![SPRING 2021
THE FRANCO-AMERICAN
ORPHANAGE
Immigrant Community and the Development of the
Modern Welfare State,1908–1932
by Sophie Combs, University of Massachusetts Lowell '20
Classroom of “orphans” circa 1920. [1]
Written for a Directed Study
Advised by Professor Robert Forrant
Edited by Esther Reichek and Aaron Jenkins
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
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![N 1908, OWNERSHIP of the Frederick
Ayer Mansion in Lowell, Massachusetts
passed from a millionaire investor to a com-
munity of immigrant workers. This change
corresponded to the industrial city at a moment of social
reckoning.At the time that organizers from St.Joseph’s pa-
rish fundraised to buy the property from the Ayer’s estate,li-
ving conditions and wages had degraded to abject lows.This
sprawling fortress—four stories tall, complete with stained
glass,pillars,and67rooms—wasatestamenttothefortunes
amassed in local mills and,subsequently,became a home for
the children of mill workers.In place of an elaborate house,
the French-Canadian church established an orphanage for
the care and education of children with working families.
The Franco-American Orphanage (FAO), first a manor
and then a childcare facility, can be considered emblematic
of the dual versions of Lowell created by industry in the
19th and early 20th centuries.1
Lowell’s orphanage was the result of local acti-
vism and can be understood as a formalized structure of
mutual aid. Financially, the FAO was symbiotic with its
community, both catering to and supported by the im-
migrant population of the city’s Little Canada.Founders
intended that the institution to provide short- and long-
term childcare services for families; in remembrance of
this objective,board members articulated,“In those days,
orphans did not receive any special consideration by the
civil authorities and the burden of education and caring
for those unfortunate children fell on the shoulders of
relatives.”2
By situating the FAO within the legacy of
American mutual aid, this paper asserts an alternative
interpretation of the orphanage in which the institution
1 This paper relies upon archival documents translated by the author from the original French. Additionally,
the character of the orphanage was assessed through several interviews of a former resident by the author. "Cul-
tural Resource Inventory – History of Ayer Home incl. Photos," Box 1 Franco-American Orphanage/School collec-
tion, Center for Lowell History.
2 Most influential in plans for the FAO was Reverend Joseph Campeau, who considered the orphanage his
"dream." For most of the FAO’s early life, board members were active members in St. Joseph’s Parish and/or local busi-
nessmen while the daily activities of the orphanage were run by women. "Fr. Campeau brings Grey Nuns to Orphan-
age," Box 1 Franco-American Orphanage School collection, Center for Lowell History.
3 Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (London: Heinemann, 1902. Reprint, Mineola, New York:
Dover Publications, 2012), 7-8.
4 Donations varied in size and originated entirely from the Greater Lowell area. "Album Historique: Paroisse St.
Joseph Lowell, Mass. 1916," Box 1 Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History.
was the product of grassroots collaboration rather than
philanthropy in the patronizing sense.This reconceptua-
lization of the institution deviates from an individualistic
narrative of progress to one where the contributions of
working families are central.As expressed by the original
theorist of mutual aid, Peter Kropotkin, in 1914:
The leaders of contemporary thought are still inclined to
maintain that the masses had little concern in the evolu-
tion of the sociable institutions of man, and that all the
progress made in this direction was due to the intellectual,
political, and military leaders of the inert masses. […]The
creative, constructive genius of the mass of the people is
required whenever a nation has to live through a difficult
moment in its history.3
Ordinary people were responsible for the exis-
tence of the FAO.Notably,a donation campaign in 1914
to pay the $30,000 mortgage exceeded its goal by nearly
$10,000 and owed its success in large part to the contri-
butions of other immigrant groups.4
In following years,
the orphanage accepted increasing numbers of children
with Irish, Italian, and Syrian backgrounds. The FAO
was at once an institution rooted in its immigrant com-
munity, dedicated to the preservation of French-Cana-
dian heritage, and instilled with an ethos of multicultu-
ralism. As such, the orphanage can serve as a crucial case
study in grassroots organization.
In a broader context, social relief that was built
up from the grassroots had a long-standing effect on the
landscape of American welfare.In line with scholarship
by Matthew Crenson and Peter Fritzsche (1998), this
paper bolsters their claim that “welfare echoed charity
and its child-centered character recalled the institutio-
nal purpose of the orphanage itself,” positing that or-
phanages were the foundation, functionally and ideo-
INTRODUCTION
I
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![logically, for subsequent developments in public relief.5
Jessie Ramey (2012), in the same vein, emphasizes the
agency of working-class people in establishing insti-
tutions thereafter absorbed into governmental struc-
tures. “Families were active participants in the history
of institutional childcare, making decisions and choices
that affected the development of early social welfare,”
Ramey notes.6
It is this process, wherein governmen-
tal structures are based in the charities that precede
them, which creates the decentralized, variable systems
of welfare coined by Alan Wolfe (1977) as a “franchise
state.”7
Michael Katz (1986) adds that “the boundaries
between public and private have always been protean
in America.The definition of public as applied to social
policy and institutions has never been fixed and unam-
biguous.”8
The FAO exemplified this ambiguity; it was
at once a private organization and one that received
funding from the Massachusetts government for acting
on its behalf. Institutions such as the FAO were the
product of mutual aid and later, to varying degrees, ab-
sorbed into the state. Mutual aid and American welfare
5 Matthew Crenson and Peter Fritzsche, Building the Invisible Orphanage: A Prehistory of the American Welfare
System (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 325.
6 Jessie Ramey, Child Care in Black and White: Working Parents and the History of Orphanages (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Illinois Press, 2012), 1.
7 Alan Wolfe, The Limits of Legitimacy: Political Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism (New York: Free Press,
1977). For further reading on decentralized welfare vis-à-vis orphaned children, see: S.J. Kleinberg, Widows and Orphans
First: The Family Economy and Social Welfare Policy, 1880-1939 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006).
8 Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: The Social History of Welfare in America (New York: Basic
Books, 1986), 2.
have in this way a historically porous relationship.
While immigrants created the model for com-
munity assistance in Lowell, top-down governmental
reform aimed to discriminate against immigrants dee-
med unassimilable into white society.In Massachusetts,
policymakers espousing eugenic and nativist beliefs
were instrumental in dismantling generalized institu-
tions of relief and replacing them with specialized insti-
tutions of rehabilitation. Reorganization of the welfare
state relied upon an ideological dichotomy between
“deserving” and “undeserving” paupers, with the lat-
ter subject to new apparatuses of policing. This paper
highlights the interrelation of ideology and structu-
ral implementation as articulated by John Mohr and
Vincent Duquenne (1997), who state:
Most historical accounts of social-welfare institutions
suggest that (1) the institutional logic of relief is com-
posed of two elements—a system of differentiated re-
lief practices (outdoor relief, the poorhouse, etc.) and
a system of symbolic distinctions consisting of various
The Ayer Mansion turned orphanage at an unknown date. The original 1859 house, the extension built in
1913, and the grotto for religious ceremonies are visible. [2]
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![Increasing differentiation and classification of those re-
quiring care, together with the tendency toward centra-
lization under State control of provision for these classes,
and the use of the family home instead of the institution as
a means of providing for dependent,neglected,and certain
classes of delinquent children.12
Classification of welfare recipients for the pur-
pose of separating, specializing in,or denying care was
foundational to Massachusetts reforms throughout
the 19th and 20th centuries. Paupers were divided
into official categories:
The poor are of two classes:first,the impotent poor,in which
dominion are included all who are wholly incapable of
work, through old age, infancy, sickness, or corporeal debi-
lity. Second, the able poor, in which denomination are in-
cluded all who are capable of work, of some nature or other,
but differing in the degrees of their capacity and the kind of
work of which they are capable.13
It was the understanding of this 1821 report that
the“evils”of poverty originated from the“difficulty of dis-
criminating between the able poor and of apportioning
the degree of public provision to the degree of actual im-
potency.”14
In the same vein,an 1866 annual report from
the Massachusetts State Board of Charities asserted that
“it is better to separate and diffuse the dependent classes
than to congregate them,” while providing instructions
for a “system of observation” in which to “collect all the
valuable facts” necessary for classification.15
In Lowell,
politicians regularly made distinctions between the
“worthy poor” and their unworthy counterparts, fretting
for the “idlers” who took advantage of state provisions.
Mayor James B. Casey expressed, “the giving of aid […]
for Vocational Education, 1921).
12 United States Children's Bureau, Child Care and Child Welfare; Outlines for Study, 1921.
13 Massachusetts Legislative Committee, The Josiah Quincy Report of 1821 on the Pauper Laws of Massachu-
setts, Written for the Massachusetts Legislative Committee (Boston: Massachusetts Legislative Committee, 1821).
14 Massachusetts Legislative Committee, The Josiah Quincy Report of 1821 on the Pauper Laws of Massachu-
setts, Written for the Massachusetts Legislative Committee, 1821.
15 Massachusetts Board of State Charities, Second Annual Report, January 1866 (Boston: Massachusetts Board
of State Charities, 1866).
16 Hon. John F. Meehan, Inaugural Address to the Lowell City Council (Lowell: Buckland Publishing Company).
17 DavidWagner, Ordinary People: In and Out of Poverty in the Gilded Age (NewYork: Paradigm Publishers, 2008), 17, 28.
18 Massachusetts State Board of Lunacy and Charity, Twenty-Eighth Annual Report (Boston: Wright and Potter
Printing Co. State Printers, 1906).
19 William H. Slingerland, Child Welfare Work in California: A Study of Agencies and Institutions (New York: Spe-
cial Agent Department of Child-Helping, Russell Sage Foundation, 1916), 195.
20 Robert A. Davis, Mentality of Orphans (Boston: Gorham Press, 1930), 164, 198.
as an injury is not only worked upon the family, but to
the community as well.” The objective of the state board,
Casey emphasized, was to ensure that charity only went
to paupers with no potential of self-sufficiency. Methods
of differentiating care were contingent on the idea that
some paupers were intrinscally unworthy.16
This conception of poverty was the ideological
foundation of the orphanage. A resolution from the
Massachusetts Board of Charities in 1864 warned of
“the unfavorable influences of [adult paupers], which, if
a child be long subjected to them, will always haunt his
memory,” and surmised that reform was only possible
for children. By 1895, Massachusetts had become the
first state to switch to a foster-care system that placed
children into rural families; such a move was justified
by fears for the “contaminating influences”of “licentious
mothers.”17
Reiterated in 1906, the Massachusetts State
Board of Charity and Lunacy pushed for “the separation
of the children at [the] institution from the more or less
contaminating influences of the adult inmates, most of
whom are from the lowest strata of life.” Adults coded
as “immoral” were disproportionately those from immi-
grant and working-class backgrounds.18
Anti-immigrant sentiment was not incidental to
welfare reform, but deeply integral to its design. In expli-
cit language, academic studies linked the “importation of
foreign laborers”to “dependency among adults and child-
ren,”and asserted as fact that “low class laborers,generally
of foreign birth or descent” have “menac[ing]” children.19
A professor from the University of Colorado warned of
both the“army of immigrants”and“army of human energy
among the ranks of the orphan population.” A “clear line
of demarcation,”he suggested,was the only solution to this
problem.20
The psychologist G. Stanley Hall remarked in
1916 that “from the standpoint of eugenic evolution alone
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![considered, [certain immigrant groups] are mostly fit for
extermination in the interests of the progress of the race,”
and was quoted in a study by the Russell Sage Foundation
on orphan children.21
Echoed in governmental reports,of-
ficials expressed that immorality was “inherited,” and as-
sessed that “vice and crime” were “forced upon [orphans]
by those whose blood courses in their veins.” Definitions
of worthy and unworthy paupers, upon which hinged the
creation of entire governmental entities, were steeped in
white supremacist convictions.22
To this point, a committee formed in 1851 entitled
the Massachusetts Board of Commissioners in Relation to
Alien Passengers and State Paupers conflated the threat of
homeless paupers with immigrant residents.The intention
of this organization was to “ascertain the names of all forei-
21 Slingerland, Child Welfare Work in California, 38.
22 Massachusetts Senate, Report of Committee on Public Charitable Institutions on Visits to Several Public Chari-
table Institutions Receiving Patronage of the State, no. 79, (Boston: Massachusetts Senate, 1851).
23 Massachusetts General Court, An Act to Appoint a Board of Commissioners in Relation to Alien Passengers and
State Paupers, May 24, 1851, chap. 347, (Boston: Massachusetts General Court, 1851).
24 Massachusetts General Court, An Act in Relation to Paupers Having No Settlement in This Commonwealth,
May 20, 1852, chap. 275, (Boston: Massachusetts General Court, 1852).
25 New York Board of State Charities, Twenty-first Annual Report of the New York State Board of Charities: Special
Report of the Standing Committee on the Insane in the Matter of the Investigation of the New York City Asylum for the
Insane (New York: New York Board of State Charities, 1887); Massachusetts Commissioner of Mental Diseases, Annu-
al Report of the Massachusetts Commissioner of Mental Diseases for the Year Ending November 20, 1924: Report of
Director of Social Service (Boston: Massachusetts Commissioner of Mental Diseases, 1924).
gners [...] and also procure all such further information in
relation to age,etc.[...] in order to identify them in case they
should hereafter become a public charge.”23
Following suit,
1852 witnessed the criminalization of vagrant paupers and
systemic deportations of the homeless; no less than 7,005
paupers were deported from Massachusetts between 1870
and 1878.24
Adjacent to welfare,the expansion of a diagnos-
tic apparatus saw to the practice of psychiatric evaluations
andthecollectionofpersonaldatainasylumsandprisons—
not dissimilar from processes for pauper classification and
the record-keeping of vagrants.The carceral state was for-
med in tandem with welfare.25
Amid these national trends, Lowell in the early
20th century operated as a self-contained welfare ap-
paratus. In the years leading up to the federalization of
Beds for children in the interior of orphanage, unknown date. [3]
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![welfare in the New Deal, Lowell assumed responsibility
for impoverished children and adults within its boun-
daries. In 1901, for example, the city invested a total of
$46,791.45 in relief, including expenses for ambulances,
food, medicine, surgeons, and coffins.26
The following
year, Lowell allocated $4,605.21 for the support of 98
orphans. Expenditures for dependent children ranged
between $1.25 (per orphan, per week) at St. Peter’s Or-
phan Asylum and $7.00 (per orphan, per week) at the
Children’s Hospital in Boston. Interestingly, Lowell’s
charitable budget made accommodations “on account of
Lowell’s paupers residing [elsewhere],” with payments
totaling $68.28 to Beverly, $482.25 to Lawrence, and
$542.28 to Boston in the year 1902.27
This system of lo-
calized responsibility can be understood as incentivizing
the tracking and policing of paupers, particularly with
programs geared toward behavior modification. In this
way, the framework for Massachusetts’ state welfare sys-
tem predated the “big bang” of Roosevelt’s New Deal
and was initially a localized process.
Contradiction was built into the DNA of Mas-
sachusetts welfare from the beginning.The fundamental
tenets of welfare—in which poverty was both a chari-
table cause and a moral failing to be discouraged—were
locked in existential conflict. As Michael Katz (1984)
has explained in his research on almshouses:
Built into the foundation of the almshouse were irre-
concilable contradictions.The almshouse was to be at once
a refuge for the helpless and a deterrent to the able-bo-
died. It was to care for the poor humanely and to dis-
courage them from applying for relief. In the end, one of
these poles would have to prevail.28
Development of the welfare state was shaped
by conflicting and discriminatory conceptions of care.
Demographic anxiety underpinned moves toward cen-
tralization and classification. Specialized institutions of
rehabilitation replaced generalized institutions of relief
26 Lowell City Council, Auditor's Sixty-Sixth Annual Report of the Receipts and Expenditures of the City of Lowell,
Massachusetts. Together with the Treasurer’s Account and the Account of the Commissioners of Sinking Funds for the
Financial Year Ending December 31, 1901 (Lowell: Buckland Publishing Company, 1901).
27 In turn, Lowell received funding from neighboring municipalities for their claimed paupers. Lowell City
Council, Report of the Secretary of the Overseers of the Poor for Lowell, January 1, 1902 (Lowell: Buckland Publishing
Company, 1902), 24.
28 Michael B. Katz, "Poorhouses and the Origins of the Public Old Age Home," in The Milbank Memorial Fund
Quarterly. Health and Society (Hoboken: Wiley, 1984), 118.
29 David Vermette, A Distinct Alien Race: The Untold Story of Franco-Americans, Industrialization, Immigration,
and Religious Strife (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2018), 98-111.
in order to omit care to low-income, non-native popula-
tions.As a result,immigrants in Lowell relied upon their
own community networks to build systems of assistance.
HE INTERRELATION OF industry and
immigration remains key to understanding
the economic context for French-Cana-
dians in Lowell. As early as the 1840s, mill
recruiters scoured depressed areas of Quebec for inex-
pensive labor, attracting wage-earners with the promise
of opportunity and personal betterment.A ten-day strike
following the reopening of Lowell mills after the Ci-
vil War further accelerated recruitment in Canada. By
1900, 24% of all cotton mill workers nationwide were
French-Canadian New Englanders;workers with at least
one French-Canadian parent comprised 44% of textile
operatives at this time.29
The dimensions of French-Ca-
nadian identity in the U.S. were, from the beginning,
economic in addition to cultural.In a presentation to the
Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, the editor of
the newspaper Le Travailleur elucidated this connection:
The Canadians are peaceful, law-abiding citizens; and
they accept the wages fixed by the liberality, or sometimes
the cupidity and avarice, of the manufacturers. […] Ca-
nadians have been great factors in the prosperity of ma-
nufacturing interests. Steady workers and skilful [sic],
the manufacturers have benefited by their condition of
THE FINEST
MILLS AND THE
DIRTIEST STREETS
Economic Context of
the Orphanage
T
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![poverty to reduce wages and compete favorably with the
industries of the Old World.30
Upon arrival to Lowell,French Canadians faced
deteriorating working conditions, living conditions,
and nativist backlash. Public officials who referred to
French-Canadians struck a careful balance between
demonization and appreciation of their contributions.
