UC Santa Cruz

The United States recruited more than half a million Filipino soldiers and guerrillas in the Philippines during World War II with the promise of American citizenship in return for their wartime service. Even after the official victory of the United States and its allies in 1945, the United States government continued to recruit Filipinos to serve under the American flag for post-war reconstruction and the development of American military bases in the Pacific. But in February 1946, the United States government signed the 1946 Rescission Act, which classified the Filipino veterans’ service as inactive and denied them recognition and rights as American veterans. Paradoxically, despite this denial and non-recognition from the United States on racial grounds, many Filipino veterans who have never stepped on U.S. soil continued to feel like Americans and identified as American veterans, and fervently believe that they deserve the same treatment and rights as their U.S.-born counterparts.

Drawing from in-depth interviews with 83 Filipino World War II veterans in the Philippines and the United States, I analyze how the lack of formal citizenship does not obstruct feelings of belonging towards a nation, especially for a population who has already performed the ultimate duty a nation asks of its citizens: to fight, kill, and die in its name. This dissertation examines the intertwined politics of race, empire, and citizenship, with special attention to the body as a central analytical component. I argue that the formation of citizenship as belonging among the Filipino veterans, while first initiated by the United States through colonization, recruitment, and legislation, was sustained by their bodily experiences as military soldiers under the American flag. By bodily experiences, I am referring to: (1) the interactions between Filipino and American World War II soldiers that built solidarity and conviviality among them, facilitated by their proximity to each other; and (2) the performances and practices of quotidian activities in an American military habitus.

Thus, I propose a theorization of citizenship as embodied that attends to the material contexts of Filipino veterans’ identification and feelings as Americans before or without entry into the host state, and before or without naturalized citizenship. I consider not only the body and its experiences, but also its physical and social location in relation to other bodies. Since racial formation and citizenship formation are not separate processes, citizenship theory must consider how the state produces racialized bodies in its efforts at nation- and empire-building, as well as how racialized populations perceive their bodies as belonging to the state. My theoretical analysis proposes the concepts phantom limb citizenship, embodied community, and differential belonging to augment the standard approach to citizenship as a static category in opposition to non-citizenship.