Cold War Encounters in US-Occupied Okinawa

This book examines roles of gender, race and nation in the geopolitics of Cold War East Asia on the Island of Okinawa.

In this innovative and engaging examination of the role of gender, race and nation in the geopolitics of Cold War East Asia, Mire Koikari explores the complex relationship between militarism and domesticity, and the involvement of women as agents in American empire building on the island of Okinawa.In this innovative and engaging study, Mire Koikari recasts the US occupation of Okinawa as a startling example of Cold War cultural interaction in which women's grassroots activities involving homes and homemaking played a pivotal role in reshaping the contours of US and Japanese imperialisms. Drawing on insights from studies of gender, Asia, America and postcolonialism, Koikari analyzes how the occupation sparked domestic education movements in Okinawa, mobilizing an assortment of women - home economists, military wives, club women, university students and homemakers - from the US, Okinawa and mainland Japan. These women went on to pursue a series of activities to promote 'modern domesticity' and build 'multicultural friendship' amidst intense militarization on the islands. As these women took their commitment to domesticity and multiculturalism onto the larger terrain of the Pacific, they came to articulate the complex intertwinement of gender, race, domesticity, empire and transnationality that existed during the Cold War.