Homespun manhood and the war against masculinity: community leisure on the US home front, 1917–19

Between the Civil War and World War I, America saw a return to militarised, heroic, warrior forms of masculinity. When the United States entered the war in 1917, however, the demands for belligerent forms of military manhood subsided, and were replaced by a desire to reattach manhood to the domestic realm. In this article, I examine a set of government programmes designed to manage soldiers' leisure time while they were stationed in training camps across the US. I argue that these home front activities betray an anxiety about sending American soldiers to fight in an overseas war for the first time in national history. The US was a young nation state fighting its first international war against other equally statist nations. In this context, it was no longer strategically useful for military manhood to be severed from the idea of home. Rather, as soldiers would be fighting for long periods in an alien territory, it behoved the military and government to temper traditional configurations of warrior manhood, and focus instead on exposing soldiers to as much home and family as they could safely arrange.     

Ask and Tell: Gay Veterans, Identity, and Oral History on a Civil Rights Frontier

In 1993 the "don't ask, don't tell" policy legislated the silenceof gay and lesbian soldiers on active duty and in the reserves.This silence about gays in the military has led to a collectiveamnesia about the patriotic service and courageous sacrificesof homosexual troops. If we forget that gay and lesbian Americanshave served their country, then we as a nation are much lesslikely to view them as full citizens, deserving of civil rightsand equal protection of the law. Oral history provides one wayto break this silence, to "ask and tell" about the militarycareers of gay and lesbian soldiers and to allow these veteransto speak for themselves about the current military policy. Basedon more than fifty interviews with gay and lesbian veterans,this article chronicles the evolution of military policy regardinghomosexuality since World War II, and it explores the intersectionof veterans' identities based on race, sexuality, and militaryservice. As these interviews illustrate, gays and lesbians haveserved honorably in the military during times of war and peace.Far from undermining unit cohesion or morale, these troops havestrengthened America's armed forces. Interviews with gay andlesbian veterans provide an opportunity to explore several themesunderlying the debate about homosexuality and military service:1) the relationship between racism and homophobia in the military;2) varying attitudes about military service within gay communities;3) contrasting experiences of gay men and lesbians in the military;and 4) the evolving nature of gay veterans' identities.     

关于中国军队中朝鲜族官兵返回朝鲜的历史考察

朝鲜战争爆发前,中国军队中的一大批朝鲜族官兵先后返回朝鲜。这些官兵大都是自近代以来尤其是日本吞并朝鲜以来,从朝鲜半岛迁入中国东北的朝鲜族。特殊的历史环境造就了这些朝鲜族具有双重国籍的特性,也构成了战后朝鲜族部队形成、改编和回国的复杂背景。他们返回朝鲜,看似孤立的历史事件,但它源于自近代以来朝鲜半岛向中国移民的历史,源于中朝两国人民携手反抗日本侵略的武装斗争史,更源于战后初期在特殊历史背景下展开的中国共产党与朝鲜的关系。某种意义上讲,它是这种错综复杂的历史渊源关系发展的必然结果。     

Editorial

Abstract

Artefact distributional data from a pre-World War II Japanese residential complex is interpreted to discuss infantry combat during the invasion of Saipan. Site interpretation is used to interpret the history of World War II operations in the Marianas and to comment on current battlefield archaeology in the Pacific.

Discussion concentrates on military artefacts in relation to structural remains on the site. Architectural remains and pre-battle artefacts are related to combat conditions and used as evidence of pre-combat incendiary bombardment. Combat activities and fire team composition are inferred for the American and Japanese units that participated in this small group action.     

GIs and “Jeep girls”: sex and American soldiers in wartime China

ABSTRACT

This article examines how sex affected the larger politics of the Sino–US alliance during World War II. By early 1945, Chinese from across the social spectrum resented the US military presence, but just one issue sparked a violent backlash: sexual relations between American soldiers (GIs) and Chinese women. Two interrelated, patriarchal narratives about sex emerged that spring. Starting in March, government-backed newspapers began criticizing “Jeep girls,” an epithet coined to describe the Chinese women who consorted with American servicemen. Rumors also circulated that GIs were using Jeeps to kidnap “respectable” women and rape them. Each narrative portrayed women’s bodies as territory to be recovered and inextricable from national sovereignty. These narratives resonated widely, turning Jeep girls into the catalyst through which all variables causing resentment against the US military presence intersected and converged. With Japan on the ropes, China’s allied friends now stood in the way of irreversibly consigning foreign imperialism to the past. Sexual relations were not the Sino–US alliance’s seedy underside, but the core site of its tensions.     