Simultaneously, immigrants were a “horde of indus-
trial invaders” and “indefatigable workers” supporting
the city’s most lucrative industries. Condemnation and
exploitation were not opposing forces but two sides of
the same coin. David Vermette (2018) demonstrates
that the degradation of industrial conditions coincided
with the shift from Yankee women to immigrants as
the principal source of labor in Lowell.The defamation
of French Canadians, such that they were referred to as
“sordid” and “an inferior race,” was both symptomatic
of and justification for the inhumane environment in
which they lived.31
Vermette explains,
It was the othering of the distinct, alien races in the mills
that made possible this dehumanization, the identifi-
cation of human beings with interchangeable machine
parts. Care and empathy extended to those within the
tribe and French-speaking Catholics of Quebec were not
members of the Yankee tribe.32
Downstream, poverty wages and the retrac-
tion of mill-subsidized housing had created a health
crisis. In 1882, the Lowell Board of Health reported
that the French-Canadian neighborhoods of Little Ca-
nada were an “unwholesome quarters” where “sanitary
30 Le Travailleur was a French-Canadian newspaper based in Worcester, Massachusetts. Massachusetts Bureau
of Statistics of Labor, "Resolve Relative to a Uniform System of Laws in Certain States Regulating the Hours of La-
bor," in Thirteenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, chap. 29 (Boston: Massachusetts
Bureau of Statistics of Labor).
31 DavidVermette, A Distinct Alien Race, 207, 250. Notably, the degradation of working conditions at this time coincided
with an overall increasing population of immigrants in Lowell. Statistics compiled by the Lowell Board ofTrade report that 40%
of the city’s population circa 1916 was native born.The remaining 80% of residents were of either foreign or mixed heritage.
Lowell Board ofTrade, Digest of the City of Lowell and its SurroundingTowns (Lowell: Lowell Board ofTrade, 1916), 5.
32 Lowell Board of Trade, Digest of the City of Lowell and its Surrounding Towns, 116.
33 George Frederick Kenngott, The Record of a City: A Social Survey of Lowell, Massachusetts (New York: Mac-
millan Company, 1912), 68-71.
34 Yukari Takai, Gendered Passages: French-Canadian Migration to Lowell, Massachusetts, 1900-1920 (New
York: Peter Lang Publications, 2008), 50.
35 Statistics calculated from survey data. Children's ages ranged between 1 and 5. G. Frederick Kenngott, The
Record of a City: A Social Survey of Lowell, Massachusetts (New York: Macmillan Company, 1912), 68-71, 133-34.
36 Frederick Kenngott, The Record of a City: A Social Survey of Lowell, Massachusetts, 108.
37 Alfred Laliberté, "L’école paroissiale," in [Rev. Adrien Verette] La Croisade Franco-Americaine (Manchester,
laws [were] grossly violated. As a result, “many of these
innocents [have] died from lack of nourishment, care,
cleanliness, and pure air.”33
Two years prior, the Lowell
Daily Citizen described the city as having “the finest
mills and the dirtiest streets," marked by foul odors
and animal matter. In 1881, a physician visiting Litt-
le Canada found “the family and borders in such close
quarters, that the two younger children had to be put to
bed in the kitchen sinks.”34
At this time, Lowell’s Little
Canada constituted the second densest neighborhood
in the country after Ward 4 of New York City.The pre-
carity that French-Canadian immigrants experienced
was most evident in their heightened mortality rates;
between 1890 and 1909 the likelihood of French-Ca-
nadian children passing away before the age of 5 ranged
from 14% to 18% compared to 3% for native children.
In 1890, adult French-Canadians experienced more
than double the 15% mortality rate of their non-immi-
grant counterparts. The stakes for mutual aid societies
in Lowell were demonstrably high.35
Shared culture was the foundation for facilitating
intra-community relief in Lowell. By 1880, French-Cana-
dians in New England had founded 63 parishes, 73 natio-
nal societies, and 37 French-language newspapers, often
directly and indirectly involved with charitable causes. By
1908, 133 parochial schools attending to 55,000 students
had been instituted.36
As the artist Alfred Laliberté has ar-
ticulated:“the parish school remains the cornerstone of our
national survivance in the United States.We can have pari-
shes,societies,newspapers,and efforts of all kinds,but if our
children do not attend parochial schools, we [will] lose all
that.”Survival was a matter both literal and cultural.37
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![Interestingly, Little Canada was an enclave no-
table for its French-Canadian roots and internal de-
mographic diversity. Yukari Takai (2008) finds that the
neighborhoods attracted workers of various backgrounds;
a former resident recalled, “Everyone spoke French, in-
cluding several families with names such as O’Beirne,
O’Flahavan,Moore,Murtagh,Thompson,O’Brien,Lord,
Sawyer, Thurber, Sigman, Tumas, Protopapas, Brady,
and Grady.”38
It is this complexity—that the city was a
place where immigrants could affirm their identities, be
absorbed into other identities, and one where cultural he-
terogeneity was celebrated among the workers—which
offers a glimpse of a multicultural ideal specific to Lowell.
Before instituting the FAO, the Grey Nuns were certain
to include the clause: “while the orphanage is essentially
Franco-American,we will not exclude other nationalities.”
Children from Italian,Irish,and Syrian backgrounds were
accepted throughout the subsequent decades.39
Indeed,
the development of the FAO as a mutual aid organization
was in many ways the mirror inverse of restructuring that
occurred at the state level.The orphanage was established
to be specifically French-Canadian and later expanded to
cater for a more general, diverse population; Massachu-
setts policymakers, on the other hand, worked to restrict
access to more specific and narrowly defined categories of
paupers.American relief,in this way,has historically been a
site of contestation and contradiction.The FAO may have
been the pride of French-Canadians, but it was also a re-
source made deliberately available to anyone who needed it.
N.H.: L’Avenir National, 1938), 256.
38 This was likely because of Little Canada's proximity to local mills. Takai, Gendered Passages, 55.
39 "Correspondence of Grey Nuns 1908" Box 1 in Franco-American Orphanage/School collection at the Center
for Lowell History; "Admission records," Box 4 of Franco-American Orphanage/School collection at the Center for
Lowell History.
40 "Compter de l’Année," Box 3 Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History.
41 The FAO remained at full occupancy every year between 1908 and 1932. There was an expansion of the or-
phanage's facilities in 1913 that can account for a surge in orphans cared for by the FAO. This coincided with both a
deadly pandemic and the first world war; Statistics calculated by author from admission records 1908-1932. "Admission
Records," Box 4 Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History.
42 To further the conversation on industrialization and immigration as interrelated processes, it is worth noting
HE FAO CAN be conceptualized as both
a mutual aid society and an agency opera-
ting on behalf of the emerging welfare state.
As early as 1910, the FAO received funding
from the Massachusetts Bureau of Charity that ranged
between $300 and $700 annually and amounted to ap-
proximately 1-2% of the orphanage’s income. Between
50-80% of the institution’s revenue was derived from
“child’s pensions”paid by the orphans’families. Payment
varied according to means; of the 291 children in 1920,
188 paid $3 per week,84 paid $2.25,and 19 paid nothing.
As stipulated in the Grey Nuns’contract,“if an unknown
orphan is admitted to the orphanage, Monsieur le Curé
of [St. Joseph’s] parish would pay his pension […] to be
reimbursed by the parishioners.” Contributions through
Oeuvre du Pain,the fundraising initiative,peaked in 1923
at $5,567.12 and dropped to an all-time low of $99.55 in
1933.40
Orphan families, the French-Canadian commu-
nity,and the state of Massachusetts account for the FAO’s
survival at a time of economic recession and depression.
The term “charity”ascribed to the orphanage understates
both its proximity to the state and the contributions of
ordinary people to its success.
A statistical analysis of the FAO’s admission
records dating 1908 to 1932 further illuminates the
institution’s role in the community. Information inclu-
ding the orphan’s birthday, parental occupations, home
address, ethnicity, date of entry, and date of departure
was dutifully recorded by the Grey Nuns when avai-
lable.41
As depicted in Figure 1.1, most orphans had
French-Canadian heritage despite minor diversification
in the 1920s. Between 1908 and 1920, a considerable
97% of orphans were French-Canadian compared to
85% between 1920 and 1932. Figure 2.1 examines the
representation of orphans from industrial cities, with
exactly 69.7% from Lowell and the remainder with ties
to Lawrence and Haverhill. In total, 94% of children
were born in Massachusetts.42
ORPHANS WERE
NOT PARENTLESS
Inside the Franco-American
Orphanage
T
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
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![Demonstrated in Figure 3.1, the plurality of
parental occupations for children at the FAO were mill
workers and journaliers (“day workers”). Most interes-
tingly, the 3% of orphans with “none”parents—including
those listed as “dead,” “unknown,” or “unemployed”—re-
veals that 97% of orphans, the overwhelming majority,
had living and working parents.43
The documented du-
rations-of-stay for orphans at the FAO, depicted in Fi-
gures 4.1 and 4.2, bolster this discovery. Between 1908
and 1932, over half—55%—of children were dropped off
and picked up within the span of a year. Approximately
78% of orphans resided at the FAO for less than 3 years.
The average length of stay was 21 months compared to
the median of 9 months. Most orphans at the FAO (a)
had living,working parents,(b) were financially supported
by their families, and (c) returned to their families after a
temporary leave. This is a reconceptualization of what it
meant to be an orphan in the early 20th century.44
In the case of a Syrian workman,George Alias,a
decision was made to keep his son Philippe and daugh-
ter Eva at the orphanage for 22 days. Edmund Pinard,
a carpenter in a nearby neighborhood, dropped off and
picked up his son Joseph three times between 1926 and
1931. The three sons of Emile and Rose Duchanne, si-
milarly, stayed for a two month stretch in 1930 and for
a four-month stretch the same year. Parents, it is clear,
were not abandoning their children. The FAO provided
a service for surviving industrial life.45
HE FAO IN Lowell was an organization
inseparable from its industrial context.
This paper’s discovery that orphans were
supported by families and given tempora-
ry reprieve at the institution can reconceptualize the
that the mill cities of Haverhill, Fall River, Lawrence, and Lynn were locations with large immigrant populations; "Admis-
sion Records," Box 4 Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History.
43 Journaliers worked primarily in seasonal and temporary job. Additionally, between 1908 and 1932, only 22
children were placed into adoptive care. This was primarily to other family members. "Admission Records," Box 4 Fran-
co-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History.
44 "Admission Records," Box 4 Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History.
45 "Admission Records," Box 4 Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History.
46 C.L., "Little Canada," oral interview, May 3, 1975, typewritten transcript. Center for Lowell History, French-Ca-
nadian Oral Histories, 5, 22.
47 Richard Santerre, La Paroisse Saint-Jean-Baptiste et les Franco-Americains de Lowell, Massachusetts, 1868-
1968 (Manchester, N.H.: Editions Lafayette, 1993), 43-44.
meaning of early 20th century charity. The FAO is
analogous to contemporary systems of mutual aid and
can demonstrate the indirect, localized mechanisms
by which the Massachusetts state distributed relief.
The myth of orphanages as repositories for abandoned
children remains an outdated stigmatization of wor-
king-class parents; indeed, this paper outlines the
ways in which orphanages were resources created by
neighborhoods in collaboration with each other. Fur-
thermore, the centrality of immigrant identity—both
as the framework for organizing within working com-
munities and as a site of backlash by nativist intel-
lectuals—to the development of American welfare is
posited to be a significant dimension of analysis and
one that merits future research.
The FAO is proof of the interdependent rela-
tionships that defined the French-Canadian community
in Lowell.As has been articulated by a former resident of
Lowell’s Little Canada:
The Population was so big in Little Canada that the
blocks were real[ly] close. But all families got along beau-
tiful[ly] and we were all French people. […] Everybo-
dy helped everybody, which is not done nowadays like it
was then, but people that had the money—if one needed
help that means they would get together and they would
come over and help. [...] If you look back to it, I still think
I’d like to be there.46
The FAO demonstrates the self-determination
of French-Canadians within a context of structural
inequality. As Richard Santerre (1993) has put into
words, “people found emotional sustenance, psycho-
logical security, and a sense of meaning in Little Ca-
nada of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” This
meaning and security was built from the bottom up by
working families.47
CONCLUSION
T
10
THE FRANCO-AMERICAN ORPHANAGE](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/yhrspring2021-211020115003/85/YHR-Spring-2021-15-320.jpg)
![Figure 1.1 Orphan Ethnicities
1908-1912 1913-1917 1918-1922 1923-1927 1928-1932 % Overall
384 1010 703 550 473 96.0% Fr. Canadian
0 11 10 11 20 1.6% Irish
0 0 3 35 10 1.4% American
0 15 15 59 33 0.1% Italian
4 17 6 76 63 3.9% Other
The “Other” category represents the small number of Syrian and Belgian children at the orphanage. [5]
Figure 2.1 Top City Origins of Orphans
1908-1912 1913-1917 1918-1922 1923-1927 1928-1932 % Overall
277 627 634 404 311 69.7% Lowell
11 93 4 19 15 4.4% Lawrence
14 24 12 47 10 3.3% Haverhill
1 13 4 31 57 3.3% Salem
4 43 12 8 33 3.1% Lynn
8 6 5 22 7 1.5% Boston
[6]
Figure 3.1 Top Parental Occupations of Orphans
1908-1912 1913-1917 1918-1922 1923-1927 1928-1932 % Overall
136 249 109 142 106 36.1% Mill workers
121 189 75 42 72 24.2% Day workers
16 57 37 22 24 7.6% Machinists
22 24 23 31 16 5.6% Carpenters
8 33 11 32 16 4.9% Shoemakers
8 21 6 12 18 3.2% Painters
0 21 7 9 27 3.1% Clerks
2 7 6 21 5 2.0% Metalsmiths
1 5 3 12 18 1.9% Drivers
13 2 3 23 25 3.2% None
“Day Workers” consisted of seasonal and temporary laborers, primarily working in mills, construction, and
agriculture. The “None” category signifies the number of parents designated as “absent,” “unemployed,”
“sick,” “deceased,” or "handicapped." Note: not all parental occupations are represented on the table. Other
professions include electricians, grocers, farmers, bakers, barbers, and plumbers. [7]
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
11](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/yhrspring2021-211020115003/85/YHR-Spring-2021-16-320.jpg)
![Figure 4.1 Length of Stay at Orphanages (Percentages)
1908-1912 1913-1917 1918-1922 1923-1927 1928-1932 Total
5.2% 14.9% 13.8% 8% 8.9% 10.6% 5+ years
0.6% 8.6% 18.5% 10.3% 14.9% 11.6% 3-5 years
21.4% 4.8% 32.5% 24.5% 28.1% 22.7% 1-3 years
14.5% 8.3% 11.8% 18.7% 14.5% 13.7% 6-12 months
17.9% 14.3% 6.3% 15.7% 12.3% 12.7% 3-6 months
41% 49.5% 17.5% 23% 21.7% 28.6% <3 months
[8]
Figure 4.2 Length of Stay at Orphanage (Mean and Median)
1908-1912 1913-1917 1918-1922 1923-1927 1928-1932 Total
11.2 20.4 28.4 19.7 21.6 21.4 Mean
3 3 21 9 12 9 Median
Units in months. [9]
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[1] Box 12 of Franco-American Orphanage/School
collection, Center for Lowell History.
[2] Box 12 of Franco-American Orphanage/School
collection, Center for Lowell History.
[3] Box 4 of Franco-American Orphanage/School
collection, Center for Lowell History.
[4] Box 4 of Franco-American Orphanage/School
collection, Center for Lowell History.
[5] Box 4 of Franco-American Orphanage/School
collection, Center for Lowell History.
[6] Box 4 of Franco-American Orphanage/School
collection, Center for Lowell History.
[7] Box 4 of Franco-American Orphanage/School
collection, Center for Lowell History.
[8] Box 12 of Franco-American Orphanage/School
collection, Center for Lowell History.
[9] Box 12 of Franco-American Orphanage/School
collection, Center for Lowell History.
14
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![SPRING 2021
TECHNOLOGY AND
PARADIGM
The X-Ray,Electrical Therapeutics,and the Consolidation of Biomedicine
by Libby Hoffenberg, Swarthmore College '20
Written for an interdisciplinary honors thesis in History and Philosophy of the Body
Advised by Professor Timothy Burke
Edited by Daniel Ma, Gabby Sevillano, and Katie Painter
An 1897 setup for taking an x-ray of the hand. [1]
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
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![regular purification of the Economy.”17
Rivieré appeals
to discourses of chemistry, neurology, physiology, and
hormonal (“trophic”) functions to justify his therapeu-
tic method.These multiple discourses, as well as his des-
cription of the body as an “economy,” reveal the impulse
within the medical community to theorize health and
sickness as involving the equilibrium of the entire orga-
nism.Electricity provided a pivot from vague understan-
dings of the body based on the harmonization of its parts
to scientific medicine’s updated models of homeostasis
based on biochemical entities. Electricity connoted the
vital force that coordinated activity but was also distinc-
tly modern, a powerful tool with vast potential to know
the world in ever more precise ways.
17 D. J. Rivieré, Annals of Physico-Therapy (Paris: Physico-Therapeutic Institute of Paris, 1903).
18 Herbet Robarts, The American X-Ray Journal 1, no.1 (1899).
19 Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health "200 Years
of American Medicine (1776-1976)," an exhibit at the National Library of Medicine.
Electricity was an enticing cure for a medical com-
munity that was actively deliberating over the proper way
to treat sick bodies. The flexible ontologies underlying
electricity authorized its use as a therapeutic modality
in both allopathic and homeopathic practices. The de-
bate between allopathy and homeopathy as the most
appropriate medical system roughly mirrored the de-
bate between those who thought that diseases ought to
be cured by treatments administered externally from the
body and those who believed that the disease’s natural
course of development in the body would cure the pa-
tient. Allopathic practitioners sought different kinds of
substances to administer to the body, while homeopaths
supposed that the body naturally stored the entire phar-
macopeia of substances it could need. Allopaths tended
to celebrate the variety of pharmaceutical compounds
that were being synthesized or discovered with increasing
frequency. New therapies presented new tools to combat
disease. Homeopaths tended to criticize the search for
new compounds. Medical pamphlets and journals fea-
tured both drug advertisements and polemics,written by
and for doctors, against the use of drugs in medical care.
