UC San Diego

This project analyzes how "Japanese war brides" who married American GIs as a result of the U.S. occupation of Japan became visible in the political context whereby the United States and Japan established an allied relationship. The marriages between American soldiers and Japanese women became controversial subjects in both the United States and Japan because they crossed the constructed racial line as miscegenation. They also became an ideological symbol of war politics between the victor and the defeated. This postwar period was the first time that American soldiers and Japanese women became so intimate that their marriages became the subject of much discussion and concern in the U.S.-Japan history. This dissertation examines how such controversial marriages between American soldiers and Japanese women became subjects that invigorated American Imperialism at the beginning of Cold War. First, I analyze how the intimacy between American soldiers and Japanese women became visible within the shift of the political relationship between the United States and Japan as they moved from wartime enemy to postwar allies; as well as analyzing representations of intimacy between American soldiers and Japanese women in the early 50's. I situate configuration of American soldier husbands within the U.S. occupation of Japan as liberation and rehabilitation whereby the marriages were understood as loving projects that liberated Japanese "enslaved" wives. Second, this dissertation captures the shifting moments when the United States realized its cultural pluralism whereby it asserted its capability of accommodating people regardless of race and confirmed its democratic principle. I analyze how mixed racial families consisting of American soldier husbands, Japanese wives, and their "mixed blood" children that were impossible subjects of miscegenation became possible subjects as a model family who self-evidently invigorate American cultural pluralism during the Cold War