War Brides in Montana

The War Brides Act (Public Law 271), passed by the U.S. Congress in December of 1945, waived nation-of-origin quotas and other stringent provisions of the American Immigration Act of 1924. The act opened the door for thousands of foreign military wives and dependents to immigrate to the United States. Given the political atmosphere in America during the 1940s, this wave of immigration was extraordinary. Nativist and isolationist fears, which had molded American immigration laws from the turn of the 20th century, held sway into the late 1940s—a fact most dramatically illustrated by the refusal of Congress to soften quota restrictions for refugees of Nazi-ravaged Europe.

Despite these restrictive immigration laws, thousands of war brides entered this country between 1945 and 1948. Conservative estimates, based primarily on military transport records, claim that 115,000 women and children, primarily from Britain, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, gained entry under the provisions of the War Brides Act and later the Fiancées Act (passed 1946). These relatively well-documented marriages are only a portion of the likely total. They fail to account for thousands of war brides, including those who did not use military transport, who married servicemen mobilized to countries outside the major fields of battle, or who married postwar occupation-force soldiers. In their 1988 study of World War II war brides, Elfrieda Shurkert and Barbara Scibetta estimate that one million American soldiers were married or affianced between 1942 and 1952—and 750,000 of these soldiers chose to live in the United States following military service. Whatever estimate is used, war brides form a significant, although largely unexplored, immigrant population to the United States.

The experiences of war brides are similar to those of most 20th-century immigrants to the United States. Like their predecessors, the war brides felt the trauma of leaving the familiar to face the unknown. They struggled through the complexities of immigration laws, and fought to balance the practical requirements of assimilation with their personal desires to maintain cultural identity.

Unlike earlier immigrant groups, however, war brides were not viewed as cultural or economic threats. War brides were not, for the most part, drawn to this country to improve their financial situation or to gain political or religious freedoms. War brides did not travel in community or familial units. They did not gather in ethnic enclaves that had previously ignited nativistic rhetoric concerning the so-called “diluting of American race and culture.” In addition, some level of assimilation was assured, as war brides were isolated immigrants, immediately enmeshed in an existing American family structure on which they depended for survival. Further, as women primarily interested in raising families they [Page 670]were not perceived as substantial threats to labor interests that feared competition from immigrant workers.

American citizens did, however, have serious concerns about women who chose to marry foreign soldiers during wartime. Many feared prostitutes or gold diggers would trap well-meaning GIs in order to gain passage to the United States. Others believed cultural differences doomed such marriages to failure, leaving the war brides and their children as wards of the state. These fears were unfounded as most of the war brides came from middle-class families who unsuccessfully attempted to keep their daughters away from the “philandering American soldiers.” Likewise the fear of failed marriages proved untrue, as 80 percent of the women remained married long after their immigration to the United States (see Shurkert and Scibetta). Nonetheless, by 1942 military procedures were in place to safeguard soldiers from ill-informed marriages. These procedures included psychological and medical examinations, extended waiting periods, proof of financial stability from the prospective groom, and written permissions from the soldier's commanding officers.

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