In this space of contradictory mindsets, electricity could
be configured as both external and internal; it was inte-
gral to the matter of the natural world but also existed
innately within the living body.
The x-ray’s continuity with electrical modalities
meant that its therapeutic potential could be justified
by appeals to vitality and energy. The x-ray’s association
with vitalism is evident in looking at the cover of the first
issue ofThe American X-Ray Journal.This journal began
in May 1897 with the stated intention “to give to its rea-
ders a faithful resume of all x-ray work.”18
The American
medical field saw an increase in the number of published
medical journals in the nineteenth century as physicians
returned from graduate training in Austria and Germany.
They grouped themselves into professional associations
and consolidated their reports of clinical and laborato-
ry research in medical publications.19
However, even as
x-ray practitioners began to coalesce around professional
organizations,they did not abandon the vitalistic conno-
tations of the x-ray. The cover of the first issue of The
American X-Ray Journal depicts a figure administering
the x-ray to the globe from outside the globe, indica-
The cover of the first issue of The American
X-Ray Journal. [2]
20
TECHNOLOGY AND PARADIGM](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/yhrspring2021-211020115003/85/YHR-Spring-2021-25-320.jpg)
![ting that the x-rays were seen to come from a mysterious,
non-earthbound, place. The spiritual connotations of a
figure floating above the earth connotes the idea of an
immaterial substance that animates the physical world,
flowing freely between living and non-living matter.
ISTORIANS HAVE NOTED the uti-
lity of the x-ray in consolidating the pro-
fessional authority of allopathic doctors
and radiological specialists—those in fields
that would later professionalize in relation to the x-ray’s
diagnostic capabilities.However,there has been conside-
rably less attention given to the way that non-allopathic
practitioners justified their authority through the x-ray,
often continuing to use the machine for non-diagnostic
purposes.After the x-ray had been wrangled as a specifi-
cally medical instrument,but before it became a standar-
dized diagnostic tool, various medical sects incorporated
the technology into their practices as a method of legiti-
mization. This period—approximately the first ten years
of the twentieth century—represents a middle space in
the x-ray’s early years that corresponds to the shifting
context of professional medicine.
Historians have noted practitioners’ self-legitima-
tion through the use of the x-ray, as the device came to
symbolize advanced scientific medicine. However, they
have not engaged with the particular nature of this sym-
bolism—the specific capacities that made the x-ray au-
thoritative. The invocation of the x-ray’s authority by
non-allopathic practitioners (those who would not go on
to coordinate their activities in relation to this authority)
shows that the regard given to the technology was not
solely a response to its association with the kind of scien-
tific biomedicine that would go on to dominate health-
20 "Electro-Therapeutics," Chicago Daily Tribune, July 23, 1899, 30.
21 Herbet Robarts, The American X-Ray Journal 1, no. 2 (1899), 30.
care. Rather, its authority was premised on its ability to
produce objective scientific images. Even when homeo-
pathic practitioners used the x-ray in therapeutic vitalis-
tic contexts,they legitimized their practice by recourse to
the x-ray’s privileged capacity for visualization.
After the x-ray had become widely known to the
general public,but before it attained its diagnostic role in
institutionalized biomedicine,it was seen as the most au-
thoritative form of electrical healing. An 1899 article in
the Chicago Daily Tribune chronicles the moment the
x-ray became a privileged electrical therapy. After ex-
pounding the various specialties in which electricity was
useful and effective “in the hands of a skilled physician”
—dentistry,medicine,surgery,cauterization,thermal and
chemical effects—the author laments the hindering of
the field’s development at the hands of “quackery prac-
ticed in early days.”20
The authority of “regular practitio-
ners,”he says,was threatened by individuals who peddled
products like electric belts and electric hairbrushes. The
author then suggests that legitimate practitioners, who
previously refrained from publicizing electrical therapies,
were becoming louder voices in the field.This “change in
public sentiment,”he suggests,“[is] greatly stimulated by
the discovery of the X ray by Baron Röntgen.” This ar-
ticle also affirms that the x-ray was not considered a dis-
tinctly new kind of machine. Articles in The American
X-Ray Journal even continued to refer to the x-rays as
“vibrations,” indicating the x-ray’s continued association
with a broader set of other electro-therapeutic machines.
An article in the same journal states that the x-ray had
“brought more forcibly before the minds of physicians
the value of the electric current as a therapeutic agent.”21
The x-ray, then, was beneficial not only in consolidating
the authority of scientific medicine, but also in justifying
the continued use of electrical therapeutics.
The x-ray, out of all other electrical therapies, be-
came associated with advanced scientific medicine be-
cause it was the only electrical therapy that produced
an image. The x-ray’s image-making capacity makes it a
case study for the history of modern scientific medicine’s
self-legitimation through the technique of specialized
perception. In the eighteenth century, the epistemically
authoritative gaze helped to standardize the interpreta-
tion of the body’s interior, so that medical professionals
could amass a stable body of knowledge about anato-
H
MECHANICAL
OBJECTIVITY
AND THE
DOCTOR-PATIENT
RELATIONSHIP
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
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![increasingly prevalent mandate to maintain individual
health—an imperative that called for continual dis-
cernment of the hidden structures and mechanisms of
the body. The category of diagnosis was useful in subs-
tantiating a paradigm wherein the patient sought not
an immediate cure but information with which to make
decisions about long-term health.
Although the x-ray was just one piece of tech-
nology within a complex healthcare system, and the
physical presence of the machine itself was diminished,
the aesthetic of the technology remained significant.
In the years after World War I, the x-ray symbolized
not only modern scientific visuality, but modern indus-
trial machinery generally. Radiologists appealed to the
x-ray’s aura of technological sophistication to justify
their role in hospital systems as qualified professionals.
In the hospital’s integration of multiple medical prac-
tices into a single system, there was sometimes tension
between radiology departments and the demands of
a large business-oriented hospital. A 1934 article pu-
blished in Radiology, a professional journal started in
1929, identified a “peculiar relationship between hospi-
tal and roentgenologists,” in which the hospital owned
the equipment and facilities that the radiologist used,
but the radiologist performed services that he/she saw
as involving distinct technical expertise. Hospitals,
on the other hand, believed that they could produce
“roentgenograms” without the help of the radiologist
and that the radiologist simply provided interpretation
of the images. This discrepancy resulted in confusion
over how to divide compensation between the hospital
and the radiologist.39
A 1935 article in the same journal
lamented that “many physicians consider the roentge-
nologist a mere photographer.”40
The “domestication” of the x-ray machine from
a cumbersome instrument to a modern and efficient
technology embedded in the hospital threatened the
radiologist because he or she could no longer demons-
trate the miraculous powers of the x-ray. Previously the
side effects, even when they were unpleasant or fatal,
proved that the x-ray was working. One radiologist in
39 Leon Menville and Howard Doub, "The X-ray Problem and a Solution: A Discussion of the Proposed Separation
of the X-ray Examination into Technical and Professional Portions," in Radiology 23, no.5 (Oak Brook, Illinois: The Radio-
logical Society of North America, 1934).
40 Emmet Keating, "Fee Tables and the Roentgenologists," in Radiology 24, no. 3 (Oak Brook, Illinois: The Radiolo-
gy Society of North America, 1935).
41 Lavine, "The Early Clinical X-Ray in the United States," 612.
42 Hessenbruch, "Calibration and Work in the X-Ray Economy," 414.
the gas tube era noted that he even “ma[de] it a point
in every case to produce a burn,” as the visible effects
of the rays indicated its curative efficacy.41
Radiologists
after WWI, on the other hand, did not attempt to pro-
duce visible effects, nor was the public nearly as willing
to tolerate them.Instead,they fashioned their authority
as technicians who provided the service of interpreting
information produced by sophisticated machines. They
claimed their professional status in reference not to the
patient’s body as a site of visible effects but to the x-ray
machine itself and its ability to produce diagnostic in-
formation. The radiologist modified the role that was
vacated by the individual doctor as a demonstrator, or
even entertainer, who produced observable therapeu-
tic effects, and became the interpreter of mechanical-
ly-produced scientific images that could then be used
to generate a diagnosis.
Much of the appeal of the x-ray in the years after
WWI lay in its mechanical sophistication. X-ray techno-
logy became a mass industry as companies in the U.S.and
Germany marketed their high-quality equipment domes-
tically and abroad.Radiology epitomized mass production,
with its “investment in apparatus and its striving to rou-
tinize labour” and its call for “elaborate plants, machinery
and other equipment, and consequently for heavy invest-
ment.”42
Radiology and the x-ray industry, along with the
hospital, increasingly fit into paradigms of big business
undergirded with the appeal of advanced technology.
The conception of the x-ray as a sophisticated ma-
chine, and the radiologist as a sophisticated machine
technician, accorded well with the emerging view of the
body as a machine.The machine metaphor was prevalent
in the work of Fritz Kahn, a German physician who was
known for his widely-circulated popular science books
and illustrations. He published an image entitled Der
Mensch als Industriepalast, or Man as Industrial Pa-
lace, that depicted the human body as a modern chemi-
cal plant. In the image, the interior of the human body
consists of a network of parts that correspond to func-
tions. Unlike the metaphor of the body as an economy,
which understood the body as an interconnected whole
26
TECHNOLOGY AND PARADIGM](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/yhrspring2021-211020115003/85/YHR-Spring-2021-31-320.jpg)
![coordinated by immaterial forces, the factory metaphor
proposed a functional relationship between parts of the
body and the body as a whole. Whereas the ‘economy’
of the body was regulated by the flow of material-im-
material substance between undifferentiated parts, the
body as ‘machine’integrated the specific functions of the
parts into a system optimized for efficiency. The body,
like the modern hospital, was conceived along the lines
of a factory, where labor was divided so as to maximize
the production of power.
Other captions for Fritz Kahn’s illustrations in-
clude “Comparison of force transmission in a car and
the outer ear”and “the basic forms and functions of the
bones and joints in man’s body are very similar to our
own architectural and technological constructions.”43
Kahn’s graphics portray the modern preoccupation
with the body as an energy system designed for maxi-
mum efficiency.44
The body was a machine engineered for efficiency,
but, like the x-ray machine, it required the expertise of
trained technicians to maintain it. This expertise existed
not in the space between the patient’s and the doctor’s bo-
dies, as it had in the first years of x-ray treatment. Rather,
expert medical opinion was produced in reference to an
increasingly large body of knowledge that was generated
between hospitals and research facilities and between va-
rious departments within the hospital. In the context of
the proliferation of scientifically-backed research studies
and the dispersal of care between multiple departments
and practitioners, health evaluations were increasingly
produced in reference to stable bodies of knowledge that
existed outside of the doctor’s experience and judgment.
The patient’s own symptoms and accounts of illness played
a smaller role in orienting diagnosis and treatment.Rather,
medical evaluation was increasingly conducted through
measurement and statistics. Blood tests, urinalysis, and
other diagnostic tests became more prevalent,as did stan-
dardized written forms that allowed practitioners to easily
extract and compare patient information.45
By the 1940s, the Eastman Kodak Company ad-
vertised its radiographic equipment by its ability to “pro-
vide inside information.” A pamphlet circulated by the
43 National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division, National Institutes of Health, “Dream Anatomy”
online gallery.
44 Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press, 1992).
45 Howell, Technology in the Hospital.
company proclaimed that radiography “in modern in-
dustry” was useful for its ability to procure “a wealth of
Fritz Kahn's illustration entitled Der Mensch als
Industriepalast, or Man as Industrial Palace, depicting
the human body as a modern chemical plant. [3]
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
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![VER THE COURSE of approximately
fifty years from its invention, the x-ray
was progressively fashioned into a medi-
cal technology that fit the particular aims
of institutional biomedicine in the United States. The
technology has continued to exist as an authoritative
method of representing and knowing the body.In orga-
nizing diagnoses around the structures discernable be-
neath the surface of heterogeneous human experience,
the x-ray helps to maintain boundaries between health
and illness. But the x-ray was not adapted to fit cir-
cumscribed notions of health and disease; it helped to
produce a particular form of diagnosis at the same time
that the epistemic landscape of American medicine
was evolving. Debuting onto a field of divergent medi-
cal sects and little to no professional organization, the
x-ray in its early years was understood in the context
of ambiguously efficacious experimental modalities. In
this context, it was considered a potential therapy along
the lines of other electrical devices that would soon
go out of fashion. Its diagnostic capacity was selected
as the space of American medicine was narrowing to
sanction scientific medicine as the only allowable me-
dical paradigm.
The x-ray’s eventual institutionalized use privile-
ged certain ways of knowing the body at the expense
of others. It enabled genuinely new representations of
the healthy body and of the pathologies that threate-
ned it, allowing for new sites of intervention and cura-
tive techniques. However, it simultaneously narrowed
the field of interpretations of illness that could count
as legitimate. The x-ray enforced a paradigm in which
treatment and diagnosis were framed in relation to the
disease, rather than to the patient. By the 1920s, cer-
tain medical professionals had identified the tenden-
cy for the specialist’s understanding of particularities
to cut against medicine’s goal of promoting health for
the whole person. Ernst Phillip Boas, a prominent phy-
sician, medical director, and author, noted that young
51 Robert Charles Yamashita, "Intervention before disease: Asymptomatic biomedical screening," (PhD diss., Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley, 1992), 66.
52 Yamashita, “Intervention before disease," 66.
practitioners who were trained in particular disorders
did not know how to assess subtle indications in a per-
son’s constitution that were associated with systemic di-
sease. He noted that “they could treat diseases but not
the sick,” and that “the reality of medical practice [is]
the opposite: ‘We treat the sick not diseases.’”51
The x-ray was implicit in circulating the notion of
an individual’s health as the proper functioning of in-
dividual parts.This notion enabled philosophies of care
that prioritized technical intervention into particular
body parts and systems. But adequate treatment often
called not for “fixing that specific part,” but for “retur-
ning the whole to a sense of normality.”52
Electrical the-
rapies in the nineteenth century were justified by their
ability to act on bodies that were understood to exist in
the same ontological category; the same vital substance
flowed through both the device and the body in which
it produced effects. Homeopathic practices interpreted
their cures along the same lines; substances in the world
were liable to induce effects on the body due to their
being of the same kind as the treated ailment.Although
the x-ray eventually distanced itself from these theories
that were deemed unscientific, it internalized many of
the same assumptions about causation in the body.The
x-ray, conceived as a machine with interrelated functio-
nal parts that together produced energy in an efficient
way, was understood to act on bodies that were consti-
tuted in precisely the same manner.
The x-ray’s effects often could not be explained
on the terms that it helped to enforce as legitimate. Al-
though the machine was taken to embody the success-
ful integration of science and industry into American
medicine, its authority was conceptualized in the very
paradigms that it had rejected as characteristic of an
esoteric or non-modern way of practicing medicine. In
casting light on affinities between orthodox and unor-
thodox medical paradigms, the x-ray shows how legiti-
mation is negotiated through explanations and uses for
particular technologies at particular times. If the x-ray
is one thread in the passing over from heterodox thera-
peutic practices to the institutionalization of scientific
technologies of care, it reveals important contradictions
within the ascension of biomedicine.
CONCLUSION:
INTERIORITY
O
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
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![American X-Ray Journal 1, no.1 (1899).
The American X-Ray Journal 1, no. 2 (1899).
D. J. Rivieré, “Annals of Physico-Therapy,” Physi-
co-Therapeutic Institute of Paris, April 1903.
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Pub-
lic Health Service, National Institutes of Health,
“200 Years of American Medicine (1776-1976)”
an exhibit at the National Library of Medicine.
Dr. E. J. Fraser, “Medical Electricity: a Treatise on the
Nature of Vital Electricity in Health and Disease,
With plain Instructions in the uses of Artificial
Electricity as a curative agent,” Chicago, 1863.
Electricity Consumption: The New Treatment Of
Phthisis By The Use ... Contributed to The Times
Los Angeles Times (1886-1922); Sep 5, 1897;
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles
Times, pg. 16
“Electro-Therapeutics,” Chicago Daily Tribune (1872-
1922); Jul 23, 1899; ProQuest Historical News-
papers: Chicago Tribune pg. 30
Fly, J.J. “Is There a Relationship Existing Between The
X-Ray and the Luminating Power that Obtains
in Telepathic Vision?” American X-Ray Journal 1,
no. 5 (1898): 268.
Her Latest Photograph: It Is An Electrical Picture.
New York Times (1857-1922); May 29, 1898;
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York
Times, pg. 14.
Keating, Emmet. “Fee Tables and the Roentgenolo-
gists.” Radiology 24, no. 3 (1935). doi:
10.1148/24.3.370
Kodak, “3 Ways Radiography Can Provide Inside
Information,” Science 109 (1949): 9.
Morton, William James. The X-Ray; Or, Photography
of the Invisible and its Value in Surgery. New York:
American Technical Book Company, 1896.
National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine
Division, National Institutes of Health, “Dream
Anatomy” online gallery.
U.S. National Library of Medicine, “Visual Culture
and Public Health Posters.”
Wonderful X Ray Tests: Blind Man Sees Through Top
Of His Own Head. Chicago Daily
Tribune 1872-1922); Jan 2, 1897; ProQuest His-
torical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune, pg. 14.
“The X-ray Problem and a Solution: A Discussion of
the Proposed Separation of the X-ray
Examination into Technical and Professional
Portions,” Radiology 23, no.5 (1934), doi:
10.1148/23.5.635
Beccalossi, Chiara and Peter Cryle. “Recent Devel-
opments in the Intellectual History of Medicine:
A Special Issue of the Journal of the History of
Medicine.” Journal of the History of Medicine and
Allied Sciences 67, no. 1 (2011): 1-6.
Blavatsky,Helena Petrovna.TheTheosophical Glossary.
London:The Theosophical Publishing Society,1892.
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VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
31](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/yhrspring2021-211020115003/85/YHR-Spring-2021-36-320.jpg)
![SPRING 2021
HOW COMFORT WOMEN
SPEAK
The Politics and Social Norms in the Narrations of Comfort
Women’s Experiences
by Helen (Jiawen) Zhang, Columbia University '20
Written for an Honors Thesis
Advised by Professor Jungwon Kim
Edited by Jisoo Choi, Emma Sargent, and Lee Johns
Comfort Women Memorial [1]
32
HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/yhrspring2021-211020115003/85/YHR-Spring-2021-37-320.jpg)
![the comfort women’s system. They describe that most
comfort women were from rural areas and argue that their
weak social agency made them the first targets of abuse.
