Abstract

The United States' entry into World War II threw the Italian-American communities into a problematic situation due to the wide support they had given the Italian Fascist regime. Through the case-study of San Francisco's Italian-American community, this article examines some of the war's repercussions. The first part proposes an examination of the relationships between the Italian-American leadership and the Italian consulate during the 1930s based mainly on Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs records. It will be shown how consulate officials, by negotiating the endorsement of the élite of the prominenti and Salesian priests, turned the Italian-American community's organizations into instruments of Fascist propaganda. The article's second part analyzes the changes occurring within the leadership, the organizational structure and the identity of the Italian-American community after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Through the city's Italian press, the emergence of a new second-generation Italian-American leadership will be described, and its use of the medium to bring middle-class associations and values to the core of the community, reaffirming loyalty to the "American dream".