The Natures of War

“Nature” is more than a resource bank whose riches can trigger armed conflict and finance its depredations; it is also a medium through which military and paramilitary violence is conducted. The militarisation of nature is part of a dialectic in which earthy, vibrant matter shapes the contours of conflict and leaves its marks on the bodies of soldiers who are both vectors and victims of military violence. Three case studies identify some of the central bio‐physical formations that became entangled with armed conflict in the twentieth century: the mud of the Western Front in the First World War, the deserts of North Africa in the Second World War, and the rainforests of Vietnam. Taken together, these reveal vital connections between the materiality and corporeality of modern war and their continued relevance to its contemporary transformations.     

Jesus and the Ideal of the Manly Man in New Zealand after World War One

This article investigates attempts to portray Jesus as a “manly Man” for “manly men” in the wake of World War One. The Jesus that emerged as a result of this enterprise was a heroic personality formed through interplay between ideals about soldiers and Christ. Whilst only some military virtues were valued — and only in particular forms — even these proved problematic in certain respects. In particular, attempts to integrate soldierly and moral manliness, especially through resurgent use of notions like chivalry and crusade, failed to connect with soldiers’ actual experiences. Nonetheless, the manly Jesus represented an important religious response to World War One. It illuminated much about New Zealand religion and religious interaction with visions of ideal manhood. In particular, visions of a manly Jesus highlighted that ideals of moral and domestic manhood and more assertive ones coexisted in a state of tension.     

Gettysburg and the Great War

Fifty years after the conclusion of the Civil War, the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania faced the challenge of another war. From 1914 to 1917, the townspeople followed events in Europe closely, becoming vehement supporters of the American entry into the war by April 1917. In 1918, the Gettysburg Battlefield became inundated with American soldiers for the second time in its history, as doughboys trained for overseas service on the site of Pickett’s Charge. This paper considers the way the town of Gettysburg reacted to and mobilized for the First World War. It explores the notion of a ‘forgotten’ American war in a place that is perpetually haunted by war memories.     

War neuroses and Arthur Hurst: a pioneering medical film about the treatment of psychiatric battle casualties

From 1917 to 1918, Major Arthur Hurst filmed shell-shocked patients home from the war in France. Funded by the Medical Research Committee, and using Pathé cameramen, he recorded soldiers who suffered from intractable movement disorders as they underwent treatment at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Netley and undertook programs of occupational therapy at Seale Hayne in Devon. As one of the earliest UK medical films, Hurst's efforts may have drawn inspiration from the official documentary of the Battle of the Somme and films made in 1916 by French Army neurologists. Although initially motivated to make use of a novel medium to illustrate lectures, Hurst was alert to the wider appeal of the motion picture and saw an opportunity to position himself in the postwar medical hierarchy. Some "before treatment" shots were reenacted for the camera. Hurst, like some other shell shock doctors, openly used deception as a therapeutic measure. On the basis that the ends justified the means, they defended this procedure as ethical. Clinicians also took advantage of changes in military regulations to address functional symptoms. Claims made of "cures" in the film and associated publications by Hurst were challenged by other doctors treating shell shock. The absence of follow-up data and evidence from war pension files suggested that Hurst may have overstated the effectiveness of his methods. Nevertheless, the message conveyed in the film that chronic cases could be treated in a single session had a powerful resonance for ambitious or charismatic doctors and was revived in World War II.     

Beyond the Brotherhood: Reassessing US Army Combat Relationships in the Second World War

Abstract

The conventional wisdom that portrays US combat soldiers in World War II as a 'band of brothers' owes much to Hollywood and popular history, and distorts serious understanding of the relationships within combat units of the US Army. This article examines this idea in the context of theories of unit cohesion and combat motivation and suggests a more complex understanding of these issues.     

War in the mental hospitals: sychiatry and clinical files (1940 – 52)

Abstract

Is there a connection between war and madness? How have psychiatrists responded to the problem of those ‘driven mad by war’? This article tries to answer these questions by drawing on clinical records for three Italian psychiatric hospitals in the period from 1940 to 1950. While these problems have been researched and debated for combatants during the World War I, in the case of the World War II, as this article shows, it is necessary to take into account the impact of war not only on soldiers but also on civilians who were equally involved in the trauma of war.     

Icebreakers in Anglo-Russian Relations (1914–21)

Foreign supply to Russia in the First World War is familiar terrain, but although the present paper engages to some degree with the military, diplomatic, and especially economic aspects of the subject, its primary affiliations lie elsewhere. Its principal purpose is to discuss the icebreakers on which it concentrates not only just before but also just after Russia's withdrawal from the First World War, with a view to contrasting the first phase of the ships' history with the second and so highlighting the perennially ambivalent character of the Anglo-Russian relationship. On the way, it touches on questions of geography, English local history, environmental history, the history of technology, and, even, towards the end, Russian literary history.     

