated newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann presented to the American Association of Museums annual meeting that same year. Lippmann had long been concerned with the relationship between the media and democracy in the United States. In his essay entitled, ‘The Museum of the Future’, Lippmann contrasts the Huntington Library’s serene galleries with the chaotic and newly reopened art museums in Berlin. Lippmann argued that museums had become sanctuaries – at risk in a dangerous world. If only more unique masterpieces existed, the author lamented, more people would have an opportunity to benefit from viewing spectacular objects in person. Lippmann asked whether or not more might benefit from viewing works of fine art if museums were more willing to create and display replicas.⁷² Although Lippmann’s arguments relate more to art than other subjects, his statement on museums (like those of Parr and Low) argues that these could help restore peace in a modern world emerging from the destruction of war. In the 1920s, Lippmann had expressed grief over the attention the public was willing to give to motion pictures while passing by historical masterpieces in museums of art.⁷³ Despite his misgivings about the abilities of the public to fully appreciate art, Lippmann considered museums as important for maintaining the heritage and treasures of culture in the modern world, and this opinion appears to have been solidified by the many tragedies of ww ii.

Conclusion

During ww ii, a lumbering goliath steeped in Victorian traditions moved to action. The Smithsonian Institution embraced the opportunity to become a tool for making war, hoping to emerge as a stronger force in democratic life in the US following the conflict. To a certain degree, the intervention worked to raise the profile of the institution and to place it in a more central role in shaping popular American consciousness of the wider world. Not only did free visits to the Smithsonian make a mark on soldiers stationed in the capitol, but publications stemming from the war still sit on library shelves, some having made important contributions to the meagre available literature on certain regions and peoples. The Smithsonian managed to reshape itself as an institution defined by current affairs as much as by history, culture and natural sciences. Government officials became familiar with museums and their collections as a resource. At the same time, measuring the exact utility of the programmes instituted by the Smithsonian’s War Committee remains difficult and information on how military leaders implemented new knowledge from collections is scant. Measuring government officials’ reactions to the pamphlet series is also a challenge: war agency leaders were not publishing reviews in academic journals for future historians. Further, the Smithsonian’s involvement in the ww ii effort was never fully defined, and neither did it take the opportunity to reflect critically on the appropriation of indigenous artefacts, human remains, or natural history specimens for making war. Rather, the museum simply described its own involvement as ‘a deliberate effort to make its resources of the greatest possible usefulness in the prosecution of the war’.⁷⁴

When the war ended, however, curators and intellectuals – most of them completely unfamiliar with the Smithsonian’s unique and sometimes clandestine engagement in wartime activities – imagined post-war museum survival as dependent on a different kind of public engagement, one more peaceful and community-based, rather than centring on the nation-state oriented needs in making war. Conceiving the conflict as ‘total war’ allowed the Smithsonian to participate in the effort. Whereas many factories and plants that had been retrofitted to produce armaments later remained vital parts of the Cold War military-industrial complex, museums like the Smithsonian largely returned to their previous missions connected to research and exhibition. On the other hand, in the conflict’s wake, museums were pushed toward shaping emergent American ideas about internationalism and universalism – encouraging the public to envision the world as possessing a shared natural environment and a shared global humanity, despite distinct cultural differences. A handful of museum leaders and commentators, like Alfred Parr, wrestled with this tension as they attempted to remake the post-war museum.

In addition to the lasting legacy of reshaping the museum as a centre for the understanding of global affairs through anthropology and natural history, the Smithsonian produced a series of publications that remained viable for decades. Although the museum claimed that the War Background Studies were widely disseminated throughout the federal government and amongst the soldiers who needed them, the series experienced only a marginal degree of popular impact. Despite John F. Embree’s publication of The Japanese in the series, for example, anthropologist Ruth Benedict was nevertheless invited by the US Office of War Information to write a similar volume on the history and culture of Japan published as The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese culture.⁷⁵ One of many social scientists who provided the government with particular insights during the war, Benedict’s book emerged from the war as holding a significant place in the canon of American anthropology.⁷⁶ Embree’s scholarship, on the other hand, was mainly confined to specialists. Based largely on her interviews with Japanese Americans, Benedict began her study in June 1944, well after Embree had published his pamphlet based partially on his ethnographic fieldwork in Japan.⁷⁷ Although Embree’s pamphlet would later be expanded into a book, The Japanese Nation, A social survey, his work would never enjoy the popular and scholarly attention given to Benedict. Certainly, Benedict benefited from the advantages of a strong position in the field of American anthropology, having studied under the eminent scholar Franz Boas at Columbia.⁷⁸ Many pamphlets in the War Background Studies, however, experienced only a modest and short-lived impact.⁷⁹