Hicks’ book, The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime
of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War (1997) is
the first English-language systematic review concerning
comfort women. Hicks analyzes comfort women’s expe-
riences during and after WWII, focusing on the threats,
poverty, and emotional trauma the victims suffered. He
argues that the origin of the system was rooted in Japan’s
military needs to stop venereal diseases and sustain sol-
diers’ morale. Although he briefly addresses comfort wo-
men as victims of patriarchal ideologies, Hicks does not
treat the gender dynamics of the colonized in depth.28
In Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese
Military During World War II (2000), Yoshimi unearths
evidence of the Japanese government’s direct involvement
in the comfort women system. In response to the 1995
“free history” movement, in which the Japanese govern-
ment tried to deny the comfort women’s “victim” claims,
Yoshimi compiled a comprehensive array of evidence
demonstrating that not only were comfort women not
prostitutes, they were often coerced or simply abducted
into slavery.29
Yoshimi examines the women’s experiences
through the lens of political history, focusing on logistics
within the comfort stations.In 2003,Tanaka’s book Japan’s
Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during
World War II and the U.S. Occupation followed in Hick’s
and Yoshimi’s footsteps.Building upon Yoshimi’s evidence
of the Japanese government’s direct involvement, Tanaka
argues that the use of prostitution by the military in coun-
tries involved in World War II consisted of both consen-
sual prostitution, as in the U.S. and Australia, as well as
military sexual slavery,as in Imperial Japan.30
Works by Korean historian Pyong Gap Min,
Korean anthropologist Sarah Chunghee Soh, and Ja-
panese literary historian Qiu Peipei move beyond the po-
litical and logistical structures of the comfort women sys-
28 George Hicks, The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War
(New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995).
29 Yoshimi, Comfort Women.
30 Yuki Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World war II and the U.S. Occu-
pation, (Routledge, 2001).
31 [Pyong Gap] Min, “Korean Comfort Women: The Intersection of Colonial Power, Gender, and Class,” Gender &
Society 17, no. 6 (2003): 938–957.
32 Sarah C. Soh, The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan, (University
of Chicago Press, 2008).
33 Peipei Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves, (Vancouver, BC: UBC
Press, 2013).
tem to focus on how the women’s experience reflects the
patriarchal controls that both local communities and co-
lonial governments exerted upon them.In his 2003 article
“Korean ‘Comfort Women’: The Intersection of Colonial
Power,Gender,and Class,”Min brings the colonization of
Korea by Japan and the role of the Korean gender hierar-
chy into his analysis of the system.He argues that Confu-
cian patriarchal values and Korean men’s anxiety were in-
termingled in the wake of Japanese colonial aggressions,
which then facilitated the spread of the comfort stations.
His study left many questions unanswered, such as how
comfort women may not be able to exercise their indi-
vidual agency when grave poverty and patriarchal autho-
rity hampered their ability to do so.31
Soh’s 2008 book The
Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory
in Korea and Japan furthered Min’s effort toward linking
the comfort women within the region’s broader historical
gender context of Korea, and offers a comprehensive cha-
racterization of the comfort stations,particularly the heavy
surveillance imposed on women.Examining the post-war
experience of surviving comfort women, Soh argues that
the continued national silence and social marginalization
they faced in the post-war era reflected Korea’s obsession
with female chastity.32
Although most comfort stations were in China,
current scholarship has yet to examine the commonalities
that existed between Korean and Chinese women’s expe-
riences, and how these commonalities might illuminate
the discrimination, objectification, and post-war silence
all caused by vulnerabilities particular to rural women fa-
cing extreme poverty and patriarchal authority.33
In 2014,
Qiu published the first set of English-language testimo-
nies detailing 12 Chinese comfort women’s experiences in
Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s
Sex Slaves. Using interviews from one hundred former
comfort women across China,Qiu demonstrated how ac-
tive collaboration between local villagers and the Japanese
was used to trick or force Chinese rural women into the
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
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![former lives. These women’s reservations about revealing
private matters are exemplified in Ms.K’s choice to remain
anonymous, even as an interviewer, so deep is the cultural
shame.44
Finally,it should be taken into account that almost
half a century had passed by the time these women were
asked to recount their life stories.This omission,then,could
be viewed as an example of the possible memory loss, tre-
mendous emotional stress, and interlocking histories that
existed in their retelling of their stories.
Unlike the Korean testimonies, the Chinese tes-
timonies had elaborate details about these women’s lives
before becoming comfort women. Like an autobiography,
their stories often began with descriptions of their child-
hoods, their families, and sometimes even their marriage
situations. While the Korean testimonies were conducted
undertheKoreanCongress,theChineseinterviewerswere
university researchers who approached these women with
an academic interest, wanting to tie China’s 20th century
gender dynamics with the comfort women’s experiences.
At least one third of the questions on the interviewers’
questionnaires were directed toward their pre-draft lives.
Therefore,thanks to these questions,we can derive a more
comprehensive picture of these victims’ histories from
their testimonies.
Like the Korean victims, the twelve Chinese
comfort women all came from humble rural backgrounds.
Their families’ destitute financial situations often became
worse after Japan’s invasion. This extreme poverty forced
many parents to sell their daughters to neighbors’ sons or
even human traffickers as “child brides (tongyangxi).”45
Due to the uncertainty of the period,these women would
sometimes be resold multiple times to different families.
Victim Zhou Fengying commented on how “girls were
unwanted and were called ‘money-losing goods’ since
they would serve another family when they were married,
and their parents had to spend a fortune to pay for the
dowry.”46
By a very young age, these women had already
44 Schellstede, “Comfort Women Speak,” 102.
45 For more information, see Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 33.
46 Qiu, “Chinese Comfort Women,” 110.
47 Qiu, “Chinese Comfort Women,” 111.
48 Gail Hershatter, The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past, (Berkley: University of
California Press, 2011), 22–25.
49 Her testimonies revealed how women were being viewed as “inferior goods” by others. Selling daughters
was a prevalent and acceptable practice in 20th century China. See Hershatter, Women and China’s Revolution, 176.
been reduced into mere “monetary goods”by their society,
were deprived of a peaceful childhood, and most impor-
tantly,had lost basic control over their own lives.
Surprisingly, most of these victims expressed litt-
le resentment toward their parents. For example, Zhou
Fenying described how her parents struggled with sur-
vival as landless farmers and how they would “hold her
tightly…[and would] cry their hearts out”47
after they first
tried to abandon her on the side of the road. In Zhou’s
narration,this touching and tragic scene immediately pre-
ceded her sale to a nearby village as a child-bride at the
age of five.” Her rhetorical choice complicates this tes-
timony, making it not merely a historical account but a
narrative text.In particular,we should attribute the artifice
of Zhou’s testimony to her memory of her pre-comfort
woman experience. Memory, as French historian Jacques
Le Goff claims, involves both a loss and a creation.48
The
seventy-year gap between the event and Zhou’s inter-
view detached her from her direct sensory responses to it.
Zhou’s past traumas, feelings, and her present state were
mixed into the process of her recollection, creating the
memory. Her memory allowed her to create an unexpec-
ted link between her parent’s love and her abandonment.
In the end, her memory transformed her subject from a
faceless victim to a woman with a unique,complicated life:
a life intermingled with love, loss, and pain, well beyond
just being a comfort woman.
For example, Zhou seemed to justify her parents’
behaviors by foregrounding their love and attachments to
her. She conveyed her sale to be a relatively “justifiable”
choice considering the extreme destitution her family was
in, which demonstrated her empathy for her parents’diffi-
cult decisions.Female infanticide and human trafficking of
women increased in China during the 1930s,49
which made
women like Zhou even more at risk. Her turbulent child-
hood brought her unimaginable pain. Zhou had to face a
world in which rural women like her had very little social
agency. In her recollection, this information demonstrates
that her powerlessness as a rural woman started way before
she became a comfort woman.As a child,she had to accept
women’s relative inferiority to men and even “embrace”her
Pre-draft Experience—
Chinese Experiences
42
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![ultimate fate of becoming a filial bride and mother within
hernewfamily,herliferevolvingaroundthestove.Although
they never used emotional words, she and others made the
choice to incorporate the details about their parents’ deci-
sions and the abuses they had faced since childhood,which
had already become their renunciation of social biases.
After becoming “child brides,” these women
cared for their parents-in-law and worked in the fields.
Given that these women had no economic resources and
became completely dependent upon their in-laws, they
were treated as servants who had to obey all demands
from their in-laws and husbands. Victim Lei Guiying
described in detail the constant beatings she received
from her first mother-in-law.50
Unable to bear these
abuses, Lei escaped the household and became a beg-
gar on the streets. Yuan Zhulin had similar experiences
where her mother-in-law “treated her like an outcast…
[and] an extra burden on the family.”51
However, unlike the Korean victims, whose
testimonies often described local collaborators provi-
ding false promises about jobs overseas as a pretense
for the draft, most of the Chinese victims were simply
abducted by soldiers on site. Whenever Japanese sol-
diers came across a village or a town, they would select
the local “good-looking” girls and transport them to
comfort stations.52
Zhou Fengying noted that “because
my cousin and I were known for our good looks,we had
been targeted.”53
In their narrations, these victims were
conscious of how their femininity, their light skin, their
height, or even their young age, resulted in their ensla-
vement.Besides blaming the Japanese troops,these wo-
men also seemed to believe that their innate feminine
qualities were responsible for the crimes, implicitly tur-
ning themselves into fellow culprits.Their narration re-
vealed the complex psychology of rural victims in 1930s
China and Korea. In the end, these rural women’s infe-
rior social standing, economic burdens, and their sub-
mission to patriarchal authority made them particularly
vulnerable to social injustices, which actually prompted
50 Hershatter, Women and China’s Revolution, 104.
51 Hershatter, Women and China’s Revolution, 113.
52 Hershatter, Women and China’s Revolution, 43.
53 Hershatter, Women and China’s Revolution, 112.
54 See Soh, The Comfort Women, 27–141.
55 For more information on Japan and Korea’s colonial relation, see Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, Silence Broken: Korean
Comfort Women, (Parkersburg, Iowa: Mid-Prairie Books, 1999), 109–113.
56 Yoshimi, Comfort Women, 107–120.
57 Soh, Comfort Women, 29–78.
58 Soh, Comfort Women, 14.
these victims to develop self-deprecating views about
their pasts within their narrations, even when discus-
sing the sexual crimes they endured.
Japan created and later destructively executed the
comfort women system with a clear exploitative, imperia-
list mindset. Under the pretext of citizen mobilizations,
they kidnapped these girls,transported them like livestock
alongside other military provisions, and forcibly turned
them into sex slaves.54
This process involved sheer vio-
lence. Testimonies from both countries show that when
false promises and coercion did not work,the women were
simply abducted.”55
When comfort women were transported to their
stations,their personhood was taken from them,and they
were treated like tools with one function: to sleep with
Japanese soldiers whenever needed in whatever way was
desired by the soldiers. When the women arrived, the
comfort station managers, usually local collaborators,
would give them either an identification number or a Ja-
panese name and refer to them by that new name from
that time onward.56
Possibly as an aim to obliterate their
past and quell potential resistance, the station often orde-
red the victims to wear Japanese clothing and mimic the
behaviors of Japanese women.57
Because Japan colonized
Korea,Korean testimonies demonstrated a higher demand
for their explicit expressions of allegiance to Japan. They
were required to openly recite their love for the Japanese
emperor and be thankful for the precious opportunity of
“serving”his soldiers.They needed to pray for Japan’s victo-
ry and express their gratitude to the soldiers who selflessly
sacrificed their lives for the empire.58
These assimilation
policies repeatedly forced these victims to submit both
physically and psychologically to these soldiers.
Both Korean and Chinese comfort women re-
ported the extremely harsh living conditions and perpetual
fear they endured. They were caged in small cubicles that
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![testimony with a short introduction to her current living
situation,then immediately moves us to the moment of her
abduction. She was a rural woman who lived in a remote
village called Hapchon. One day, two Japanese soldiers ab-
ducted Jin while she was picking cotton with her mother.
She was only fourteen at the time. Jin never mentions the
presence of her father before or after the war, so it is pro-
bable that he was absent. As mentioned in Section II, this
absence of a male figure in the household was common du-
ring the 1930s due to war mobilization and a general finan-
cial depression. She concludes this initial “encounter” with
one sentence,“I was crying.”She does not report any details
of fighting against the two soldiers,but only recalls this mo-
ment of emotional frustration.Here,Jin explicitly describes
a moment of vulnerability, maybe as a way to reflect her
sense of powerlessness as a comfort woman.69
The army transported Jin to Kinariyama, Taiwan,
where she spent five years as a comfort woman.In her testi-
mony,Jindisclosesafewdetailsofthesefiveyears.Shemen-
tions the number of men she served every night (twenty),
and that the army injected her with #606 after she contrac-
ted venereal diseases. She mentions that she also worked
as a military nurse during the day and a comfort woman
at night,“with no time to rest [...] [nor] time for a meal.”70
Many other descriptions in her testimony are related to the
general conditions for other comfort women. For example,
Jin describes how “most girls were sixteen to nineteen years
old… they were all abducted and brought to the camp like
me.”71
All of these rather frigid linguistic choices may reflect
the depth of Jin’s trauma and shame,making it hard for her
to recollect her experiences in detail. Moreover, the rest of
Jin’s details demonstrate that her body and other comfort
women’s bodies were treated as simply a tool for these sol-
diers’needs. Her testimony describes how comfort women
were hunted like animals, shipped like military provisions,
and treated like public toilets.
Before becoming comfort women, these women
already had very little control of their own lives and desires.
Then, the unimaginable level of abuse and agony that they
endured further reproduced and reinforced the same social
concept of women’s inferiority to these men—a continua-
69 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 11–15.
70 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 13.
71 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 13.
72 Ding Ning, “My Life in Village Xia,” in the Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature, Joseph S.M. Lau
and Howard Goldblatt eds., (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 132–147.
73 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 121.
tionoftheirturbulentchildhoods.Thesetestimoniesserveas
these victims’lamentations over their horrendous suffering
as comfort women,and demonstrate their consciousness of
objectification by the Japanese army—instilling a shame
that they continued to feel during the post-war decades.
URING THE WAR, these rural women
lacked effective social agency and, unsur-
prisingly, there was little local opposition
against the recruitment of comfort women or
the establishment of comfort stations. The same vulne-
rabilities continued to shape those women’s experiences
after the war. For nearly five decades, all Korean and
Chinese comfort women remained in silence. Korean
and Chinese records that explicitly mentioned military
comfort women recruits, with pictures clearly demons-
trating comfort women being drafted, were ignored.
Hundreds of comfort stations and their records were
left unchecked. Although some social writers, like Ding
Ling,did note these women’s persecution and suffering at
the hands of their communities,72
no academic research
or official investigations were conducted on comfort wo-
men before the 1990s.
Before it became an international topic, most
comfort women survivors were targets of public shaming
and were forced to hide their pasts. If their pasts became
known, their local communities, or sometimes even their
families,would often identify them not as victims of sexual
crimes but as traitors who “slept with Japanese soldiers.”73
Many Chinese survivors were publicly persecuted, impri-
soned, and tortured during the Cultural Revolution for
“counter-revolutionary” sentiments. Historians note that
many comfort women committed suicide during these de-
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![tation of both patriarchal oppression and a Japanese war
crime against Korean women. Using the women’s tes-
timonies, she claimed that Japan violated the 1932 in-
ternational agreement on the prohibition of prostitution,
which was signed by Japan.81
In doing so, the Korean
Council redirected and elevated the comfort women tes-
timonies beyond these victims’individual suffering to an
issue of national pride.
By 1994,the left-wing international human rights
organization, the Japanese Democratic Lawyer’s Associa-
tion, was invited to China. They dedicated themselves to
supportinglawsuitsforChinesecomfortwomenandother
victims of war crimes. From 1994 to 2005, without any
support from the Chinese government or the public,these
Japanese attorneys and local Japanese grassroots organi-
zations, such as the Association to Support the Lawsuits
of Chinese Comfort Women and Association to Support
the Claims of Chinese Law Victims, paid for all research,
investigations, and legal costs.82
It is worth nothing that
these Japanese activists’ great contributions paralleled the
groundbreaking academic work that Japanese scholar Yo-
shiaki Yoshimi did.Professor Su Zhiliang and Chen Lifei
(his wife) at Shanghai Normal University, with funding
from these transnational organizations, began their own
research on comfort women within China.The twelve tes-
timonies included here also were gathered with assistance
from and collaboration with local researchers.83
Unlike the
Korean testimonies,the Chinese victims were interviewed
by historians, who were relatively free from strong politi-
cal or feminist inclinations.Furthermore,since Su studied
in Japan, he had a close relationship with non-Chinese
scholars, which made him aware of the importance of
analyzing the comfort women from a somewhat transna-
tional perspective.
81 Soh, “Korean Comfort Women,” 1232.
82 On the Japanese civic organization’s role in funding the redress movement for the Chinese comfort women,
see Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 190–194.
83 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 97.
84 In the beginning, some of the panels and museums that adopted the comfort women theme were tempo-
rary. In 2006, when the known right-wing politician Abe Shinzo became the leader of Japan, his revisionist stance
prompted the establishment of the “Comfort Women” exhibit in the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, the archive at
Shanghai Normal University in Shanghai, and a symposium in Shanxi University, and the Museum of the Eighth
Route Army in Shanxi’s Wuxiang County. See Vickers, “Commemorating Comfort Women,” 184.
85 Su Zhiliang, The Research on Japanese Military Comfort Women, Tuanjie Publishing: 2015, 1. Here the re-
corded language is my translation, and the original Chinese text reads: 作为一个史学工作者，有责任将日军之暴行予以
彻底的揭露。
86 Hyunah Yang, “Re-membering the Korean Military Comfort Women: Nationalism, Sexuality, and Silencing,” in
Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism, (New York: Routledge, 1998), 125.
87 For instance, by 1995, four years after Kim’s trial, seven comfort women had to live in one common room.
Soh, “Korean Comfort Women,” 1231.
