ABSTRACT
The America for which Dillon Myer and the “forces of goodwill” were fighting was in direct opposition to that of his “enemies.” Many of Myer’s white-collar performances of masculinity rested on other men’s bodies suffering the assaults of war. He represented himself as a warrior who heroically fought to rescue Japanese Americans. Myer promoted a narrative, which placed Japanese Americans into the national story casting them as familiar, approachable, and prosaic. As War Relocation Authority director, Myer enjoyed his first Presidential appointment and entered the exclusive Bourgeois Brotherhood, which included Harry Truman and select other white men who had been born into middle-class families. Most men in Myer’s network came from families who benefitted from the United States’ westward expansion, the ideology of manifest destiny, and a national economy developed by enslaving Africans and seizing Natives’ land. Stoicism and optimism were characteristic of Myer’s leadership style, which his staff observed and, sometimes, found frustrating.
