JAPANESE WAR BRIDES IN THE POSTWAR ERA Angela Lynn

288 Pages·2009·3.79 MB·English

by  Angela Tudico

ABSTRACT

Title of Document: “THEY’RE BRINGING HOME JAPANESE
WIVES”: JAPANESE WAR BRIDES IN
THE POSTWAR ERA

Angela Lynn Tudico, Ph.D., 2009

Directed By: Professor Robyn Muncy, Department of History

“’They’re Bringing Home Japanese Wives’: Japanese War Brides in the Postwar Era”
explores the immigration of Japanese war brides to the U.S. following World War II
and why the United States so swiftly and dramatically reversed its views toward
immigration from Japan following the war; the degree to which Americans, both
those of Japanese descent and those of other heritages, accepted this influx of
newcomers; and the lived experiences of these immigrant women during their first
decade in America. Drawing on sources that range from government documents to
interviews with war brides conducted in the 1950s, I argue that postwar constructions
of racialized gender eased the acceptance of these women into American society.
However, sometimes the degree of acceptance was contingent on the race of the war
bride’s husband to such a degree that one might speak of racial or ethnic coverture in
the mid-20th Century U.S.
“THEY’RE BRINGING HOME JAPANESE WIVES”: JAPANESE WAR BRIDES
IN THE POSTWAR ERA

By

Angela Lynn Tudico

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
2009

Advisory Committee:
Professor Robyn Muncy, Chair
Professor Elsa Barkley Brown
Professor David Freund
Professor Clare Lyons
Professor Charles Rutherford
© Copyright by
Angela Lynn Tudico
2009
Acknowledgements

When writer’s block would set in (quite frequently!), I would often stare off
and imagine how I would compose one of the final pieces of my dissertation, the
acknowledgements. The task struck me as daunting—there are so many people I
have to thank and without whom this project would not have happened—so I would
dismiss the thought and get back to the business of writing. But the time has come to
finish this thing off, so here it goes.
I would like to thank the Department of History at the University of Maryland,
College Park for funding the completion of this project. Their support funded a
critical semester of research, as well as a travel to present an excerpt of this project at
a conference in Illinois. I would also like to thank the College of Arts and
Humanities at the University of Maryland for a crucial year-long fellowship that
allowed me to complete the final year of writing without financial worry.
It is not an exaggeration to say this project would never have been possible
without the hard work and unflagging enthusiasm of my advisor, Professor Robyn
Muncy. Professor Muncy’s insights, questions, and ideas have kept me on my toes
and made this project immeasurably better than if I had been left to my own devices.
She has been endlessly generous with her time, support, patience, and willingness to
work with me on this endeavor. I would also like to extend my gratitude to the rest of
the dissertation committee: Professors Elsa Barkley Brown, David Freund, Clare
Lyons, and Charles Rutherford. I am thankful for how generous they have been with
the time they have given this project, as well as their interest in and support of it.
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I have been very lucky to receive the assistance of talented and resourceful
archivists and librarians over the course of my research for this project. Jim
Cartwright and DeeDee Acosta of the Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaii at
Manoa, though located in Hawaii, could not have been more helpful if they were
down the street. Zack Wilske at the United States Citizenship and Immigration
Services History Office and Library provided valuable information on source
materials available for this project and served as an ongoing resource in my efforts to
track down those sources. I would also like to thank George Brisko, Suzanne Harris,
and Jessica Kratz at the National Archives and Records Administration in
Washington, DC for their patience and assistance over the course of my research at
their institution. Finally, Susan Robbins Watson at the Hazel Braugh Records Center
and Archives offered me considerable help both in person and via email.
Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank my family and friends for all
of their humor, love, and support over the many years it has taken me to complete this
project. It is possible, though highly unlikely, that I may have been able to complete
this project without them. What is certain is that I would not have been able to finish
with my sanity in tact. Thanks to Seema Singh for inviting me up to New York
whenever I needed a break, as well as for reading chapter excerpts. I passed many a
necessary happy hour at Mr. Henry’s with Jessica Kratz, Kelly Ryan, Adam Parez,
and Zack Wilske. Kate Keane and I have worked on our dissertations nearly
simultaneously, and I am very grateful for her willingness to work through the
problems of dissertating with me. Her advice and feedback on excerpts of this project
have proved invaluable. I have also particularly harassed Kelly Ryan for much
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advice and answers to so many questions, that it is a wonder she bothers to read my
emails at all anymore. Over the years she has been a fantastic friend, colleague, and
office-mate. Her sense of humor, haikus, and own dissertation have helped me in
countless ways. Finally, my parents, Louis and Emma Tudico, and my brother,
Christopher Tudico, have supported me in whatever I have chosen to do for as long as
I can remember. Their love, patience, generosity, and unfailing belief in me have
sometimes gone without thanks, as I suppose is often the case with family. With that
in mind, I would like to say how especially grateful I am to them. This project is as
much theirs, as it is mine.
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements...................................................................................................ii
Table of Contents......................................................................................................v
Introduction...............................................................................................................1
Chapter 1: What’s Love Got to Do With It?: War Brides Force Changes in
Immigration Law.....................................................................................................28
Chapter 2: “We had to go through such red tape”: Race, Gender, and the Process of
War Bride Immigration............................................................................................73
Chapter 3: The Public Perception of War Bride Immigration.................................115
Chapter 4: War Brides in America: The Meeting of Cultures and Fluidity of Race
..............................................................................................................................167
Chapter 5: War Bride Communities......................................................................215
Conclusion............................................................................................................260
Bibliography..........................................................................................................271