However, given that their work had been accepted
by the CCP and even adopted by national museums such
as the Nanjing Massacre Memorial and Museum of the
Eighth Route Army,84
all bases for patriotic education,it is
noteworthy that some extent of nationalistic and anti-co-
lonial tone is still present in these Chinese scholars’ work.
As Su said in his own book’s foreword, his research is to
delineate “this monster’s [Japan] evil deeds”and completely
expose “the brutality of Japanese militarism” for the honor
of the countless Chinese comfort women whose lives were
ruined.85
Lastly,it should be noted that Su’s book’s publisher
was founded by the State Council of the People’s Republic
of China,which has a direct connection to the Party.
Both the Korean and Chinese governments’
initial response to these grassroots organizations was
to suppress and avoid them. When a Korean news-
paper publicized local records of comfort women
in 1992, the Ministry of Education in South Korea
forbade any further disclosure of these records.86
The
government provided neither funds nor support for
the Korean Council or other organizations that ad-
vocated for these women. Relying on small private
donations, these organizations could not financially
aid these victims.87
The situation was worse in China,
where no official research was conducted or grassroots
organizations formed until 2000. Even in the 2000s,
the Chinese government denied comfort woman Li
Lianchun access to travel documents when she was
invited to speak in the Women’s International War
Crimes Tribunal in Japan, claiming that her deci-
Government's Role in the Redress
Movement
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![then Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama pu-
blicly announced that Japan’s annexation of Korea “was
legally and historically valid and effective,” and that the
colonization “did good things for Korea.” Japan further
angered the Korean public and government by claiming
that the contested area “Dokdo” belonged to Japan, di-
rectly challenging Korea’s territorial sovereignty. Korea
responded by tearing down the Japanese Colonial Head-
quarters and building the National Museum for Inde-
pendence on the site in 1997. With Korea’s victim image
amplified, the Korean government aimed to show how
outrageously incorrect Japan’s revisionist views were, and
how they affected the present.Thus,as intermediary agen-
cies conducted and disseminated these testimonies during
the 1990s, the Japan-Korean relationship greatly deterio-
rated.105
The Korean government actively revisited and in-
vited the public to revisit Korea’s colonial past with a focus
on the Japanese brutality toward the Korean people. Ali-
gning with this political inclination, the testimonies also
dwelled upon the suffering that the Japanese army caused.
The intermediate organization itself, the Korean
Council,clearly had strong anti-colonial inclinations.Yun
Chung-Ok, its leader at the time, came from a family
of independence fighters. She recalled how her father’s
strict and patriotic education influenced her greatly as a
person.106
Moreover, even when the comfort women be-
came a transnational phenomenon, the Korean Coun-
cil and other Korean nonprofit organizations primarily
concentrated on Korean women’s experiences.107
Using
the testimonies, their initial arguments and petitions to
the Japanese government and the United Nations usually
focused on the aspect that Japan, as the colonizer, used its
war mobilization as a cover for the enslavement of Korean
comfort women, their colonized.108
As a result, these vic-
tims and their testimonies intermingled post-war Korea’s
own reconstruction and reorientation with their collective
memory of their colonized past.
Similar to Kim Sang-Hi’s testimony, Lu Xiuzhen
began her testimony with a short introduction to her life
105 Cheol Hee Park, “Cooperation Coupled with Conflicts: Korea-Japan Relations in the Post-Cold War Era,” in
Asia-Pacific Review, 2008, 13–35.
106 See Soh, “Korean Comfort Women,” 1225.
107 See Vickers, “Commemorating Comfort Women,” 176.
108 Rumiko, Nishino eds. Denying the Comfort Women: The Japanese Assault on Historical Truth, (New York, NY:
Routledge, 2018), 219.
109 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 118–120.
110 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 118–120.
111 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 106.
112 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 124.
before becoming a comfort woman. Then, she described
the destruction of China by the Japanese troops,claiming:
I heard that the Japanese troops had vacations.Their officers
had a week-long vacation,while the soldiers had three days.
On their vacation days, the military men would come to
the village from where they stationed.They looted chickens,
grains,oranythingtheycouldfindandshotoxenandpigsto
eat. Worse even than that, the Japanese soldiers kidnapped
the girls and women they could find [...] Chinese people suf-
feredhellishlywhentheJapanesearmyinvadedourcountry.
Japanese soldiers could kill us at will with their guns, so my
mother had no way to save me.Those Japanese troops were
not humans; they were no different from beasts.109
Note in this part, Lu first enumerated the various
crimes the army committed. Only after this laundry list,
Lu started to describe her own experience of being for-
cibly captured by soldiers. Furthermore, her account of
this initial “encounter” ended with a general denuncia-
tion of Japan, and a lamentation, not of her suffering,
but of the entire Chinese population.”110
By including
her experience with other Japanese war crimes, Lu seems
to abstract the personal human rights violation against
her own body into yet another example of Japanese
war crimes against the Chinese people. Moreover, Lu,
like Kim Sang-Hi, consciously established a dichotomy
between the Chinese as the “self” and the Japanese as the
vicious “other.” They crafted Japan’s image as so strange
and evil, practically alien.
This “inhuman” depiction of the Japanese and
their soldiers was common in these women’s testimonies.
For instance, Wan Aihua, throughout her testimony, refers
to the soldiers as the “devils.”111
Yuan Zhulin describes how
the Japanese soldiers were “devilish-looking.”112
To these
women, these men committed unimaginable violence and
abuse against their bodies, so their descriptions became
justifiable and understandable. But in addition to seeing
these descriptions as natural emotional responses to their
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![these victims’ earlier confessions of nationalism, revealing
how these testimonies could have been altered and later
misrepresented by different agenda-driven forces.
Kim Dae-Il begins her testimony by directly di-
ving into her comfort women experiences when she was
drafted and transported from Korea to Manchuria. It fo-
cuses on describing the terrible treatment and verbal in-
sults that Korean comfort women suffered.She laments:
So we were made sex slaves and were forced to service [for-
thy] to [fifty] soldiers each day. One time, a soldier sat on
top of the stomach of a pregnant “comfort woman” who was
almost full term. Apparently, this act induced labor. As a
baby started to appear, he stabbed both the infant and the
mother and exclaimed, “Hey, these senjing (dirty Koreans)
are dead. Come and see.”116
In this testimony,Kim details how one Japanese
soldier pushed a baby out of the body of a comfort wo-
man, stabbed both victims, while yelling “dirty Choson”
(an ethnic slang for Korean people). Her whole testi-
mony focused on how the Japanese soldiers intersec-
ted their power with grave ethnic discrimination while
committing their atrocities. Many other victims also
noted how pervasive ethnic discrimination was in their
comfort women experiences.117
By involving the concept of “ethnic otherness,”
their descriptions reflected both their anti-colonial, an-
ti-Japanese sentiments and their personal nationalism.
The “otherness,” as previously mentioned, established
a “self-other” dichotomy. However, the attribution of
“otherness” came also from the Japanese, not only from
the victims themselves.When the Japanese soldiers mixed
physical abuse with ethnic slurs,they justified their crimes
by branding these women as the “inferior” other, unwor-
thy of any rights. The abuses, therefore, cannot be purely
defined as sexual violence, but also as a unique, targeted
attack against the comfort women’s ethnic identities. Si-
multaneously, Kim’s and others’ choices to include these
details suggest how essential their national identities are
in their memories. In their stories, the Japanese soldiers’
crimes went beyond being mere attacks upon their phy-
116 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 26.
117 Other women like Kim Yoon-Shim, Son Pan-Im, and Lu Xuanzhen also talked about ethnic discrimination. For
more information, see Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 25–27.
118 On the local collaborations with the Japanese Army and its importance in the comfort women, see Kim-Gib-
son, Silence Broken, 32–54; Maki, Unfolding the ‘Comfort Women’ Debates, 1–26.
119 For more information, see Soh, The Comfort Women, 107–142.
sical bodies, but were elevated to an overall abuse against
their countries—revealing the nationalism of their views.
Despite noting how the comfort women system
was founded upon and carried out with Japan’s ethnically
discriminative ideology,these women often noted the par-
ticipation of local collaborators acting as drafters,interpre-
ters for soldiers,or even managers of comfort stations.Al-
though these local collaborators were not the focal point
of their testimonies, historical records reveal the signifi-
cant role that Korean and Chinese collaborators played in
the system’s success.A wide array of authoritarian Korean
personnel were involved, including village elites, commu-
nity leaders,police officers,and even administrative clerks.
These collaborators accompanied private brokers and
sometimes acted as recruiters themselves. Local officials
were given lists of qualified girls in their communities and
were expected to fulfill a quota within a given time.Using
their positions as village leaders, these collaborators often
came to victims repeatedly, making long speeches about
filial piety and encouraging their participation. Besides
wanting to ensure their privileges,the colonial policies im-
posed upon the elites also compelled them to participate
in the recruitment process.118
Sometimes, if a recruiter executed their quota,
their entire community would be rewarded and ho-
nored. Moreover, these elites feared losing authority
or their own daughters to the system, and therefore
zealously assisted with drafting and running comfort
stations. Some collaborators were businessmen who
saw the comfort women system simply as a lucrative
business. Since the Japanese government supported
such businesses, the collaborators could proceed wi-
thout fear of government curtailment. For example,
one Korean collaborator was able to open five comfort
stations in Shanghai and received a 20,000 yen annual
profit.The comfort women could not be separated from
the general, historical pattern of widespread criminal
sex trafficking of women in both Korea and China.
Yet, both governments and various intermediary agen-
cies overlooked this complexity regarding the comfort
women.119
They treated it as simply a unique Japanese
crime against their homeland, rather than fitting it into
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![the long-standing and widely accepted practice of kid-
napping and trafficking women across East Asia.120
However, neither the Korean nor Chinese govern-
ments, nor even the nonprofit organizations researching
comfort women emphasized this aspect.In fact,these agen-
cies intentionally downplayed collaborators’ roles, aiming
to simplify the dichotomy to a simple “self-other”between
countries.We could even explain this kind of simplification
as a continued method of silencing.The result of testimony
became a filtered product that eliminated “uncomfortable”
historical elements, like local collaborators or interpreters’
involvements, that might destabilize people’s nationalism.
Also, given that these women had little chance to speak
about their stories, their interviewers and the intermediary
agencies became a crucial element in finalizing their testi-
monies.We can even push the argument further by sugges-
ting that the omission of the roles of interviewers in their
testimonies in themselves may suggest polished products.
BothKoreanandChinesecomfortwomenseemto
be nationally conscious when they describe other comfort
women’s ethnic makeup. Most of their accounts included
information primarily on women coming from the same
country as themselves. Jin Kyung-Paeng’s testimony per-
fectly demonstrates this emphasis on people’s nationali-
ties. Her story opens by describing her present-day living
arrangements: “living in a small apartment in Bundang,
made available by the Korean government.” After setting
her nationality, Jin begins to summarize a comfort wo-
man’s life. She describes how two Japanese Kempei (mili-
tary police) abducted her and moved her,with thirty other
Korean girls,to Taiwan.She then says:
The Japanese guards divided the Korean women from the
ship into three groups of ten and took us to different loca-
tions. We were the first Korean women in the area. There
were also [twenty] Japanese women who had been there
for a year. But the [fifty] of us were not enough to meet the
soldiers’ demands.121
120 For more information, see Vickers, “Commemorating Comfort Women,” 176.
121 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 12.
122 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 11–15.
123 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 106.
124 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 101–105.
125 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, A Resolution Expressing that the Government of Japan should
formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Impe-
rial Armed Forces' coercion of young women into sexual slavery, known to the world as "comfort women", during its
colonial and wartime occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II,
July 30 (2007), 110th Cong.
Here, Jin reminds her readers twice more
about the comfort women’s nationality. The first time,
Jin reveals that her “group” was the first Korean group
transported to “serve” this army unit. The second time
is when she tells us that the thirty Korean girls living
in her comfort station could not fulfill the needs of
their assigned soldiers.122
Similarly, Chinese victim Li
Guiying’s testimony also highlights nationality. She
says: “All were Chinese, but wore Japanese robes.”123
It should be noted that, although rare, some women’s
testimonies included information regarding the trans-
national features of comfort women. For instance,
Ms. K (a Korean victim) mentioned that some girls
“of Chinese origin” lived in a comfort station in Man-
churia.124
At least to a certain extent, comfort women
from many national origins coexisted within the same
station. Maybe, then, we should look at how these wo-
men’s emphasis overlapped with the nationalistic wri-
ting styles of their interviewers.
In the Korean case, as mentioned above, the
agency that gave voice to the Korean comfort women
hadaverynationallyfocusedagenda.Theirfoundinglea-
ders were highly nationalistic, and their early petitions
(during the period when testimonies were recorded)
were also focused on Korean nationalism. Moreover,
the book that collected Korean comfort women’s tes-
timonies also had a rather Korea-oriented perspective.
First, the Washington Coalition for Comfort Women
was founded by Korean Americans—a diaspora com-
munity. In fact, the comfort women redress movement
received more support and attention in the U.S. than in
Korea and China in the 1990s. Through grassroots ef-
forts, many Korean American communities persuaded
U.S. politicians to take action to pressure the Japanese
government in the compensation process. On July 30,
2007, the U.S. government issued a House Resolution
calling Japan to “formally acknowledge, apologize, and
accept historical responsibilities.”125
This could be connected to Jewish efforts to rally
54
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![took Hwang to a room and raped her. Before describing
the moment of violence, Hwang mentions how her hair
“was still braided,” a traditional indication of innocence.
Kim described her psyche at the moment of the violence.
I still had absolutely no idea what he was about to do. I just
told him that I hoped one of the orders was for me to work at
a factory.He told me that I was not going to any factory.So
I asked him what his orders were. He told me to follow his
instructions. Then he told me to take off my clothes. It was
like a bolt from the sky. My braided hair clearly showed I
was a virgin. How was it possible that I could take off my
clothes in front of a man?139
Hwang was not the only victim who described her
innocence and ignorance of soldiers’ violence. Kang Duk-
Kyung described how she had no knowledge on sex, not
even “the word menstruation” before becoming a comfort
woman.140
Pak Kyung-Soon lamented her innocence as she
followed the orders of the Japanese soldiers.“I was so naive,”
Pak said.141
Words like “innocent,”“naive,” and “follow or-
ders/directions”appeared in many testimonies,especially in
those of Korean victims.The motivations for underscoring
such information may be overdetermined.
First,the ideal of chastity,as we discussed,might be
a deeply ingrained concept in these women’s minds.When
representing their lives, these women may want to under-
score their formerly chaste status. Second, the right-wing
revisionistargumentthatJapanesescholarsandofficialsheld
was that these comfort women were contractual prostitutes,
who voluntarily signed up to serve the military.142
These tes-
timonies,especially the Korean cases,were initially conduc-
ted for the purpose of supplementing evidence on ongoing
international trials and investigations. Therefore, comfort
women’s narratives were turned into weapons to attack op-
posing revisionist challenges.Third,their stress on sexual in-
nocence fits the“perfect victim paradigm,”traits that people
often expect sexual violence victims to demonstrate. The
perfect rape victim was powerless and conservative in her
personal dress and behaviors, showing injuries to attest to
139 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 6.
140 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 13-19.
141 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 75.
142 Onozawa Akane, “Comfort Women and State Prostitution,” in Denying the Comfort Women: The Japanese
State’s Assault on Historical Truth, 70–87.
143 Jan Jordan, “Perfect Victims, Perfect Policing? Improving Rape Complainants’ Experiences of Police Investi-
gations.”
144 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 147.
145 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women,148.
her reluctance.143
During the redress movement, different
intermediary agencies intentionally tried to fit comfort wo-
men into this “perfect victimhood”paradigm. For example,
instead of depicting mature women,many comfort women
statues erected in Korea and China are either youthful tee-
nage girls with slim bodies and solemn facial expressions
(see Fig.1,2) or old,distressed elders (see Fig.3).All of this
suggests the hidden yet intense pressure upon these women
and their interviewers to emphasize purity.
Besides innocence, these women seem to also
highlight their powerlessness to expose male transgressions.
Huang Youliang, for example, started her testimony with
Japan’s invasion of her village.They caught her and shouted
at her so loudly that she felt as “if [her] head were swelling.”
A soldier then followed her home, “carried [her] into the
bedroom,and ripped off [her] shirt and skirt.”144
Although
her description is short, Huang describes a moment of ab-
solute vulnerability.Readers could no longer read about her
presence, but only focus on what the soldiers’ actions were
doing to her body. A while after that initial violence, the
Japanese army transported her to a comfort station, where
the girls were guarded by soldiers.
Besides the physical torment, Huang describes
how the soldiers “never gave [them] anything or any mo-
ney.They didn’t even give [them] enough to eat,never mind
pay [them].”145
This detail is also the last bit of information
that she shares about her life as a comfort woman, before
moving on to her later journey and liberation. Both the
colonial records and similar stories told by other women
have substantiated her claims.Not to challenge Huang’s or
others’ statements, I wish to dwell on Huang’s decision to
include the powerless moments,the comfort station’s heavy
surveillance,and the“non-contractual”relationship between
her and the army.All of this could support the intermedia-
ry agencies’definition of comfort women as military sexual
slaves,which,like the emphasis upon innocence,might have
served to counter the rising revisionist arguments denying
the truth.
Since the mid-1990s, a “free history” movement
began and was adopted by many Japanese right-wing his-
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![torians like Fujioka Nobukatsu. They argued that since
no convincing evidence was ever presented to prove the
Japanese government’s direct involvement in the comfort
women draft and comfort station management, these wo-
men were lying. Even if such brutal incidents did happen,
they were the crimes of civilian middlemen, for all these
middlemen drafted only consensual prostitutes. Claiming
they were never enslaved and that these women got paid
and had the freedom to leave,Kamisaka Fuyuko even went
as far as arguing that the whole comfort women “issue”
was fabricated by anti-Japanese activists to demean Japan’s
image.146
The brute force used by these soldiers juxtaposed
by the women’s vulnerability was the first challenge against
146 Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II , Trans. Su-
zanne O’Brien (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 1–4.
147 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 154.
