Java string comparison failing

I have a java method that passes in a string and is comparing the value in the string to a direction (i.e "East", "West", "North", "South").  When it finds a match it returns an Directions object (i.e Directions.East, Directions.West, Directions.North, Directions.South).  I am making the call to the method as follows: convertDirection(eElement.getAttribute("startDirection"));

Here is the method:

   private static Directions.Direction convertDirection(String dir)
   {
      System.out.printf("Direction in method: %s Length=%d\n", dir, dir.length());
      if(dir=="East")
      {
         return Directions.East;
      }
      if(dir=="West")
      {
         return Directions.West;
      }
      if(dir=="North")
      {
         return Directions.North;
      }
      if(dir=="South")
      {
         return Directions.South;
      }
      return Directions.North;
   } 

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If the XML attribute contains "West", when I debug the method, dir shows "West" and the string length of dir is 4 so I don't have any extra unseen characters.  However, the if(dir=="West") statement returns false so it doesn't return my West direction and falls through to the end of the method and returns North.  If I hard code the call as follows:
convertDirection("West");

The method works correctly.  I've tried creating a string variable and assigning the results of eElement.getAttribute("startDirection") to the variable and passing that into the method but it still doesn't work.

Any help is greatly appreciated as I have to have this working by tomorrow morning and I am at a complete loss.