Indigènes after Indigènes: post-war France and its North African troops

This article focuses on North African soldiers who served in the French army of occupation in western Germany after its liberation in 1945. Taking as its starting point Rachid Bouchareb's 2006 film, Indigènes, the article contrasts claims the film made about the memorial exclusion of the colonial soldier with his surprising centrality to French accounts of their own military exploits. Using publications issued by the army for its internal readership and archival records of the military occupation's day-to-day activities, the author argues for a modified understanding of the French Republican notion of assimilation that is able to take account of the prolific representation of the North African soldier, and his accommodation, in Cold War Germany.     

A cartographic fade to black: mapping the destruction of urban Japan during World War II

In this paper we examine the history, production, and use – practical and rhetorical – of maps created by the United States government during World War II as related to the development and execution of aerial bombing policies against Japan. Drawing from a range of maps and primary documents culled from libraries and archives in the United States, we argue that maps provide an important, and hitherto neglected, means through which to trace the exploration and eventual embrace of the incendiary bombing of Japan’s cities. In particular, our aim is to show how maps, along with the men who made and used them, played a central role in the planning and prosecution of air raids on urban Japan. We also address the mobilization of American geographers into the war effort, the re-configuration of America’s spatial intelligence community during World War II, and the ways in which maps were constructed in the context of total war.     

On the Battlefront: Canadian Soldiers,an Imperial War,and America's National Pastime

“The moment our men get out of the trenches they begin to play baseball… .” ¹ 1. Coningsby Dawson, Living Bayonets: A Record of the Last Push (New York: John Lane Co., 1919), 129.

—Lieutenant Coningsby Dawson, an officer in the Canadian

Expeditionary Force during the First World War

The Great War is credited by some historians for giving direction to Canadian nationalism. Success on the battlefields provided many citizens with patriotic pride, as well as a sense of brotherhood as Canadian troops fought alongside the British in an imperial struggle. Despite an environment that favoured nationalism and imperialism, Canadian soldiers embraced America's national pastime. For many of the rank and file, baseball was an important part of their war experience. The commanding officers' support for sport, however, was essential to baseball's existence in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces. Despite the enjoyment baseball brought soldiers, a handful of officers in the military's high command were apprehensive about sport's rising status. By 1917, after years of uncertainty about how to incorporate baseball into the soldiers' training regimen, the military could no longer ignore the need and role for sport in military life. Perhaps spurred by American entry into the conflict, the CEF issued a report that officially authorized baseball and like games.     

亚裔美国史学五十年:反思与展望

回顾和检讨亚裔美国史学在过去半个世纪里所走过的道路可以发现,早期亚裔美国史学中一个最突出的问题是以意识形态为主导的一元论历史观。在近30年的时间里,学者大都仅仅从"种族歧视"这一个角度去诠释历史事件,反对从其他视野去观察亚洲移民的经历。不过,最近15年来,这个领域中出现了冲破一元论历史观束缚的趋势。新一代学者提出了白人、黑人和亚裔之间三角形关系的论点,从而否定了"有色对白种"的双重种族关系理论模式。从"跨国主义"的视野观察亚裔美国史的人认为,亚洲移民实际上具有双重的民族主义和双重文化认同,从而向"同化论"、"定居者"论和"美国化"论提出了挑战。他们还发现,日本人向美国移民和日本帝国主义的海外扩张之间有着密不可分的关系。这些新动向标志着亚裔美国史学正在逐步走向成熟。     

Mythologising the Dominion Fighting Man: Australian and Canadian Narratives of the First World War Soldier, 1914–39

A stereotypical image of the nation's First World War soldiers—and a conventional understanding of their war experience and its meaning—is not a concept unique to the British Empire's former Pacific Dominions, but is also promulgated in other parts of the Empire. During the First World War and interwar period, Canada also saw the emergence of a ‘Myth of the Soldier’ that paralleled the Anzac legend in many ways. This article focuses on some of the similarities and differences in Australia and Canada's mythologising of their First World War soldiers, proposing that this process reflects aspects of identity formation common to settler societies within the British world.     

Race-ing Rape: Representations of Sexual Violence in American Combat Films

Abstract

Although portrayals of the rape of Asian women in American combat films are associated with the Vietnam War movie, such scenarios first became an established trope of the combat genre in films made during and about World War II. While pre-Vietnam War films used rape as a narrative device to justify US foreign and military policy, Vietnam combat films later used it as metaphor for US imperialism. Notwithstanding this difference, the combat film’s representation of sexual violence both pre- and post-Vietnam has always thrived on its confirmation of an American hegemony predicated on the subjugation of peoples (and, in particular, women) of colour.