"Bring the Boys Home" Movement

“BRING THE BOYS HOME” MOVEMENT. The largest-scale rebellion in US military history, the victorious post–World War II “Bring the Boys Home” movement began in the fall of 1945, after the unconditional surrender of Japan. Timing of demobilization of the remaining twelve million men and women in the US armed forces depended on a point system based on length of service, number of dependents, combat duty, and decorations. Most combat veterans believed that newly inducted replacements would occupy the former enemy territories and that they would be sent home rapidly. Instead, they were told that points had stopped accumulating on V-J Day. Many found themselves on cross-country trains to the West Coast, where they were loaded on ships headed for the Pacific theater for occupation duty in friendly liberated nations like the Philippines.

At railroad stations men propped up homemade signs in the train windows: SHANGHAIED FOR THE PACIFIC, while cheering crowds on the platforms held up their own signs: THE WAR IS OVER, BRING ’EM HOME! Reporters attempting to interview the soldiers were arrested and detained by the Army Security Guard. In October General Douglas MacArthur announced that 200,000 men would be required in the Far East. President Harry S. Truman publicly contradicted him by stating that two and a half million men were needed. Congressmen were deluged with protest letters and hundreds of “Bring Back Daddy” clubs sprang up all over the country. Among the leaders of this movement was Emil Mazey, later to be secretary-treasurer of the United Automobile Workers. In the 1960s Mazey would be the first major leader of the United Automobile Workers to come out against the war in Vietnam.

The Bring the Boys Home movement gained momentum and was best organized in Manila, the Philippines, where a friendly population had fought an underground war against the Japanese invaders. On Christmas Day four thousand men marched to protest the cancellation of a troopship sailing. Their commander ordered them back to their barracks and dismissed the demonstration as “a college rally.”

But when, on 4 January 1946, the War Department announced that 300,000 men per month would be going home from the Pacific instead of the previously projected 800,000, spontaneous demonstrations cropped up all over Manila. On 7 January more than 2,500 men distributed leaflets calling for a mass meeting that night. “The State Department wants the army to back up its imperialism,” the leaflet stated, contradicting reports that the swelling tide of protest reflected nothing but homesickness. Twenty thousand men came to the rally. Although the basic demand of the speakers was lower critical point scores, there were many angry denunciations of the US policy and military involvement in northern China, where US troops were aiding Chiang Kai-shek against the Communist supporters of Mao Tse-tung, and in Indonesia, where they were helping in the Dutch attempt to defeat the nationalist forces of Sukarno. The men cheered when speakers informed them that the only purpose for the continued American occupation of the Philippines was to put wealthy landowners who had collaborated with the enemy back in power. Money was collected for a full-page ad in the New York Times and thousands of trade union members stationed in Manila contacted union leaders. The National Maritime Union responded with a nationwide one-day strike, and William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, issued a public statement of support for early demobilization. On 10 January, 158 delegates elected by 139,000 men formulated a program to present to the members of the Senate Subcommittee on Surplus Materials. A nine-soldier delegation told the visiting senators that members of one “railroad battalion are being held in Luzon as potential strikebreakers on a native railroad” and added that many of the soldiers interpreted the special combat training of the Eighty-sixth Infantry Division, which had already fought in Europe, as preparation for the repression of possible uprisings by disgruntled farm tenant groups.

By 8 January, the Bring the Boys Home movement had spread throughout the Pacific—to Luzon, Hawaii, and Guam. In Japan, Secretary of War Patterson was greeted by a demonstration when he visited Yokohama and the provost marshal of the US Army Service Command told the press that the demonstrations were “a near mutiny stirred up by a lot of Communists and hotheads.” That night, President Truman told the American people that demobilization was taking place “as fast as possible” and that there was “a critical need for troops overseas,” while soldiers protested at nearby Andrews Field. By morning the movement had spread to Europe.

Military leaders and government officials could arrive at no consensus on methods of dealing with the Bring the Boys Home movement. They wavered between the carrot of concessions and the stick of punishment, censoring Army newspapers, telling the men their protests were futile, and calling them everything from “Reds” to “sissies.” Technically, participants could have been prosecuted under Article 66, the mutiny provision of the Articles of War, but these men were war heroes in the eyes of the public.

At the end of the second week in January, without reference to the burgeoning movement, the War Department instituted a new point system that would release the men more quickly, and efforts to recruit new forces were stepped up. Previously empty ships soon filled up with troops for the voyage home. On 17 January Eisenhower banned GI demonstrations. In Manila, court-martials were ordered for any soldiers who continued agitation for demobilization. But by then, the aim of the Bring the Boys Home movement had clearly been achieved and could not be reversed without great political cost. Nine months after V-E Day and five months after V-J Day, the US World War II veterans had won a stunning victory and were finally going home.

Garza, Hedda. “The “Bring the Boys Home’ Movement.” American History Illustrated, June 1985.

New York Times, December 1945–January 1946. Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, 8 January 1946.