When museum leaders outside the Smithsonian came to consider the modern museum ‘dilemma’, many failed to acknowledge the full extent to which the nation’s largest museum played a role in making war. Francis Henry Taylor, Theodore Low, A. E. Parr, and Walter Lippmann all failed to recognize the Smithsonian’s contributions to the war effort as a component of the museum’s role in society. Instead, intellectuals came to embrace the vision of the museum as a vehicle for peace as well as environmental and cultural preservation.

Historians frequently consider ww ii as a war of science, though connected most often to physics and engineering. Largely unrecognized is the role of the natural sciences and anthropology in the war effort. Leading the drive in this endeavour was the Smithsonian Institution. The museum’s central location, as well as its extensive collections and staff allowed it to participate in the war in a unique and unprecedented manner. Following the war, as the United Nations grew into a touchstone for international politics, the Smithsonian – like many other major natural history museums around the US – shifted focus to emphasize universalism in world cultures and the natural world. Through wartime news, American citizens had become increasingly aware of the world around them, and the Smithsonian offered an outlet to learn about the mysteries of the Pacific Islands, for example, through both exhibition and publication.

What is clear is that the museum’s vitality as an institution depends heavily on choices made when seeking pragmatic relevance to modern society. Museums have continued to embrace current events as an opportunity to educate the public about foreign societies and the environment. Today, museums respond quickly to current events, disasters, and scientific discoveries as opportunities to educate the public and capture popular interest. In complex ways and with uneven results, ww ii served as a major turning point in this development, pushing museums to become increasingly responsive to a rapidly changing society rather than mere closets for arcane knowledge.

Footnotes

1

Memorandum, Frances D. Bass to W. P. True, 9 April 1943. Box 1, Folder: War Committee Correspondence. Carl W. Mitman Papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives (hereafter cmp, sia).

2

Memorandum, ‘Selected Examples to Illustrate the Nature of Technical Information and Assistance Furnished by the Smithsonian Institution to the Army, Navy, and War Agencies Since Pearl Harbor’, 30 June 1943. Box 1, Folder: War Committee Reports. cmp, sia.

3

A worthwhile, if incomplete, summary of US museums mobilizing for war in the mid-twentieth century can be found in a Library of Congress report from 1952. The publication builds on the experience of museums during the war, pushing for preparedness in the midst of Cold War anxieties. Nelson R. Burr, Safeguarding our Cultural Heritage: A bibliography on the protection of museums, works of art, monuments, archives, and libraries in time of war (Washington, dc, 1952).

4

Following the formulation of political scientist Arthur A. Stein, ‘When a nation goes to war, it must utilize a variety of resources in its struggle. This international national undertaking is generally referred to as mobilization. Here, mobilization is defined as a process by which national elites rapidly gain control of resources for the purpose of waging war.’ Arthur A. Stein, The Nation at War (Baltimore, 1978), p. 11.

5

Historian Jeffrey Trask writes, ‘Debates about the civil role of museums – whether museums should serve primarily as places to preserve the sacred status of fine art and reify cultural capital or as institutions to promote social cohesion through democratic programming and educational outreach – continue to this day.’ Indeed, the Progressive Era ideals confronting museums established in the Gilded Age pushed some institutions to establish agendas of advancing the civic capacity of museum visitors. By ww ii then, museums in the United States were already positioned to expand their respective roles in civil society. Jeffrey Trask, Things American: Art museums and civic culture in the Progressive Era (Philadelphia, 2012), p. 3.

6

A valuable point of comparison and a snapshot for best practices in museum methods and purpose can be found in the National Park Service (nps). Shortly before the US declaration of war, the nps published an important guide for the museum exhibitions and collections under its supervision: Ned J. Burns, Field Manual for Museums (Washington, dc, 1941).

7

David Brinkley, Washington Goes to War (New York, 1988), p. xiv.