148 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women,161.
the revisionists’argument concerning “willingness.”The de-
tails about food shortages and heavy comfort station sur-
veillance countered the revisionists’ denial of the Japanese
government involvement. Finally, the testimonies’ empha-
sis on “no payment”made these women “sexual slaves,”not
“prostitutes.”
Huang ends her testimony with a demand:an apo-
logy from the Japanese government. Her ending encapsu-
lates the feelings held in nearly all the Korean and Chinese
comfort women’s testimonies. Chen Yabian demanded “an
apology and compensation from the Japanese,”147
Lin Yajin
demanded “the Japanese government [...] admit the atroci-
tiesitcommittedandcompensatemebeforeIdie,”148
Hwang
Peace Monument [2]
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![Keum-Ju demanded “Japan show true repentance and act
accordingly,”149
and Moon Pil-Gi demanded “clear apolo-
gies and compensation from the Japanese government.”150
The Korean testimonies were recorded twenty years
before those of the Chinese victims. Yet, these women of-
fered the same two demands: proper, sincere apology and
compensation. These explicit demands also turned these
testimonies from an autobiographical account of victims’
lives into argumentative essays or petitions addressed to
the Japanese government. On the one hand, such confor-
mity may reveal a consensus that was reached among these
victims to prompt Japan to redress their demands. On the
other hand,it may suggest the intermediary agencies also
149 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 10.
150 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 67.
151 Like the Korean Council interviewers, Washington Coalition for Comfort women interviewers, or the Shan-
ghai Normal University’s interviewers (Su and Chen), all directly handled comfort women’s grievances to Japan.
had a similar objective for the comfort women’s stories.151
Such demands made the comfort women a continuing,
unsolved debate, a problem that these intermediary agen-
cies had to continue to protest and fight against. Ironically,
although these comfort women demanded compensation,
many still “chose”to reject compensation when offered.
In May 2020, a survivor named Lee Yong-Soo
came forward as a whistleblower to expose the Korean
Council,whocoercedthemnottotakecompensationfrom
Japan. The agency forced her to travel around the world
making speeches, retelling her testimony, even when Lee
felt uncomfortable doing so.An official investigation later
found that the leader of the Korean Council,Yoon Mee-
Nanum Jip/House of Sharing [3]
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![Hyang,had embezzled public funds and private donations
for personal use.152
In China’s case, as mentioned, Su also
rejected Japan’s wish to pay these women, upon the wo-
men’s requests. Even though they suffered with chronic
pain and depression, and lived on minimal support from
their governments, and even when these women explicit-
ly announced their desire to receive compensation, they,
through the mouths of their representatives, suddenly
declined and seemed even to “denounce” these payments.
According to Su, these victims considered such payments
to be a half-hearted,insincere apology.
In this section, I illustrated how comfort women’s
testimonies had anti-colonial,anti-Japanese sentiments,na-
tionalistic subtexts,and mission-directed inclinations.These
commonalities aligned with Korean and Chinese political
environmentsandtheireffortstolinktheircolonialpastand
Japan’s war crimes to Japan’s present actions. It also aligned
with the nationalistic inclinations of the intermediary agen-
cies who conducted these interviews.Though not to negate
or question the validity of their claims, these testimonies
still reveal that comfort women’s stories could have been
trimmed.Rural women’s lack of social agency continued to
shape their experience after the war and after the comfort
women system ended. Even when the opportunity arose
for these women to narrate their individual experiences,
the political environment, nonprofit organizations, and the
directed “self-other”dichotomy and curated war memories
influenced and perhaps even directed their voices toward
their distinctive agendas. Hence, these women’s agency be-
came compromised and their stories altered to suit political,
mission-directed purposes.
Although influenced by political, feminist, and
nonprofit institutions and their agendas,I believe these wo-
men,by personally telling their stories,did express their dis-
tinct feelings and reveal their unique experiences. Beyond
the political and feminist subtexts, these women demons-
trated their own agencies through exposing the victimiza-
tion, discrimination, and objectification they experienced
during the war and throughout the post-war era. In their
152 Hyonhee Shin, Josh Smith, “South Korea charges former 'comfort women' activist with fraud, embezzle-
ment,” Reuters, September 14, 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-comfortwomen/south-korea-
charges-former-comfort-women-activist-with-fraud-embezzlement-idUSKBN2651GB.
153 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 148.
154 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women,147–151.
stories, they controlled their narration, created their de-
sired representations, and, most importantly, became active
players in forming personal histories for comfort women.
After the war ended,the comfort women’s identity
was a severe public stigma. Huang Youliang’s and Moon
Ok-Ju’s testimonies on their post-war lives reveal that these
women challenged the conventional narrow study on the
comfort women by stressing the unique horror of their
wartime suffering. Additionally, these testimonies illustrate
how their communities,and sometimes even their families,
were prejudiced against them for being victimized.Job dis-
crimination, verbal and physical abuse, and social isolation
filled their post-war lives with unwavering misery.
After describing her comfort woman experience,
Huang Youliang described her post-war experiences in
three short paragraphs. Her father and a neighbor held
a fake funeral to save her from her enslavement.To elude
the soldiers’ probable searches, Huang and her father left
their village and became beggars. When they eventual-
ly returned to their village, Huang’s past became widely
known.She said:
Since everyone in the village knew that I had been ravaged
by the Japanese troops, no man in good health or of good
family wanted to marry me. I had no choice but to marry
a man who had leprosy. My husband knew about my past
and used it as an excuse to beat and curse me for no reason
other than that he was unhappy.153
Here, Huang tells us that her past as a comfort
woman made her unmarriable material, because her body
had been violated by the enemy. She had to marry a sick,
abusive man whom she clearly had little love for. During
the Cultural Revolution, her friends and neighbors targe-
ted her as a traitor who supposedly “served” the Japanese
soldiers. The village children also cursed her due to her
awful past. The government denied both her husband’s
and children’s applications for the Party or local leadership
roles.Even today,50 years after her abuse,Huang revealed
that even her own children would “sometimes swear at
[her]”because of her past.154
In these few sentences, Huang reveals the sheer
amount of objectification and discrimination she endured
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![during the post-war era. First, her suffering did not end
with the war;she was shunned by her village,who repeate-
dly reminded her that her dignity was irrevocably ruined.
Huang was still denied control over her own body and life
during her post-comfort woman life:she reported that she
“had to marry” her husband. More importantly, although
we cannot be certain if Huang’s past as a comfort woman
was the sole cause of her post-war suffering, Huang her-
self seemed to have already linked her past to her present
struggles. She seemed to accept the public’s opinion that
her past was shameful and that her body was too da-
maged to qualify her for a “good”marriage. Like in Zhou
Fengying’s testimony, this intersection between the past
comfort women experience and the present marginaliza-
tion in Huang’s recount was a somewhat“newly produced”
memory.Particularly,the grave emotional and psychologi-
cal toll in Huang’s words spoke both to her miserable en-
slavement and her family and community’s decades-long
antagonism towards her.
Second, the public reduced her identity to one
generic label—comfort woman. Huang’s personal strug-
gle, poverty, and suffering did not temper their prejudice.
The mere fact that Huang slept with many Japanese men
seems to have stigmatized her with an inexcusable sin. In
the end, Huang’s story did not surface until the 2000s,
primarily because the public refused to listen to her sto-
ry with compassion for half a century. Third, because of
her “sin,” Huang, in the public’s mind, deserved all the ill
treatment she received. Whether it was her government,
family, or a random stranger in her village, anyone could
abuse and insult her with impunity. The public actually
punished Huang for her enslavement and shamed her to
stay silently in the shadow of her past.
Moon Ok-Ju, like Huang, devoted a small por-
tion of her testimony to delineating her post-war struggles.
Moon told us that she was de facto liberated in 1945 after
Japan’s surrender and the arrival of Allied troops.She,along
with other Korean comfort women,was sent back to Korea.
Moon did not mention her family or anyone per se in des-
cribing her post-war life.
I stayed home for a while and thought about my future. I
had no formal education, no experience in anything, and
also I was beyond a marriageable age. I had to find so-
mething to support myself. Those days, women working
in bars were looked down upon as low-class and dancers
155 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 59.
156 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 53–61.
were considered high-class prostitutes. So I became a “ki-
saeng,” similar to a geisha, who, in general, was treated
better. I earned a living by entertaining customers in bet-
ter restaurants or in private houses.155
Shedideverythingonherown.Afterstayinghome
for a while after the war, Moon had to “become a kisaeng
(a courtesan providing entertainment to upper class men,
often a euphemism for prostitution)”because her comfort
women past left her with no alternative.Living in extreme
destitution,Moon complained that she had “pains all over
[her] limbs…making even simple walking a difficult task.”
She ends her testimony claiming she has foreseen her fate,
a fate in which “[I] am all alone.” Moon died two years
after her interview.156
Although never explicitly discussing her ill treat-
ment, Moon still managed to reveal her struggles and
agony with her words. First, Moon had a home to which
she returned after the war,but she did not stay there long,
possibly due to discrimination. Even without a skill or
prospect for employment, Moon still had to leave her
family home and find a means to support herself. Even
though it was her choice to become a kisaeng, she had
little choice but to accept the offer, because “she had to
find something to support [herself].”Like Huang,the life
choices that Moon made during the post-war era were
fundamentally out of her control. Not only did she lack
social power, comfort women like Moon were ultimately
denied control over their own lives. Consequently, Moon
lived in an apartment subsidized by the government. Her
destitution is a common phenomenon among comfort
women survivors from all countries. Most of them have
no income source and have to depend on their families or
government support,remaining mired in poverty.
In her post-war job as a kisaeng, her primary role
was to serve a male client’s pleasure.Her job still made her
dependent on the “desires”of men. In a way, after her en-
slavement, Moon was forced to take on a lifestyle similar
to those of her comfort woman days. This continuation
not only demonstrates comfort women’s post-war strug-
gle, but also complicates the clear “self-other” dichotomy
— with the Korean identity being the only credentialed
“self.”Also, decolonization did not happen overnight.The
residues of colonial effects continued after the war ended.
Moon and other comfort women’s post-war continued
poverty could be interpreted as Japan’s colonial remnants
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![in these postcolonial societies. As early as the 1950s, the
Korean government worked with the U.S. military sta-
tioned in South Korea to form the sex industry around the
military bases, establishing camptown prostitution. Pre-
sident Park Chung Hee legalized prostitution in Korea as
a way to justify camptown prostitution.Wianbu, like ian-
fu (comfort woman in Japanese), was a euphemism used
for Korean women serving in such towns. By the 1970s,
industries often used prostitution to please foreign inves-
tors,especially businessmen from Japan.Caroline Norma’s
study even suggested direct collaborations between the
governments of Japan and Korea in facilitating prostitu-
tion,and Japan supported the development of prostitution
facilities on Cheju,a South Korean island.157
Moon lived in complete social isolation during the
post-war era. Throughout her testimony focused on her
comfort woman life, Moon consistently used “we” when
describing the situations she had experienced.For instance,
in her narration, she says that comfort woman life was dif-
ficult because “we were not fed well there, and so we were
always hungry.”By using “we,”she makes her comfort wo-
manlifeasharedexperiencethatothervictimsalsoendured.
However, her language completely changes when she re-
counts her current life.She uses “I,”with no mention of ac-
companiment by relatives,friends,or even neighbors.Moon
indicates that she was not surprised by her current isolation
because she had long fearfully anticipated this fate. As in
Huang’s experience, the public shaming had made Moon
believe she had committed an inexcusable sin that would
always keep her from attaining normality.
Huang’s and Moon’s descriptions of their post-war
struggles and destitution are not unique: the other comfort
women also reported living in poverty,enduring abuse,and
being ostracized by their communities.158
Countering the
conventional comfort woman image, these testimonies
proved that the public deliberately marginalized these wo-
157 Caroline Norma, “Demand from Abroad: Japanese Involvement in the 1970s' Development of South
Korea's Sex Industry,” in The Journal of Korean Studies (1979) 19, no. 2 (2014): 399–428. http://www.jstor.org/
stable/43923277.
158 Kim Haksun’s husband abused her because of her comfort woman identity. Other women hid their comfort
women identities as a secret because of the destructive potential. For more information, see Angella Son, “Inade-
quate Innocence of Korean Comfort Girls-Women: Obliterated Dignity and Shamed Self,” Springer Since, New York,
2017.
159 Another important element in the study of comfort women is that nonprofit organizations outside of
Korea usually worked with a specific agenda too. For example, most explicit support from American senators were
efforts to win votes from their Korean American communities. Feminist organizations, like those in Japan, used
Korean comfort women testimonies to prove a lineage of patriarchal aggression existed, while avoiding the voices
of comfort women. For nonprofit organizations like the United Nations, comfort women testimonies were debased
into proving the subject matter as a violation of human rights. Again, victims’ individualism, their consciousness,
and their experiences were never the center of the discussion.
men.In the eyes of the public,they were emblems of shame
and an inferior past that China and Korea wanted to for-
get. A comfort woman’s unchaste, violated body made her
the antithesis of the transitional feminine ideal,159
making
them also the victims of their societies’shame surrounding
female sexuality.This shame was constantly reinforced and
repeated via the widespread social discrimination victims
experienced after the war.
After they were liberated from stations, many
comfort women faced decades of public shaming, social
exclusion, and even physical abuse. These women’s deci-
sions to detail their struggles in their narrations reflect
how they linked their post-war pain to their identity
as comfort women. The public shaming repeatedly ne-
gated these women’s victimization, turning the comfort
women themselves into culprits for their suffering. Un-
surprisingly, past traumas combined with present public
castigations resulted in the prevalence of a self-depre-
cating attitude in many of the testimonies. Yin Yulin’s
testimony, for example, shows that victims developed a
strong sense of shame about their pasts and deemed their
lives failures. By confessing their shame and pain, they
challenged the assumed positive benefits of these inter-
views, revealing the underlying brutality and senseless
nature with the act of “revisiting”the crime.
Yin Yulin begins her story by describing her pre-
draft life. She tells us that she married a man when she
was fifteen and he died from typhoid four years later.On
the very day of her husband’s death, the soldiers invaded
her village.They caught her when she was “in great grief
for [her] husband [...] and too weak to resist them.”After
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Deeply Rooted Personal Shame
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![the invasion,the soldiers stationed on a nearby mountain
frequently came down to “rape [her] at [her] home.”Yin
records how her body “was always trembling with fear”
because she had no place to hide. Although water was
precious in her village as it needed to be carried from afar,
Yin would still wash herself repeatedly after each rape
because she felt her “body was very dirty.”160
After a while, the soldiers took Yin away from
her home to a blockhouse on the mountain itself, where
an officer and his soldiers gang raped Yin. He “rose from
the bed and returned repeatedly, torturing [her] almost
the entire night.” From that traumatic night, Yin “suf-
fered from an incurable trembling.” She shakes uncon-
trollably “every time [she] is nervous [...] and would feel
tremendous pain in [her] heart” whenever she shares her
trauma. The rapes continued for two years, and by then
Yin had become so sick that she “suffered from constant
dizziness and body aches as well as from a menstrual di-
sorder.” Yin believed that her “comfort woman” status
scared off every man in her village, so she chose to marry
a man from afar. This distant marriage ended her ensla-
vement. Her husband respected her and “took on several
hard jobs simultaneously for many years to earn money,”
to help improve Yin’s health. However, even after the war
ended, Yin lamented the continuation of her misery. Her
uterine damage left her with a “filthy reddish discharge,”
which made her lower body “hurt constantly and [...] eve-
ry movement difficult.” The physical pain was combined
with “acute psychological problems” whenever she had
her night terrors in which she recalled “these unspeakable
things.”Yin ends her story by stating her commitment to
revealing the Japanese army’s evilness and demanding an
official apology from Japan.161
Yin’s testimony does not just re-narrate her past.
More importantly, it unveils how her traumatic past has
impacted her life, leaving permanent scars and mental
imprints. First, Yin explicitly expresses her grave shame
concerning her enslavement.In her mind,her sexual abuse
corrupted her self-worth, making her dirty. Even fifty
years later, Yin still reiterated that she compulsively wa-
shed her body every time she was violated. Moreover, si-
milar to Huang Youliang,Yin presumed that her comfort
woman past made her an unwanted, unsuitable woman
160 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 135–140.
161 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 135–140.
162 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 138.
163 A common adjective employed by comfort women to label their memory, for example Kim Yoon-Shim, Zhu
Qiaomei.
for any local man, forcing her to marry far from home.
As discussed, both Korean and Chinese rural women had
long been immersed in an “ideal of chastity”tradition that
considered women’s sexual purity to be the universal femi-
nine goal.Thus,comfort women failed to fulfill a woman’s
designated duty by failing to protect their purity. There-
fore, Yin’s shame probably arose from her sense of failure
in protecting her sacred chastity. Even before the public
began to shame her,Yin had already sentenced herself to a
life as someone for whom it would be “impossible to find
a man to marry.”162
Second, her shame existed alongside her physical
and psychological pain. The torture she endured left Yin
with uncontrollable trembling,chronic pain,and night ter-
rors,all of which constantly pulled her back to her trauma-
tic past,a past she labeled “unspeakable.”163
Her memories
burdened and tortured her. Just as with her other tangible
pains, memories served as a constant reminder that she
had failed in her feminine duties and become damaged
goods. Andby including her pain and her memories in
her testimony, Yin challenged the conventional view: she
bluntly told us that even the process of extracting comfort
women’s stories was arguably brutal by nature. It forced
Yin to recall moments when she lost her self-worth and
dignity.It worsened her psychological state,triggering her
intense fear and uncontrollable trembling. Consequently,
the interview processes forced comfort women to relive
the origins of their shame once again.
The primary component of comfort women’s expe-
rience is trauma. The imprisonments, physical abuses, and
rapes all had profound impacts on these women’s physical
and mental health. Building upon previous scholarship, I
examined a previously unexplored topic: comfort women’s
self-agency. The women’s testimonies, then, personalized
these traumas, stressing each woman’s individuality. Kim
Soon-Duk’s testimony attests that through the constant in-
corporation of their emotional responses toward their trau-
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Private Trauma and Collective
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![mas and by the conscious omission of certain parts of their
experiences, the comfort women’s testimonies allowed the
victims to individualize their pain,revealing their distinctive
struggles in dealing with their enslavement. These stories,
I argue, created a platform for these women to take on the
burden of representation for the other thousands of un-
heard comfort women by situating themselves against the
colonialpastasactiveplayerswhonavigatedandresistedthe
political and social forces they faced.
