Triangular Francs: The Eisenhower Administration’s Complicated Franco-American-South Vietnamese System of Foreign Aid to Saigon

This article examines the little-known system of foreign aid that the Eisenhower administration called “triangular trade.” Created to increase development aid without specific Congressional authorization, U.S. officials managed it chaotically and often secretly. This article analyzes U.S. application of this policy in relations with France, focusing on an examination of “triangular francs” whose most important manifestation occurred in South Vietnam. It tries to understand the complicated and often contentious relationships between the three nations with respect to “triangular francs,” illustrating its often neo-colonial aspects. After first presenting the system, the article proceeds to examine each of the three participants’ role in it and reservations about it. In particular, it seeks to show how Saigon’s leaders sought to influence the system to make it more advantageous to them and the impact this had on both Paris and Washington.

An Insider’s Response to Racism: Abe Fortas and the Japanese Question during the Asia-Pacific War, 1941–1945

Abe Fortas (1910–1982) has been best known for service during his legal career as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States for four years from 1965 to 1969. His supporters have characterized his life as a lawyer who supported and defended the American Civil Rights Movement during the tumultuous periods of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States. However, observers of his career have paid little attention to the fact that Fortas was one of the few American bureaucrats who took the stand in defense of those of Japanese ancestry in the official hearings in the 1980sinvestigating the internment of Japanese Americans during World War ii. Fortas, as undersecretary in the Department of the Interior from 1942 to 1946, had a close relationship to key U.S. policies dealing with people of Japanese ancestry during the Asia-Pacific War, including the establishment of martial law in Hawai‘i and the ending of the Japanese internment. Fortas’s responses to and critiques of U.S. policy regarding the Japanese American question reveal the intertwined dynamics of how white racism developed and challenges against it at the governmental level.

Anti-American Expressions: The 1957 Taipei Incident and Chinese in the Philippines, Thailand, and Hong Kong

Although scholars have investigated the intricacies of anti-Americanism, few have examined the factors that affected the abilities of minorities or colonized people to protest U.S. policies. This article compares and contrasts the responses of Chinese in the Philippines, Thailand, and Hong Kong to the May 24th Incident of 1957, when 25,000 Chinese attacked the U.S. embassy and ransacked the U.S. Information Service Office in Taipei, Taiwan, due to the acquittal of a U.S. soldier for killing a Chinese. While U.S. military and economic aid motivated recipients to rally behind the anti-Communist banner, geopolitics, domestic conditions, and anti-Chinese racism also played pivotal roles in determining whether the Chinese could voice or act upon their anti-American sentiment. The Philippines’ heavy dependence on U.S. military and economic aid, coupled with long-lasting anti-Chinese racism, limited the potential for Philippine Chinese to critique U.S. policies. By contrast, tenuous U.S.-Thai relations and domestic anti-Americanism emboldened Thai Chinese to lambaste U.S. military injustice. Although the largest U.S. aid recipient, Britain adhered to neutrality in its Cold War politics and permitted a vibrant cultural industry in Hong Kong, resulting in strong criticism of U.S. policies among the city’s Chinese.

‘The Japanese Stand Today as Teachers of the Whole World’: American Food Reform and the Russo-Japanese War

Japanese food first became the focus of serious attention in the United States during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), when Japan’s victory over the Russian empire signaled that nation’s arrival as a new world power. This newfound interest had nothing to do with gastronomy. The conviction driving it was that diet and preventative health care in the Japanese military, which had been critical to its unexpected success, could serve as models for the United States. Military doctors, home economists, dietitians, businesses, vegetarians, and physical fitness fans joined this discourse, each with their own agendas. Many participants were women whose advocacy linked the supposed innate feminine propensity for nurturing and care giving with a shared faith in science to solve the problems facing the modern world. All believed Japan’s rice, vegetable, and fish-based diet contributed to the exceptional physical strength and stamina of the Japanese people because, unlike their own, “it was plain, rational, and easily digested, metabolized and assimilated.” More enthusiasm than knowledge in their claims, but this mattered little since the goal was not to popularize Japanese culinary culture, but to reform U.S. eating habits. This article examines the American discourse on Japanese food and health and how it shaped and reflected domestic political, social, and economic priorities in the 20th Century’s first decade.