8

Examples of artefacts and data requested by government officials have been selected from a comprehensive list written at the end of the war. Memorandum, op. cit. (note 2): Box 1, Folder: War Committee Reports. cmp, sia.

9

For more on museums and ww i see, Harlan I. Smith, ‘The work of museums in war time’, Scientific Monthly 6 no. 4 (1918), pp. 362–78.

10

A Guide to Balboa Park San Diego California, American Guide Series (San Diego, 1941), p. 3.

11

‘San Diegans made many sacrifices during the war years, but one that long-term residents still remember was the temporary loss of much of Balboa Park. In early 1942, the park along El Prado became a restricted zone for use as expanded training and hospital facilities by the Naval Training Station and the nearby Naval Hospital. Their occupation of the central corridor through the park forced museums to dismantle and store most of their collections. The Museum of Man, Natural History Museum and Museum of Art removed more than a million artefacts and works of art for storage in museum basements, private museums outside the city, schools and other ‘undisclosed’ locations. Artefacts too large to travel were enclosed with protective walls. Thousands of hospital beds soon filled former exhibition galleries. During the war years, recovering patients could be found swimming in the Lily Pond, while sailors drilled in formation along the park’s open promenades. Although some areas like the zoo remained open to the public, most of Balboa Park remained off limits until peacetime returned.’ Lucinda Eddy, ‘War comes to San Diego’, Journal of San Diego History 39 nos 1–2 (1993), p. 76.

12

See Lynn H. Nicholas, The Rape of Europa: The fate of Europe’s treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War (New York, 1994). Konstantin Akinsha and Grigorii Kozlov with Sylvia Hochfield, Stolen Treasure: The hunt for the world’s lost masterpieces (London, 1995). An example of the concern expressed about cultural artefacts in the immediate aftermath of war can be found in Alma Wittlin, ‘Museums in war-time’, Contemporary Review 168 (1945), pp. 103–8. See also, Fiske Kimball, ‘Museums abroad since the War’, Philadelphia Museum Bulletin 44 no. 219 (1948), pp. 2–15.

13

In ww ii’s aftermath museum leaders in the United States pointed to the destruction in Europe as rationale for advancing international cooperation between museums and other cultural institutions. In a letter to the editor responding to an essay critical of unesco, San Francisco Museum of Art Director Grace McCann Morley writes, ‘International co-operation seems the World’s best hope for peace just now, and each means such as unesco offers toward that end, seems precious. I am inclined to believe, after seeing the heart of London, war destruction in France and Germany, that we had better all make our international organizations work if we want art, or indeed any civilized life to survive.’ Grace L. McCann Morley, ‘unesco and the future of museums’, Burlington Magazine 89 no. 530 (1947), pp. 136–7.

14

Fiske Kimball, ‘Museums abroad since the war’, Philadelphia Museum Bulletin 44 no 219 (1948), pp. 2–15.

15

See ‘Museums, art galleries here to stay open’, Washington Post, 3 January 1942, p. 19. The Metropolitan Museum in New York stood in contrast, having started taking steps to protect works of art against air raids months before 7 December 1941 and moving some outside of the city altogether. ‘Museums plan to protect art treasures in raids’, New York Times, 10 December 1941, p. 17; ‘Art museum to send treasures to air raid refuge in country’, New York Times, 20 January 1942, p. 21.

16

Trask, op. cit. (note 5), p. 127.

17

Neil Harris, Cultural Excursions: Marketing appetites and cultural tastes in modern America (Chicago, 1990), pp. 76–81.

18

Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on art and literature, ed. Randal Johnson (New York, 1993), pp. 31–2.

19

Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 1–5.

20

Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago, 1958).

21

Casey Nelson Blake argues that the nexus between arts, public life, and democracy in the United States reveals contradictory impulses and unsettled discourses. In the second half of the twentieth century, these debates grew into, ‘an emerging body of scholarship that united art historians, historians of culture, politics, and diplomacy, ethnographers, sociologists, and interpreters of public memory and commemoration, legal theorists, and scholars working in American studies, cultural studies, and cultural policy, and religious studies, among many other fields.’ Despite scholarship debating these issues, little attention has been paid to museums and war. Casey Nelson Blake, The Arts of Democracy: Art, public culture, and the state (Washington, dc, 2007), pp. 2–4. Hannah Arendt, Jurgen Habermas, Robert Putnam and others, according to Blake, ‘influenced a wider consideration of the symbolic environment conductive to civic engagement.’ The present essay is framed within this classic formulation.