Kim Soon-Duk begins her story with an intro-
duction.She was then seventy-three years old,living in the
House of Sharing in Seoul.164
She was born and raised in
Dai-in Myon, near Jinju city. When she was sixteen years
old,local Japanese officials posted a notice of the mandato-
ry draft of all Korean women who were fifteen and above
to work overseas as nurses. Kim’s mother told Kim to hide
from the draft at Kim’s sister’s house, but Kim believed her
mother “was needed at home more than [she] was.” She
decided to go. The army sent Kim and fifty other Korean
girls to Nagasaki and housed them at an inn.Each night,a
group of“virgin girls”would be forced to have sex with mili-
tary officers.One night,Kim was also sent,and the Japanese
officer persuaded her that “every young girl experiences sex
in her lifetime,[and] that [she] might as well do it now”.165
Kim omitted the details of that night. The next morning,
Kim confronted the manager about her and others’ expe-
riences,but the manager told her that sex with local autho-
rity was necessary for them to secure a job position.After a
week, the army shipped the same 50 girls to Shanghai and
checked them into a comfort station—“We were sex slaves
in it,”Kim concludes.166
They were taken to a military hospital where Kim
saw hundreds of Korean girls.Kim told us that she became
ill soon after her enslavement,“bleed[ing] severely through
[her] vagina.” Her manager gave her some black powder
that reduced the bleeding.Because her comfort station was
close to the battlefront, Kim saw so many corpses that she
“even dream[s] of it to this day.”After talking about seeing
death, Kim devotes an entire paragraph to her thoughts of
suicide.“Somehow I could not do it.I had poor health.I was
still bleeding [...] I still had nightmares.” Eventually, Kim
“became acquainted with a middle-aged man”named Izu-
164 Founded by Korean Council, Buddhist organization, and other foundations.
165 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 38.
166 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 37–38.
167 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 38–40.
168 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 41.
169 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 38.
mi who was kind to her and allowed her to stay in his room.
KimevenhadtheleisuretostudyJapanese.Kimconfidedto
Izumi about her suicidal thoughts,and he helped her obtain
travel papers to return home. Their relationship continued
after she was back in Korea, and they exchanged gifts and
letters. Izumi’s letters stopped coming after the war. Kim
says she owes Izumi a lot for his help.167
Kim then encapsulates her post-war life with three
things: she lost all of her family, she had to work different
jobs to support herself, and she developed a relationship
with a man but remained unmarried, because she “knew”
with her comfort woman background she could“never [get]
legally married.”She still had nightmares and they became
worse when “remembering the past at these interviews.”
Kim ends her testimony by demanding that the Japanese
government compensate all comfort women and also pu-
blicize their crimes,and that the Korean government apply
more effort toward advocating for them.168
On its surface,Kim Soon-Duk’s testimony delivers
the same anti-colonial, anti-Japanese sentiments as other
testimonies, emphasizing the same nationalistic inclina-
tions, and ends with the same universal demands as the
others. However, if we examine the specific plot and lan-
guage choices within Kim’s testimony,we are able to extract
the individual story of a rural woman.First,she counters the
conventional powerless, passive image of comfort woman
and makes herself an active player who strategically navi-
gates the surrounding environment.In the beginning,Kim
tells us that she made the choice to answer the draft and
travel overseas (believing she would become a nurse). Kim
defied her mother’s orders, knowing that her mother “was
needed at home more than [she] was.”169
Beyond demonstrating the trickery of the Japanese
government, Kim reveals that poor rural Koreans like her
mother dared to resist Japanese orders,and that poor,mar-
ginalized girls like Kim were courageous enough to migrate
overseas. Also, Kim’s final decision speaks to three things:
her ability to make an independent decision against her
parents’will, her calculated intellect to minimize the draft’s
damage to her family,and her selfless familial love that en-
abled her to sacrifice herself for her family.Later,the second
day after her initial rape, Kim tells us that she confronted
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![her manager on behalf of herself and others about their
draft’s deceptive description. This detail, again, illustrates
that Kim did not passively tolerate her violation; instead,
she directly challenged a male authority figure and voiced
her grievances.
Moreover, liberation from her enslavement was
the result of her active expressions of grievances to officer
Izumi. Her liberation ultimately depended upon Izumi,
but it would not have been secured if she had not expressed
her desires.Her actions reveal that comfort women should
not be defined as passive victims who accepted their fates,
but rather as active agents who fought for their freedom.
Other comfort women also recorded their repeated at-
tempts to escape from their enslavement, despite the risk
of severe punishments.
For Kim, in contrast to other testimonies, a Ja-
panese soldier was the key person to release her from
enslavement. Kim tells us twice that “Izumi is a kind
person.”170
After meeting Izumi, Kim’s living conditions
improved enough to enable her to even learn Japanese as
a leisure activity. He was able to respond to her demands
by liberating her from her life as a comfort woman.Their
attachment was strong enough to withstand both dis-
tance and time. Kim reports that they maintained com-
munication throughout the war, and she even “sent him
a number of gifts, including a Senninbari, a Japanese
good luck belt.”171
Senninbari, or a thousand stitch belt,
is usually made by the family of the soldier in hope of
them avoiding all harms during combat. Kim explicit-
ly claims that she “owe[d] him a lot.”172
Her decision to
discuss their relationship suggests that she tried to indi-
vidualize her testimony, to have it function as something
beyond a simple victim’s tale. Her story countered or at
least complicated the normative “self-other” dichotomy
consistently presented when discussing comfort women.
It shows that sometimes intimacy and even “kindness”
were intermingled with the violence.Whether we should
define their relationship as romantic is not the point.
Rather, these “abnormal” subplots within Kim’s story
reflect her agency: she was no longer a faceless, generic
victim. Kim’s narration made her a three-dimensional
person with ambitions and dreams.
Despite the potential of external influences tain-
ting their testimonies, Kim, like other comfort women
170 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 40-41.
171 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 40.
172 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 40.
173 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 39.
survivors, was put in charge of constructing a story that
revolved solely around her own life. She picked particu-
lar stories and information to be included in her testimo-
ny while omitting others. These choices reflect how her
unique traumas affected her psyche. For instance, Kim
omitted details of the initial rape and disclosed few perso-
nal details of her comfort women’s experiences.Obviously,
such omissions might be the result of memory loss, given
that her testimony was based upon recollections of events
from a half a century ago. Her omissions may also sug-
gest her reluctance to retell the details of these traumatic
experiences. Just as Yin Yulin expressed, it could be tre-
mendously painful for these victims to even think about
the past,the violations,and the moments of their absolute
vulnerability. In a way, giving testimony forced them to
relive their unimaginable sufferings again, and Kim may
have simply refused to continue linking herself to these
pains.The acts of selection and omission in these testimo-
nies are a form of power, and by omitting, Kim avoided
disclosing pieces of her privacy and dignity that were rob-
bed from her decades ago.Through these unspoken words,
Kim retained control of her self-representation.
Instead of specific anecdotes, Kim spends a pa-
ragraph describing her suicidal thoughts during her time
as a comfort woman. Even without anecdotes, powerful
phrases like “I frequently thought of killing myself” and
“I thought of jumping from a high place”convey her des-
pair and speak to the extent of the brutality,objectification,
and suffering she endured during her enslavement.173
If we
consider that a woman committing suicide to protect her
chastity was regarded as a courageous response to poten-
tial violation and virtue in the traditional feminine dialec-
tic texts,it is quite possible that Kim included her suicidal
thoughts as a way to align herself with this cultural stan-
dard.As she mentioned,her past made her “unmarriable,”
and her post-war struggles certainly illustrated her conti-
nued marginalization by society.Therefore,if her “violated
body” was her original sin in her society’s eyes, she may
have included her suicidal thoughts to elevate herself: she,
as any other chaste woman, thought about suicide when
faced with violation. The fact that Kim thinks of suicide
reflects her agency—her ability to control her life. Mo-
reover, even though she lived in such a vulnerable socie-
tal position, Kim persevered and survived. She was brave
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
65](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/yhrspring2021-211020115003/85/YHR-Spring-2021-70-320.jpg)
![“Comfort Women”." In Rethinking Japanese Fem-
inisms, edited by Bullock Julia C., Kano Ayako,
and Welker James, 230-50. Honolulu: University
of Hawai'i Press, 2018.
Shin, Gi-Wook, and Daniel C. Sneider.“Japanese
Colonial Rule, Forced Labor, and Comfort Wom-
en,”in Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and
the Asia-Pacific War. Stanford, California: Stanford
University Press, 2016.
Shin, Hyonhee and Josh Smith,“South Korea charges
former 'comfort women' activist with fraud, em-
bezzlement,”Reuters, September 14, 2020. https://
www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-com
fortwomen/south-korea-charges-former-com
fort-women-activist-with-fraud-embezzle
ment-idUSKBN2651GB.
Soh, C. Hee.“Women’s Sexual Labor and State in
Korean History.”Journal of Women's History 15,
no. 4 (Winter 2004): 170-177. doi:10. 1353/
jowh.2004.0022 .
Soh, C. Sarah. “Aspiring to craft modern gendered
selves: “Comfort women’s and Chongsindae in
late colonial Korea.” Critical Asian Studies 36.2
(2004): 175-198.
Soh, Sarah Chunghee.“The Korean “comfort women”
tragedy as structural violence”in Rethinking histor-
ical injustice and reconciliation in Northeast Asia: the
Korean experience, edited by Gi-Wook Shin, Soon-
Won Park, and Daqing Yang, 55-74. New York,
NY : Routledge, 2006.
Soh, C. Sarah. The comfort women: Sexual violence and
postcolonial memory in Korea and Japan. University
of Chicago Press, 2008.
Soh, C. Sarah,“The Korean" comfort women": Move-
ment for redress,”Asian Survey 36, no. 12 (1996):
1226-1240.
Son,Angella.“Inadequate Innocence of Korean Comfort
Girls-Women:Obliterated Dignity and Shamed Self,”
PastoralPsychology 67,175–194 (2018).doi:10.1007/
s11089-017-0779-8.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty.“Can the subaltern speak?:
postkolonialität und subalterne artikulation.”Wien
Verlag Turia, 2008.
Su Zhiliang. The Research on Japanese Military Comfort
Women. China: Tuanjie Publishing: 2015.
Tanaka,Yuki. Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and
Prostitution During World war II and the US Occu-
pation. Routledge: 2001.
Vickers, Edward.“Commemorating “Comfort Women”
Beyond Korea,”Remembering Asia’s World War Two,
London: Routledge, 2019.
Ward,Thomas J.“The Comfort Women Controversy:
Not Over Yet,”East Asia (2016): 255-269.
Yamashita,Yeong-ae.“Revisiting the “Comfort Wom-
en”: Moving Beyond Nationalism.”in Transform-
ing Japan: how feminism and diversity are making a
difference, edited by Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow
213-128. New York, NY: Feminist Press, 2011.
Yang, Hyunah. “Re-membering the Korean Military
Comfort Women: Nationalism, Sexuality, and
Silencing.” in Dangerous Women: Gender and
Korean Nationalism, New York: Routledge, 1998,
pp. 123-139.
Yang, Lijun.“A Clash of Nationalisms: Sino–Japanese
Relations in the Twenty-First Century,”in China
-Japan Relations in the 21st Century, (Singapore:
National University of Singapore, 2017), 83-127.
Yoshiaki,Yoshimi. Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the
Japanese Military During World War II. Translated
by Suzanne O’Brien. New York: Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1995.
Yoo, Sook-Ran.“The Colonial Government’s Agricul-
tural Policies and Women’Lives in the Rural Areas
of Korea in the 1930s.”Asian Women 17, 39-64.
[1] Comfort Women Memorial, Liji Alley, Nanjing,
China, bronze, 2015.
[2] Peace Monument, Seoul, South Korea (faces the
Japanese Embassy), bronze, 2011.
[3] Nanum Jip/House of Sharing, Gwangju, South
Korea, 1992.
Image Sources
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
69](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/yhrspring2021-211020115003/85/YHR-Spring-2021-74-320.jpg)
![SPRING 2021
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
How Personal Correspondence Can Shape Our Understanding
by Liam Sheahan, Susquehanna University '21
Written for Senior Seminar
Advised by Dr. Edward Slavishak
Edited by Grace Blaxill and Gage Denmon
ON THE NEXT PAGE
A section of Winfield Reiss’ untitled
1933 mural. The mural was installed
in Cincinnati’s main rail terminal and
depicted the rebuilding of Cincinnati
by middle-class laborers. [1]
of National Events
John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 August 1944, in possession of author.
70
PUSHING THE ENVELOPE](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/yhrspring2021-211020115003/85/YHR-Spring-2021-75-320.jpg)
![August 13, 1944
D
Dear Mum and Dad
ear Mum and Dad,,
This will perhaps be my last note from
Colorado so don't expect anything for a
time although we will probably receive
my new address during the week[…]
This afternoon Jacowitz and myself
went swimming at the Broadmoor and
then a couple of “balls” at the bar after
which we picked up another friend of
ours and came back to the Antlers for a
filet mignon complete with a champagne
cocktail. I know it was extravagant, but
we figured it will probably be our last
fling[…]
This week I also took out the additional
government insurance, so I now have
the full $10,000 protection for $6.60
per month. I also made out a volunta-
ry allotment which begins when I hit
foreign soil and will amount to $40 per
month[…]
Don't worry if you don’t hear from me
for a while as I’ve never felt better in
my life, and fully equipped and garbed
for anything that's in store for me.
I haven't heard from Joan yet since be-
fore her birthday, so I won't for a while.
Hope to see you soon.
Your loving son,
Your loving son,
J
John
ohn1
1
1 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 16 August 1944, in possession of author.
WAS A YEAR of goodbyes for most fami-
lies in America. This was the case for John
Moynagh as he wrote to his parents a few
days before his deployment to France. The
past three years had sent millions of men to foreign shores
to fight and die for their country. The herculean under-
taking of dragging American culture out of its Depres-
sion-era mindset and into one suited for war had taken
the Roosevelt administration years and required a vast
network of propaganda to imbue every aspect of life with
a war mentality. It required a total reconstruction of what
it meant to be an American as well as the conventional
values of American patriotism. Improvements in news-
papers and radio as conveyors of mass media allowed for
this new image of American culture to be spread rapidly
throughout the nation. Yet in order to understand how
this cultural shift took hold, we must look deeper than the
masses of men and women seen on the newsreels putting
all of their effort into the war and instead focus on the
individual, a single cog in the massive machine of history.
Through letters, photos, and postcards, the men
and women involved in the Second World War infor-
med their family and friends about the state of the na-
tion’s efforts and were informed in turn of the efforts
of their loved ones back home. These letters offered a
moment of repose, a time to reflect on and record what
they had witnessed. Yet not even the act of writing a let-
ter home to mom and dad was completely free from the
all-encompassing grasp of the war. Censorship of com-
munications was paramount within military operations,
and those overseas wrote everything with the eye of the
censor in mind. However, there was a second, more
sensitive type of censorship involved in the acts of let-
ter-writing, one of a more social nature. Hopes, dreams,
and—most importantly—fears had to abide strictly to
the newly crafted wartime culture that the Roosevelt ad-
ministration produced. New cultural norms of equating
masculinity with a desire to serve the nation had been
created within New Deal organizations and carried into
the war. Adherence to this mindset dictated what could
be shared and what must be kept confidential. Through
this careful screening of text and emotion emerged the
identity of the soldier-writer. Not a raw and unabridged
identity, but an image carefully crafted for those at home
within the lines of a few short pages. Though war is often
depicted as a raging inferno of death and destruction, its
1944
72
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![fire also offers those involved a forge, within which they
can create an identity of their own in the most stressful
and chaotic time of their lives.
What authors leave behind in their letters, and
perhaps more importantly what they omit, offers the his-
torian a chance to see what they reveal about themselves to
others, intentionally or not, and how they choose to write
their identity. This paper is a case study of a single soldier,
using his personal correspondences to follow him through
his life during the prewar years, his various training stages,
his experiencing the horrors of war, and his role post-hos-
tilities. Through the lens of evolving ideals of American
masculinity, this paper will examine how letter-writing
can reveal the pressures of macroscopic, national changes
on the individual identity of an American man.
HEPRIMARYSOURCESwithinthispa-
per are a collection of letters written by John
Moynagh, a 21-year-old Army enlistee in
1943. Moynagh wrote to his mother, father,
and younger sister Joan for the duration of the war. The
collection spans from January 1941 to December 1945,
covering his entire active-duty career. Though telephones
and telegraphs existed during this time and were widely
available to everyone, the preferred method for long-dis-
tance communication was letters. This medium offered
a way for people separated by long distances to create
a constant, interconnected correspondence that could
last far longer than other communication forms of the
time. Not only was the letter unrestrained from the word
counts and time limits of telegraphs and telephones, it
was also far more permanent. For military families like
John’s, letters offered the ability to create a storyline of
2 Tracie Crow, On Point: A Guide to Writing the Military Story (Lincoln, Nebraska: Potomac Books, (2015), 10.
3 Crow, On Point, 13.
4 Crow, On Point, 10.
experiences that could be built upon despite large gaps
in time between installments. Upon receiving a letter, a
family member could revisit old writings to help recall
what was discussed previously, allowing for a continuous
conversation to form through multiple letters spanning
multiple weeks or months. For a soldier, the ability to
fold a letter into his coat pocket to be re-read whenever
and as frequently as he wanted allowed for letters to take
on a sentimental, therapeutic value that connected de-
ployed soldiers to their loved ones back home.
