Table Of ContentBeyond the Black and White TV
Beyond the Black
and White TV
•
Asian and Latin American Spectacle
in Cold War America
Benjamin M. Han
Rutgers University Press
New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London
Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.
LCCN 2019050052
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from the British Library.
Copyright © 2020 by Benjamin M. Han
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An earlier version of chapter 2 was published as “Transpacific Talent: The Kim Sisters
in Cold War America,” Pacific Historical Review 87, no. 3 (Summer 2018): 473– 498.
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Contents
Introduction 1
1.
Narratives of Integration: Ethnic Spectacle and
Las Vegas 20
2.
Narratives of Exchange: Asian Performers after
the Korean War 43
3.
Narratives of Partnership: Latin American Entertainers
after the Cuban Revolution 74
4.
Narratives of Coexistence: Pacific Islanders and
the Statehood of Hawai‘i 105
Epilogue 138
Acknowledgments 149
Notes 153
Bibliography 177
Index 191
v
Beyond the Black and White TV
Introduction
On January 11, 1959, Ed Sullivan conducted an exclusive interview
with Fidel Castro shortly after Castro overthrew dictator Fulgen-
cio Batista during the Cuban Revolution. The interview was broad-
cast on Sullivan’s variety show as part of a recurring segment known
as “Sullivan’s Travels,” which documented his visits to many cities
and countries around the world, including Hong Kong, Japan, and
Italy. During the interview, Sullivan asked Castro, “How do you
feel about the United States?” After explaining that he had sym-
pathy for the people of the United States, Castro stated, “It’s a
nation that belongs to the people of every world. [The] United
States is not one race but people who came from every part of the
world.” Castro’s response is a testament to how the United States
has shaped its national image abroad as an exemplary model of
democracy and freedom. More importantly, the interview speaks
of the amicable political relationship between the United States
and Cuba immediately following the Cuban Revolution—b efore
their diplomatic relations would take a drastic turn as a result
of Castro’s growing affiliation with Communism and the Soviet
Union. While the interview was an odd moment for a commercial
TV program mostly known for entertaining American families on
Sunday nights, it captures how the variety show genre made signif-
icant strides as an important contributor to the circulation of geo-
political knowledge in American television during the Cold War.
More significantly, Castro’s response is an affirmation of what
the United States had envisioned at the height of the Cold War: to
construct a national image grounded in the democratic principles
of freedom, capitalism, and more specifically, racial equality. In the
1
United States, the 1950s were marked by racial segregation in the
South that would soon explode into a full-s cale civil rights move-
ment that countries like Cuba and the Soviet Union would use as
a means to denounce the United States.
Hence in the 1960s, “race relations” became an important sub-
ject of polemical debate among Cold War politicians. Despite
the battle for civil rights and liberties on the domestic front, the
growing visibility of race problems in the form of discriminatory
practices in the South was negatively impacting the United States’
image across the globe. The Soviet Union scrutinized and dispar-
aged the United States for its racism. Therefore, the U.S. govern-
ment took measures to change its reputation in its battle against
Communism. The U.S. Department of State began sponsoring
international music tours featuring prominent African American
jazz artists such as Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie.1 On the
surface, these U.S. government– sponsored jazz tours were viewed
as a goodwill gesture of internationalism using popular music; in
reality, they were politically orchestrated attempts to project an
image of the United States as an antiracist nation. As a result,
black musicians who participated in the tours not only acted as
cultural ambassadors who promoted American jazz music but also
spoke personally of how the United States was indeed a demo-
cratic nation of all races in order to deflect international criticism.
In addition to the circulation of jazz music around the world,
there was an influx of popular music from the Asia- Pacific and
Latin America to U.S. television during the Cold War. The diver-
sity of both international and ethnic music on television ranged
from “Oriental” pop to rumba. Oriental pop enjoyed a brief
moment of popularity in the United States with Sakamoto Kyu’s
hit songs “Let’s Walk with Our Heads Up,” “Sukiyaki,” and “China
Nights” in the early 1960s.2 The popularity of such songs resulted
in many recordings of Asian- themed tunes, including “Yoshiko”
and “Yoko-H o- Hama.” Additionally, Hawaiian music enjoyed tre-
mendous popularity in the 1960s and 1970s through the enigmatic
and romantic figures of Alfred Apaka and Don Ho. And a wide
array of Latin American music from the rumba to the cha-c ha was
2 Beyond the Black and White TV