22

Bernard Weisberger, ‘Rosie the Riveter / World WariiHome Front Oral History Project’, an oral history conducted by the author 2011, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2011.

23

David H. Price, Threatening Anthropology: McCarythism and thefbi’s surveillance of activist anthropologists (Durham, nc, 2004); David H. Price, Anthropological Intelligence: The deployment and neglect of American anthropology in the Second World War (Durham, nc, 2008).

24

As quoted in Theodore Low, ‘What is a museum?’ reprinted in Reinventing the Museum: Historical and contemporary perspectives on the paradigm shift, ed. Gail Anderson (Lanham, md, 2004), p. 31.

25

George W. Stocking Jr. (ed.), Objects and Others: Essays on museums and material culture (Madison, wi, 1985), p. 8.

26

Outside anthropology, the Metropolitan Museum of Art acknowledged in 1942 that, ‘The museum is indebted to the Works Projects Administration for the substantial contribution of wpa employees to the world of almost all departments.’ Francis H. Taylor, ‘Suspension of the wpa Museum Project’, Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 37 no. 6 (1942), pp. 164–5.

27

In 1936, for instance, the Smithsonian Institution reported that work relief agencies provided 28,572 man-hours combined. Smithsonian Institution, Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, showing the operations, expenditures, and condition of the Institution (Washington, dc, 1936).

28

Archival records indicate the importance of the mep on a national scale: Box 14. Folder: Diorama. Records of the Department of Anthropology/US National Museum/National Museum of Natural History. Series 17: Division of Ethnology Manuscript and Pamphlet File. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.

29

nya and wpa employees were active at the Hearst Museum between 1936 and 1942. For details of the year described in the above paragraph, see ucMuseum of Anthropology Annual Report (1940), pp. 6–7.

30

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution (1940), p. 27.

31

Archaeological Reports, 1934–1942. Box: 86. Folder: Works Progress Administration. Manuscript 844. Records of the Department of Anthropology/US National Museum/National Museum of Natural History, Series 17: Division of Ethnology Manuscript and Pamphlet File. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. For more on New Deal archaeology see Bernard K. Means (ed.), Shovel Ready: Archaeology and Roosevelt’s New Deal for America (Tuscaloosa, 2013).

32

Letter from Carl W. Mitman to C. G. Abbot, 10 April 1942. Papers of Carl W. Mitman. Box 1. Folder: War Committee Correspondence. cmp, sia

33

‘New Smithsonian head’, Science News-Letter 13 no. 353, 14 January 1928, p. 27.

34

‘The work of Dr. C. G. Abbot’, Science new ser. 48 no. 1252, 27 December 1918, p. 641.

35

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution (1942), p. 1.

36

See, for instance, Carl W. Mitman, ‘The story of timekeeping’, Scientific Monthly 22 no. 5 (1926), pp. 424–7.

37

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution (1942), p. 1.

38

Ibid., p. 2.

39

Form letter, C. G. Abbot, 16 May 1942. Box 1. Folder: War Committee Correspondence. cmp, sia

40

For more on this transition, see Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876–1926 (Chicago, 1998).

41

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution (1942), p. 2.

42

Ibid., p. 3.

43

Ibid.

44

Ibid.

45

Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution (1943), p. 1.

46

Ibid., p. 2.

47

The concept of ‘total war’ has been written about at length, with many scholars exploring the deep effects of industrialized war on society. Rarely, however, do any of these treatments of total war explore the real impact of the war on museums and other cultural institutions in the United States. A recent major example of this literature represents the fifth and final volume of a series of conferences on total war hosted by the German Historical Institute in Washington, dc: see A World at Total War: Global conflict and the politics of destruction, 1937–1945, ed. Roger Chickering, Stig Forster and Bernd Greiner (Cambridge, ma, 2005).

48

Memorandum, op. cit. (note 2).

49

Objects and information requested by the US military can be found in a single, large Memorandum, op. cit. (note 2).

50

Price, op. cit. [Anthropological Intelligence] note 23, p. 97.

51

Carl Whiting Bishop, Origin of the Far Eastern Civilizations: A brief handbook. Smithsonian Institution War Background Studies no. 1 (Washington, dc, 1942), p. 1–7.

