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Making Our Allied Friends at Home in China: The Chinese War Area Service Corps’ Hostel and Cross-Cultural Programs for American Servicemen, 1941–1945

Sun, June 26, 1:00 to 2:50pm, Shikokan (SK), Floor: 1F, 106

Abstract

This paper examines how the Chinese government managed the presence of more than 60,000 American servicemen in China during World War II. During the war, Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek attempted to demonstrate his commitment to the Sino-American alliance by housing and feeding American servicemen in China free of charge. He assigned the task to Huang Renlin, the American-educated director of the WASC, an agency originally established to provide relief for Chinese soldiers at the front. The WASC built more than 100 hostels for American servicemen in a network that stretched from Xi’an, in China’s northwest, to Longling, a few miles from the Burmese border. Chinese Hostel staff became the key middlemen allowing American servicemen to carry out their wartime mission of fighting alongside the Chinese in order to defeat Japan. WASC hostels fed American servicemen in accordance with U.S. War Department standards, and by February 1945, its operations formed the second-largest item on China’s national budget. My research draws from overlooked sources in Taiwan and the United States as well as newly-available documents in China. I argue that by building a privileged world for American servicemen to inhabit, the WASC allowed the U.S. Army to carry out its mission in China, but its operations became a leading source of Chinese-American friction while also exacerbating domestic problems. WASC hostels became hotbeds of theft, black market activities, and disputes over Chinese sovereignty. Keeping American servicemen comfortable and well-fed also placed onerous burdens on China’s finances and agriculture.

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