From Enemy Combatant to Junior Ally: Examinations of Occupation-Era Nisei GI's and US-Japan Relations

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

This panel is a multi-faceted examination of the US-led Allied Occupation of Japan (1945-52) that will appeal to specialists from a range of disciplines (History, Political Science, Ethnic Studies, etc.), while incorporating a variety of approaches to Asian studies, including oral history, propaganda studies and discourse analysis, and the use of multi-lingual archives. They all shed light on key aspects of the Cold War context, such as the repatriation of Japanese soldiers and civilians from across Asia and the Soviet Union, and provide a more nuanced understanding of conventional markers of the Occupation era like the “reverse course” which indicated a shift in American priorities from democratization and demilitarization to a focus on securing Japan as a bulwark against Communism. The panel’s scope ranges from an analysis of the construction of the image of second-generation Japanese American (Nisei) soldiers as models of liberty and democracy, and their role in interrogating former Japanese POW’s who had been subject to persuasion to join the Japan Communist Party, to recent reminiscences by the Nisei themselves more than half a century later about their interactions with Japanese citizens and other Allied troops in the early post-World War II period. The panel promises to engage audience members with a provocative presentation of innovative interpretive frameworks and heretofore unexamined primary source materials, such as Russian-language documents outlining Soviet policies toward POW’s, and video clips of Nisei veterans in Hawaii recounting their military experiences on the eve of Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009.

Area of Study

• Japan

Session Organizer

• Kristine Dennehy, California State University, Fullerton

Chair

• Lisa Yoneyama, University of Toronto

Individual Presentations

• The US Interrogation of Japanese POW’s from the USSR after World War II - Akina Kobayashi, Hosei University

• The Making of Japanese American War Heroes and the Rearmament of Occupied Japan - Eiichiro Azuma, University of Pennsylvania

• The Military Intelligence Service Japan Occupation Oral History Project: A Preliminary Overview - Kristine Dennehy, California State University, Fullerton

Discussant

• Takashi Fujitani, University of Toronto