Japanese Commemorations of World War II in the Mariana Islands

This chapter examines the creation and contestation of Japanese commemorations of World War II in the Mariana Islands. As an archipelago colonized by Japan and the United States, the Mariana Islands have become a site through which war memories have developed in distinct and shared ways. With respect to Japanese commemorations, the analysis demonstrates why and how they inform and are informed by Chamorro and American remembrances of the war in the Mariana Islands. By analyzing government, media, and tourist accounts of the war from the 1960s to the present, I thus show how we can gain an understanding and appreciation for the complex ways by which Japanese of various generations reckon with a violent past.

The Pacific Ocean as Highway to Gold Mountain

This chapter takes a broad look at the Pacific Ocean in relation to Chinese migration. As trade, consumption and capital flows followed migrants, powerful networks were woven and sustained; in time, the networks fanned across the Pacific from British Columbia along the West Coast of the United States to New Zealand and Australia. The overlapping personal, family, financial and commercial interests of Chinese in California and those in Hong Kong, which provide the focus of this study, energized the connections and kept the Pacific busy and dynamic while shaping the development of regions far beyond its shores. The ocean turned into a highway for Chinese seeking Gold Mountain, marking a new era in the history of South China, California, and the Pacific Ocean itself.

Transatlantic and Transpacific Connections in Early American History

This chapter explores America’s earliest engagement with the transpacific world and in particular with China. From the mid-eighteenth century, Americans seeking new economic opportunities considered Asia and the Pacific region important to their development. Taking advantage of their geographical proximity to both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, Americans developed ways to connect the two regions. These transoceanic networks of trade proved crucial to the economic and political development of the young United States and set the stage for its future influence in the region.

Who Closed the Sea?

There is a profound lack of awareness among younger generations about Japan’s prewar engagement with the Pacific Islands, let alone other colonial sites, yet arguably, this amnesia is not a spontaneous phenomenon. Forgetting about Micronesia and erasing it from the Japanese mass consciousness was a project in which both Japanese and American postwar forces were complicit. Focusing on stories of Japanese amnesia and selective memory in the Marshall Islands, this chapter explores the Marshallese notion of “closing the sea,” how U.S. power has long been a mediating factor in why Japanese forget their Pacific past, and also why Marshall Islanders remember it.

Kilsoo Haan, American Intelligence, and the Anticipated Japanese Invasion of California, 1931–1943

To what extent did U.S. intelligence believe that Imperial Japanese forces would invade the West Coast, an idea that many believe was responsible for the alleged atmosphere of wartime hysteria that led to mass confinement of West Coast Japanese Americans? Based on unused archival materials, this article shows that these agencies dismissed the idea of an impending Japanese invasion, shown by their negative reaction to Korean nationalist Kilsoo Haan’s “Yellow Peril” prediction of a Japanese invasion of California in 1943. It also demonstrates that assumptions about Yellow Peril ideas require more nuanced analysis, for they were not universally accepted or as widespread as often believed. The chapter concludes with observations on Kilsoo Haan, U.S. intelligence, and Japanese American internment.

Transpacific Accommodation and the Defense of Asian Immigrants

Do Asians in the United States face racism today? The answer is “yes” if one considers the persistence of covert discrimination, anti-Asian hate crimes and speech, as well as stereotypes of smart students, exotic beauties, martial arts masters, and technology nerds that manifest in popular media and entertainment. But the answer is more complicated if one considers the repeal of anti-Asian laws, policies, and overt practices of segregation and discrimination that were engrained in the United States and throughout the West and its colonies until the 1960s. This essay examines a time in California when anti-Asian racism was not just popular but seen as righteous and necessary. Kurashige reveals that despite the high degree of racism there exist key political players who opposed it in seeking to bridge the Pacific through racial understanding and cooperation. Why did these white Californians oppose the dominant racial beliefs of the time, and what lessons do their actions have for today?

A Very Long Early Modern?

This chapter summarizes background changes that shaped interactions in the Pacific and Indian Oceans before and during the age of steam; early modern China as an importer of exotic goods and exporter of skillful entrepreneurs; and early European naval competition, exploration, and settlement.

How the Portuguese Became White

The push for inclusion into the United States forced leaders of the Hawaiian “Republic,” and the American populace to face questions regarding the relationship between race, nation, and citizenship. This chapter questions why men such as Sanford Dole and Lorrin Thurston, two leaders of the provisional government of Hawai`i (1893-1894) and Hawaiian Republic (1894-1898), used all means necessary in order to change the racial classification of Portuguese labor in the islands to “white,” during the last years of the nineteenth century. By analyzing their attempt to create a white settler society in Hawai`i through their redefinition and recruitment of Portuguese labor, this chapter examines how evolving politics of race and class shape, and were shaped by, processes of late nineteenth century U.S. colonialism in the Pacific.

Transpacific Adoption

As one of America’s forgotten wars, the Korean War remains in the shadows of American memory. This chapter recounts one of the profound social and cultural outcomes of the war--Korean transnational adoptions. It traces the work of U.S. missionaries that established initial points of contact between average Americans and Korean children-in-need during and after the war, sentimental and material connections that set the stage for transnational adoptions. In the 1950s, missionary appeals to rescue Korean children and mixed-race GI babies incited Americans to push for the legal adoption of children from Korea, pressure that ultimately led both the U.S. and South Korean governments to establish permanent adoption legislation. To date, over 100,000 Korean adoptees have entered the United States. This essay investigates the origins of Korean transnational adoptions and the racial legacies left in its wake on both sides of the Pacific.

Fighting the Postwar in Little Saigon

Studies of Vietnamese Americans have traditionally shared a linear assimilationist framework, whereby “good” refugees have successfully moved beyond the Vietnam War while “bad” refugees continue to engage in reactionary anti-communist protest. My own research into Little Saigon reveals that both types represented contrasting approaches to winning the postwar. Traditional model minority types tried to validate the South Vietnamese as a people worth fighting for while ultra-nationalist bad refugees imagined themselves as a far more capable fighting force than most Americans wish to remember. Like Greg Dvorak’s paper, this one explores the tensions present in social memory and social amnesia, where exhortations for the diasporic Vietnamese refugees to forget the past really meant they should forget their version of the past. Middle-aged veterans of South Vietnam in particular faced the challenge of maintaining an anti-communist refuge in America in the post-Cold War era where they could construct an identity for themselves contrary to the negative images dominant in Vietnam and the United States.