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Introduction
This dissertation analyzes the immigration of Japanese war brides to the U.S.
following World War II. Roughly 45,853 Japanese war brides entered the United
States between the years 1947 and 1964. Along with Filipino (14,435), Chinese
(6,000), and Korean (6,423) war brides, these women constituted the largest ever
wave of female immigration from Asia. More than aggregate numbers though, these
women constituted a dramatic demographic shift in the United States—a 20%
increase n the Asian American population in less than fifteen years.1 This new
immigration becomes even more significant in light of the legal ban on Japanese
immigration to the United States in the prewar era and the federal government’s
internment of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. This
dissertation explores why the United States so swiftly and dramatically reversed its
views toward immigration from Japan; the degree to which Americans, both those of
Japanese descent and those of other heritages, accepted this influx of newcomers; and
the lived experiences of these immigrant women during their first decade in America.
Although the United States has long been the destination of emigrants from
around the world, it has not always welcomed its new arrivals with open arms. And
in the case of some peoples, the U.S. did not welcome them at all. From the mid-
1920s until the years immediately following World War II, the United States
government placed a ban on, for instance, Japanese immigration. In 1947, however,
the federal government amended the 1924 law, allowing for the immigration of

1 Caroline Chung Simpson, “’Out of an obscure place’: Japanese War Brides and Cultural Pluralism in
the 1950s,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 10 (1998): 47-81, 51.
1
Japanese war brides.2 Thus, the policy contrived particularly for these women
represented a dramatic shift in United States policy towards immigration from Japan.
The most shocking part of this story is that the reversal of policy occurred in the
aftermath of America’s total war effort against a virulently racialized Japanese
nation.3 The racist sentiment against Japanese people ran so high that the U.S.
government even relocated many of its own Japanese American citizens to internment
camps. Yet almost immediately after the war, the U.S. policy regulating Japanese
immigration began to shift until it was reversed in 1952 with the passage of the
McCarran-Walter Act. This act amended the 1924 Immigration Act that excluded
Japanese immigration in favor of a quota system that did allow limited Japanese
immigration and “…placed Japan on the same quota system as European countries.”4
The full 1924 Act was not reversed until the Immigration Act of 1965, which
abolished the use of quotas based on nation of origin in immigration decisions.5
What caused this revision in United States immigration policy toward the
Japanese? Was it the pressure exerted by American GIs who wanted to bring their
foreign sweethearts home? Such an explanation, though certainly an important
factor, represented only one piece of the puzzle. Another piece was the belief that a
soldier deserved the wife and family of his choice in return for honorable services
overseas. This idea was associated with the passage of war bride legislation, as it was
invoked time and again in attempts to pass bills facilitating immigration of war brides

2 Ibid.
3 For a comprehensive discussion of American racist sentiment toward the Japanese during World War
II see John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1986).
4 Izumi Hirobe, Japanese Pride, American Prejudice: Modifying the Exclusion Clause of the 1924
Immigration Act (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2001), 241.
5 Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Little,
Brown and Company, 1989), 419.
2
and fiancées, thereby suggesting a connection between the idea and the passage of
legislation. The significance of this legislation lay in its opening new avenues for
immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe as well as Japan. Yet by appealing to
Congress on this basis, government officials discursively turned war brides and
fiancées into the spoils of war—a type of prized awarded for honorable services
rendered. This construction of war brides somewhat recalled the thinking of some
British colonists in the colonial era who saw sexual relations between British men and
American Indian women as an effective way to colonize North America peacefully.6
There, too, conquering men taking conquered women as wives embodied the triumph
of one people over another as it solidified an alliance between them.
If, however, the legislation recalled a history that subordinated women to men
in its international relations, it broke new ground in fully equalizing the positions of
women and men in the American military. Female members of the U.S. Armed
Forces benefited from the law the same way that men did, and these women made use
of the law by bringing their war husbands and fiancés back to the United States. The
history of war spouses after World War II thus represented both continuities and
changes in the relationship between gender and conquest.
In addition to explaining changes in immigration policy, this dissertation
seeks to understand the way war brides experienced the immigration process. Race
proved an important factor in shaping that experience for war brides and fiancées, a

6 See, for example, Richard Goodbeer, “Eroticizing the Middle Ground: Anglo-Indian Sexual
Relations Along the Eighteenth Century Frontier,” in Martha Hodes, ed., Sex, Love, Race: Crossing
Boundaries in North American History (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 94.
Proponents of this method of conquest included William Byrd. Others disagreed with Byrd’s ideology
on this matter. They were concerned about the cultural impact American Indians could have on
colonial society through intermarriage.
3