52

Ibid., pp. 14–19.

53

Herbert W. Krieger, Island People of the Western Pacific, Micronesia and Melanesia, Smithsonian Institution War Background Studies no. 16 (Washington, dc, 1943), p. 5.

54

Juliet Marie Burba. ‘“Whence came the American Indians?”. American Anthropologists and the Origins Question, 1880–1935’, Ph.D. diss, University of Minnesota (2006).

55

Memorandum from W. P. True to C. G. Abbot, 17 June 1942. Box 1. Folder: War Committee Correspondence. cmp, sia.

56

Doris M. Cochran. Poisonous Reptiles of the World: A wartime handbook, Smithsonian Institution War Background Studies no. 10 (Washington, dc, 1943).

57

Henry B. Collins, Jr., Austin H. Clark, and Egbert H. Walker, The Aleutian Islands: Their people and natural history (with keys for the identification of the birds and plants), Smithsonian Institution War Background Studies no. 21 (Washington, dc, 1945).

58

John R. Swanton. The Evolution of Nations, Smithsonian Institution War Background Studies no. 2 (Washington, dc, 1942); John R. Swanton. Are Wars Inevitable? Smithsonian Institution War Background Studies no. 12 (Washington, dc, 1943).

59

Low, op. cit. (note 24), p. 30.

60

Ibid., p. 31.

61

Ibid., p. 42.

62

Ada Rainey, ‘Museums help morale in wartime’, Washington Post, 4 January 1942, p. l7.

63

Annual Report of the American Museum of Natural History (1944), p. 1.

64

Ibid., p. 18.

65

‘Museum exhibits war and its opposites’, Los Angeles Times, 9 January 1944, p. c1.

66

Malcolm F. Farmer, ‘San Diego’s museums: a report on the past, present, and future of the major museums of San Diego, California’, San Diego Museum of Man Scientific Library (1946), pp. 33–44.

67

A. E. Parr, ‘In transition’, Annual Report of the American Museum of Natural History (1945), p. 9.

68

As quoted in Herbert and Marjorie Katz, Museums, USA. A history and guide (Garden City, ny, 1965), p. 130.

69

Francis Henry Taylor, Babel’s Tower: The dilemma of the modern museum (New York, 1945), p. 8.

70

Ibid., p. 52.

71

Ibid., p. 53.

72

Walter Lippmann, ‘The museum of the future’, The Atlantic 184 no. 4 (1948), pp. 70–72.

73

Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York, 1922), pp. 164–5.

74

Memorandum, ‘The Smithsonian Institution’s Part in World War ii’, 15 March 1945. 20. Folder: War Committee Reports. cmp, sia Box 1.

75

John F. Embree. The Japanese, Smithsonian Institution War Background Studies no. 7 (Washington, dc, 1943). At the time of publication, Embree was an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Embree, an American, had conducted fieldwork in Japan in the late 1930s. In the preface to her work, Benedict writes, ‘My thanks are also due to the Office of War Information, which gave me the assignment on which I report in this book,’ Ruth Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese culture (New York, 2005).

76

For additional context on the role of anthropologists (like Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead) and other social scientists during ww ii, see James T. Sparrow, Warfare State: World WariiAmericans and the age of Big Government (Oxford, 2011), p. 67.

77

Benedict cites Embree on several occasions in her book: e.g., Benedict, op. cit. (note 75), p. 83.

78

Benedict was a student and colleague of the eminent anthropologist Franz Boas. Embree, who likewise studied under important anthropologists at the University of Chicago, died in an accident at a fairly young age, cutting short his career, and his influence. For biographical information on Embree, see John Pelzel, ‘John Fee Embree, 1908–1950’, Far Eastern Quarterly 11 no. 2 (1952), pp. 219–25; Fred Eggan, ‘John Fee Embree, 1908–1950’, American Anthropologist new ser. 53 no. 3 (1951), pp. 376–82.

79

As mentioned above, Embree’s War Background Studies pamphlet became a larger book, John F. Embree, The Japanese Nation: A social survey (New York, 1945). John Reed Swanton’s War Background Studies, on the other hand, are not even listed in his bibliography published on the occasion of his death. See Julian H. Steward, John Reed Swanton 1873–1958 (Washington, dc, 1960).