A Time of Apprehension - The 1940s

chris N

Gw, Quite true regarding statehood. Alaska would be a state before any of the others and I have doubts regarding whether the Philippines would win congressional approval.
 

bm79

chris N said:
Gw, Quite true regarding statehood. Alaska would be a state before any of the others and I have doubts regarding whether the Philippines would win congressional approval.
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Especially given the world as it is in this TL, I don't see much problem with Phillipine statehood. In OTL, the only reason Peurto Rico isn't a state is that they've never petitioned for it. If US rule under Governor-General Al Smith left enough good feeling behind, then I don't see why the Phillipines wouldn't ask for statehood, especially with the Japanese breathing down their backs.

Same goes for Alaska and Puerto Rico, though, yet they've been left out... Alaska is threatened by the Japanese just as the Phillipines or Hawaii are, and Puerto Rico is threatened by the Germans operating out of the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. In this TL, Guam would also petition for statehood, IMHO. Given their strategic importance and their relative isolation, I'd expect they'd also want the (perhaps illusory) protection that statehood would provide against the growing Japanese menace (unless they were included in the Phillipines state?). American Samoa and the US Virgin Islands probably don't have the population to be considered for statehood, but I see no reason why the US wouldn't have a 53-starred flag in 1950!! Boy, wouldn't that thing be ugly... still prefer the 48-starred flag of WW2 myself. So neat and clean looking...
 
Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

Donor
Everything I read about Alaska and its process of statehood said that the main motivating fact was how important the state had proved to be in the Second World War, together with the experiences of hosting airbases etc. But in this timeline the USA has not even been in a war, except by proxy, and the wars that have been fought have been far from Alaska. Sure, Japanese annexation of Kamchatka might provide a wake-up call that begins to move things onwards towards statehood, but its not there already, whereas reading the history of Hawaii's bid it shows that attempts were made OTL in the 1930s originally, so I can see them pushing and pushing and getting there. As for the Philippines its history in this timeline is divergent; that needs to be remembered, these places don't suddenly come into prominence with OTL occurrences tagged on, but with twenty or so years of differing history from the timeline

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
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