Postwar Readjustment
American Indian veterans encountered varying degrees of success in re-entering civilian life after World War II. Some returned to the reservation, where economic opportunities were bleak. The Navajo viewed their veterans as a positive force, whose service and contact in the war portended progress for the tribe.
Veterans received readjustment checks of $20 a week for 52 weeks while unemployed, and were eligible for G.I. Bill benefits, including free high school and college education, and low-cost mortgages. Veterans moved to cities; the Indian population in urban centers more than doubled (from 24,000 to 56,000) from 1941 to 1950. Some veterans, like Abel in the novel House Made of Dawn, moved to California cities only to experience little success there. More than three thousand Indians each lived in San Francisco and Los Angeles after the war; fewer than five hundred, or a sixth of them, were able to find steady jobs. Tellingly, the median income for urban male Indians was $1,198 a year, in contrast to $3,780 for the white male population.
In California, many of the "Urban Indians" came from the Apache, Hopi and O'odham nations in Arizona and New Mexico; others came from Oklahoma. New York city attracted Iroquois from upstate New York. Tens of thousands of Indians live in major cities including Chicago, Cleveland, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Phoenix and Seattle.
Read more about this topic: Native Americans And World War II
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