In modern warfare, too, soldiers recount the va-
lue of writing letters. Since the War on Terror began in
2003, there has been a large movement to bring veteran
accounts into the hands of the public. Former Marine
Tracie Crow describes how important writing has been in
her life as a veteran and for those around her. She writes
that when “[speaking] to soldiers like Brooke King[…]
who is willing to share how writing helped her,” they of-
ten explain that writing “‘helps to make sense of what is
happening to [them].’”2
These modern experiences sug-
gest that writing was perhaps even more important to
the soldiers of WWII than they understood. Though no
psychiatric methods of coping with the stresses of milita-
ry life were formalized in the U.S. Army during the Se-
cond World War, whenever a soldier picked up a pen to
record his experiences, he often engaged, knowingly or
unknowingly, in a therapeutic process. Crow continues
by adding that though there is a “natural association to
assume [that] a military story equals a story about war,”
many soldiers’ stories often include “a rich amount of
mundane and humorous material—the sort that can still
provide readers with insight into who we were during
those years.”3
It is here that Crow draws the real connec-
tion between the therapeutic aspects of writing and a
historian’s analysis of these letters. Letters written by
soldiers are not always about war because they may not
want, or may not be able, to write about their experiences.
Instead, authors may fill their lines with other news that
can be shared in an effort to quantify their activities for
their loved ones. One letter filled with what Crow calls
“mundane material”4
may only give a glimpse into the
author’s life at the time of writing. But when read as one
chapter in a book of many letters, isolated and mundane
acts, even if they are shared as a way to self-censor and
avoid discussing the war, form a more detailed picture of
T
THE IMPORTANCE
OF LETTERS IN
WARTIME AND
HISTORICAL
ANALYSIS
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
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![the writer’s identity. Finally, when these letters are com-
bined with other sources like contemporary propaganda,
historians can analyze whether this picture conforms to
their understanding of the time or if the individual expe-
rience conflicts with it.
The letters of John Moynagh are no different; they
are not meant simply as a scribbled check-in, but instead as
an ongoing conversation with loved ones, an unintentio-
nal biography that spans years. Within them is a massive
quantity of the seemingly mundane. But as historian Mi-
chel Foucault explains, from the perspective of the writer,
anything contained within a letter is “never pointless, fu-
tile, or petty, and never unworthy of being narrated.”5
Dia-
na Gill builds on this theory, writing that “war forces letter
writers and diarists, short on time, energy and paper, to
focus on the truly relevant.”6
Gill’s theory on the act of let-
ter-writing allows for those most mundane tasks that may
originally be overlooked to suddenly burst with meaning.
Within this theory the act of something as simple as going
to the movies is a fact worth noting and dissecting, because
to the author, that act meant enough to be shared.
As Gill explains further, “socially, people convey
themselves through the stories that tell others of their dis-
tinctiveness.”7
Distinctiveness is determined by the stan-
dards of the day—whether that be who is the smartest,
strongest, most popular, or some other metric. In John’s
writings, the standards reflected are the masculine ideals
introduced during the Roosevelt administration’s recons-
truction of the male identity during the New Deal, namely
that one’s manhood is determined by strength and phy-
sical prowess. These letters, though filled mainly with the
“boring” parts of Army life, nevertheless come together to
“serve as a way of exposing the writer’s identity. They are a
narrative stage upon which 'one opens oneself to the gaze of
others.'”8
They become the soldier’s biography and, in doing
so, reflect his personal identity and the societal standards
that influenced its creation. Though John’s identity evolved
during warfare, it did not begin there. It began years earlier,
before war in Europe was a thought, and Americans were
dealing with far greater struggles at home.
5 Michael Foucault, “Society Must be Defended:” lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76, trans. David Macey
(New York: Picador, 2003), 67.
6 Diana C. Gill, How We Are Changed by War: A Study of Letters and Diaries from Colonial Conflicts to Operation
Iraqi Freedom (New York: Routledge, 2010), 29.
7 Gill, How We Are Changed by War, 22.
8 Foucault, “Society Must be Defended,” 67.
9 Michael S. Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Free Press, 1997), 192.
10 Kimmel, Manhood in America, 199.
11 Christina A. Jarvis, The Male Body at War (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), 20.
N THE YEARS following the stock mar-
ket collapse in October 1929, the wealth of
the Roaring Twenties came crashing down
and settled in the Hoovervilles that dotted
the country as America’s unemployment rate rose to a
peak of 25% in 1933. Sociologist Michael Kimmel states
that “never before had American men experienced such
a massive and system-wide shock to their ability to prove
manhood by providing for their families,”9
and as a result
the identity of the average man, which had been foun-
ded on the idea of being the breadwinner of his family,
collapsed. Men felt this emasculation not only in their
minds but in their homes as well, as “unemployed men
lost status with their wives and children and saw them-
selves as impotent patriarchs.”10
As the Depression worsened into the 1930s,
the newly elected Roosevelt administration began its
attempts at rebuilding the American economy and so-
ciety. To accomplish this task it looked to harness the
“men-as-breadwinner” ideal as a way to push the hun-
dreds of construction projects it wished to pursue into
reality. Within its first hundred days, the Roosevelt
administration created multiple organizations that at-
tempted to get Americans back to work. Of these, the
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was the largest
and most well-known. Created in 1933, “employment
in the CCC[…]was specifically limited to young men
between the ages of 17-25 […] and employed more than
2.9 million single, jobless, primarily working-class men
during its nine years of existence.”11
As Christina Jarvis
I
THE NEW DEAL AND
ITS INFLUENCE ON
AMERICAN
MASCULINITY
74
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![observes, the CCC not only subliminally propagated the
“men-as-breadwinners” identity, but leaned into it fully
and publicly by declaring that “the CCC was explicitly
a 'man-building agency'” with the Corps director James
McEntee going so far as to “title his 1940 book on the
agency Now They Are Men.”12
McEntee and the CCC
as a whole were focused on rebuilding American mas-
culinity, because they believed it would accomplish the
agency’s main goal, to support the families of the wor-
kers within its program. Though only one man per family
could participate in the program, the Corps was able to
make each man’s contribution to his family stretch by
including within their rules that each man was required
to send a minimum of $22 of their $30 pay each month
to their families.13
This reinforced the mindset that the
men were not there for themselves, but to work for their
family’s prosperity. Framing CCC participation in this
way helped to restore the men’s status as breadwinners
both physically and psychologically.
The physical work performed by the CCC
operated hand-in-hand with a newborn propagan-
da network. McEntee’s marketing of the CCC only
meant so much without proof, which came in the form
of photographs distributed on the pamphlets and ad-
vertisements put out by the CCC, showing “generally
fit, lean men completing tasks requiring obvious phy-
sical strength.”14
Statistics supplemented these pho-
tographs, showing that enrollees gained “12 pounds
and grew 1/2 inch in height during their stays.”15
All
of this marketing was headed off by McEntee’s state-
ment that the “ultimate goal of the CCC […] was to
produce better husbands […], better workers, better
neighbors, and better citizens.’”16
The goal of producing
“better men,” as Jarvis notes, meant instilling “respec-
table masculine values associated with the middle-class
breadwinner ideal.”17
To support this, enrollees were
often depicted within pamphlets reading in camp libra-
ries, playing team sports, and regularly attending reli-
gious services. These portrayals instilled the image that
the CCC “sought to eradicate enrollees’ former rough
12 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 21.
13 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 21.
14 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 21.
15 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 22.
16 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 22.
17 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 22.
18 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 23.
19 Laura Hapke, Labor’s Canvas: American Working-Class History and the WPA Art of the 1930s (Newcastle: Cam-
bridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 3.
recreational activities such as drinking, gambling, and
'bumming around.'”18
Though high CCC enrollment showed the Roo-
sevelt administration that its constructed American iden-
tity was gaining popularity, it was not the only federal
organization used in creating this reconstruction. The
Works Progress Administration (WPA) hired artists of all
styles and put them to work forwarding the middle-class,
working-man ideals that the CCC was exemplifying. This
project was known as the Federal Art Project (FAP) and
as Laura Hapke explains, “in return for being supplied
with materials and tools, artists were expected to reconcile
themselves to what might be called factory time.”19
Artists
created works for the FAP that could be used as marke-
ting for the WPA and the New Deal’s progress as a whole.
Hapke states that the FAP’s main goal “was an agenda to
H.M. Talburt's depiction of Roosevelt as a burly lion
tamer shows the Presidents connection with the
working-class and America's unified effort to fight
back against the depression. [2]
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
75](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/yhrspring2021-211020115003/85/YHR-Spring-2021-80-320.jpg)
![resurrect the flagging spirits of a workforce construed as
masculine[…the Depression] was a crisis of masculinity
that visual artists needed to help resolve.”20
Hapke ob-
serves that within their 340,000 portraits, landscapes, and
still-lifes the FAP, “whether representing the […] farm
or factory, city or countryside, frequently captured the
heroism of everyday life […] through representations of
Americans engaged in purposeful labor.”21
Many of these
depictions were created on the locations of New Deal pro-
jects and presented to the American people as visual proof
of the progress that was being made to put people back to
work and move the nation forward.
Besides portraying progress, the FAP’s art also
presented the new ideal body politic to fit the middle-
class breadwinner image. The portrayals of workers in the
FAP’s art were a stark contrast to the men seen on every
street corner. Instead of the unhealthy, “weak” men who
lined the streets in front of soup-kitchen doors, the FAP’s
workers took on the proportions of the newly created su-
perhero aesthetic born from the recent popularization of
comic strips. Introduced in the mid-thirties, the superhe-
ro aesthetic portrayed the subject with broad shoulders,
massive chests, and bulging arms, all meant to convey
inhuman power, while retaining a human likeness. The
WPA embraced the style within their own works, using
it to project a long-lost strength directly onto the middle-
class workers within their paintings. Even President Roo-
sevelt, wheelchair bound by childhood polio, was privy to
the makeover of the new working-class image. In a 1930s
political cartoon, the President was depicted in a plain
shirt, his sleeves rolled up to reveal bulging forearms, and
brandishing a whip against a lion labeled ‘Financial Cri-
sis’.22
The workers in FAP art, too, were often depicted
with massive tools in hand, such as jackhammers or other
heavy machinery, promoting the image of America’s in-
dustrial strength. This fusion of man and machine became
increasingly important for the marketing of the American
masculine ideal in the build-up to war.
Despite America officially being neutral in wor-
ld affairs, it was apparent by 1939 that the New Deal’s
middle-class breadwinner identity would require a re-fit
to prepare the United States for war. These changes began
once again within the CCC, which slowly implemented
20 Hapke, Labor’s Canvas, 3-4.
21 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 25.
22 World Telegram, March 10, 1933, found in Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 33.
23 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 23.
24 U.S. Congress, United States Code: Selective Training and Service Act of , 50a U.S.C. §§ 302-315 Suppl. 1, 1940.
more militaristic policies. These included the wearing of
spruce-green uniforms and the use of over 225,000 World
War One veterans to act as camp commanders.23
Paralle-
ling the increased militarism of the CCC was the announ-
cement in September 1940 that President Roosevelt had
authorized the first peacetime draft for the United States
Army, which called for the registration of all males from
ages 21 to 35 in the Selective Service system.24
Though too young to be eligible for the first round
of draft registration, John Moynagh still had plenty of ex-
posure to the growing might of the armed forces. As the
Army rebuilt its numbers, the Navy was simultaneously
rebuilding some of its old infrastructure, calling on the
Harold Layman's Driller exemplifies the portrayal
of American bodies fused with massive industrial
machines. This visual theme would transfer from
machinery to weaponry as the country's wartime
propaganda took over the role of the WPA. [3]
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![help of civilian contractors and organizations created
by the New Deal to rebuild fuel-depots, bases, and fleet
anchorages. In January of 1941, John, working with
Platt Construction, travelled to one such fleet base in
Melville, Rhode Island to install fire suppression sys-
tems. He wrote a letter to his sister Joan about the new
base and explained that “this week I have been working
on new additions to the naval hospital.”25
He described
the anchorage as “the real thing out there. Torpedo sto-
rage houses, mines, submarine nets etc.” and asked her
to “tell Dad those torpedoes look like a bar of 12 inch
[steel] peened over on one end and a regular little en-
gine on the other. Man! What a messenger of death.”26
Though this is the only mention of the construction
on the hospital, the work must have been extensive;
when John became eligible for the draft in February of
1942, his place of employment was still listed as Platt
Construction: Melville, RI.27
The work on the Naval
hospital was considered vital to national security, and as
such, John was exempt from the next round of drafting.
The open secret that the U.S. military was pre-
paring for war and the large numbers of men enlisting
led to a shift in the body politic of America even wit-
hout the guiding hand of the Roosevelt administration.
Born from the new Selective Service screening proce-
dure came new terms to the American lexicon, draft
classifications 1-A and 1V-F. As Jarvis explains, these
classes were based on “the individual’s mental, mo-
ral, and physical fitness, [and he was] either classified
as 1-A, 1-B, or 1V-F (unacceptable for military ser-
vice).”28
A classification of 1-A meant individuals were
“free of disease[…]and [had] no disabling complica-
tions,”29
1V-F meant that for any number of physical
or neurological reasons a registrant had failed to qua-
lify and was exempt from service. Icons of pop-culture
picked up on these new standards as early as October
1941. In Helen Frost’s 1941 hit single titled “He’s 1-A
in the Army, and He’s A-1 in My Heart,” her “man of
25 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 22 January 1941.
26 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 22 January 1941.
27 John Moynagh, Selective Service Registration Card.
28 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 59.
29 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 59.
30 Redd Evans, He’s 1-A in the Army and He’s A-1 in My Heart, Helen Frost, October 29, 1941. Vinyl Disc.
31 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 60.
32 Gerald Shenk and Henry C. Dethloff, Citizen and Soldier: A Sourcebook on Military Service and National Defense
from Colonial America to the Present (New York: Routledge, 2011), 111-112.
33 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 27 September 1941.
34 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 26 April 1943.
mine, he ain't missin' nothin'” due to his classification
of 1-A. She goes on to sing that “he's gone to help the
country that helped him to get a start.”30
Frost’s lyrics
and those of countless other performers showed mil-
lions of Americans that being classified as 1-A proved
not only that you were fit to serve your country, but
also that you were a desirable man.. As Jarvis puts it,
“although the 1-A classification was intended to denote
physical and mental fitness for general military service,
it took on an added meaning in popular discourse as it
marked an idealized type of masculinity.”31
After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December
of 1941, the gradual societal and industrial buildup of
militarization became a tidal wave. As historian Gerald
Shenk explains, the wave of patriotic fervor that fol-
lowed Pearl Harbor, combined with the “18,633 [men
that] were inducted for a one-year service obligation,
and another 800,000 reservists (many of them on CCC
rosters), [that] were called to active duty”32
created a
surplus of recruits at first. Yet the Army knew that this
would not be enough to sustain their numbers for a
prolonged fight and began a heavy recruitment process
on the back of the patriotic wave. This campaign and
the hundreds of others at the local level inspired mil-
lions to join up to active duty throughout 1942. The
Army Reserves offered a way for those like John who
were working civilian jobs deemed vital to national de-
fense to show they were still doing their part. Despite
the massive influx of Army recruits, the civilian jobs
necessary to national defense were not short of appli-
cants, and John wrote frequently that “there have been
quite a few layoffs[…]and they are cutting lose [sic] all
the driftwood.”33
These pressures, combined with the
ever-increasing pressure to join in the fight for the na-
tion, eventually led John to leave his job and enlist with
the U.S. Army. In his first letter home he described his
feelings on his new role: “if this is army life let’s have
it! – but I’m afraid it’s too good to last.”34
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![OHN AND THE other recruits quickly
learned that Army life would adhere strictly
to the portrayals of masculinity that the New
Deal campaigns created with only slight mo-
difications. The 1940s Army program was designed to
take a large group of men from all walks of life and turn
them into a standardized military force within a few short
weeks. The main problem for the Army to overcome was
the incredible range of fitness levels that passed through
the selection process. As a result, basic training in John’s
words found the men “kept busy from five in the morning
to five at night and I mean busy. We are out in the yard at
seven ready for business, usually drilling and calisthenics
until 11:30 am. The afternoon is the same except with a
lecture or movie (of a military nature) thrown in.”35
Thesecalisthenicsinvolvedallmannerofstretches
and aerobics as well as physical activities such as games
of strength. Those who succeeded in these activities were
often rewarded with unofficial titles or leave from extra
duties, while those who failed were given more exercise
and other assignments such as the dreaded Kitchen Po-
lice (KP). As a result, fierce competition took root within
these games and it became a source of pride when one
was the winner. This is evident when John writes to his
parents about his victory in not just one, but two of these
games. He described the two games in great detail, the
first of which was an exercise in which “49 [men] form a
circle with arms locked and some poor goat is thrown in
the center and has to try and get out. The other day no
one would volunteer so I went in and broke out twice to
be crowned Bull of the Ring.”36
The second game, more
gladiatorial in nature than the first, was titled King in
the Ring and involved “a circle about 25 feet in diameter
35 John Moynagh to Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 16 May 1943.
36 John Moynagh to Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 21 May 1943.
37 John Moynagh to Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 21 May 1943.
38 Foucault, “Society Must be Defended,” 67.
39 Jarvis, Male Body at War, 66.
40 Jarvis, Male Body at War, 66.
[…] installed on the ground into which the 50 men fight
and throw each other out until one man remains[...] that
was really my day for I am also the King of the Ring.”37
The use of these games in basic training was im-
portant for three reasons. Not only were they a way for
recruits to gain both muscular and cardiovascular stren-
gth, but they also taught them basic lessons in teamwork
necessary to complete an objective. Finally, these games
were a morale booster to the victors, whether they es-
caped the circle or prevented someone from escaping.
This must have been an especially important point as
noted by the space the description takes up in John’s let-
ter home, covering over half of the total text. Foucault
reminds us that when a writer mentions something in
a letter, that it is “never pointless”38
and therefore these
games must have a perceived importance to John greater
than the simple description that was written. Though on
the surface he described what could pass as a schoolyard
game, to him it was a show of strength. At the time of
writing, he had only been in the Army for a month, and
yet he was already the strongest of fifty men, at least for
a day. This was a great achievement for John and his ea-
gerness to explain it to his parents shows the pride he
took in his physical growth from civilian life. As Jarvis
explains, the Army encouraged this assessment of per-
sonal growth among their recruits through the use of
“personal record books[…]in which men could record
their measurements on five different dates to keep track
of their height and weight as well as chest, bicep, waist,
and calf sizes.”39
Similarly, the Navy published results of
their pre-flight cadets after finding they had gained over
5 pounds and lost two inches around the waist, proving
that “the Navy has “rebuilt” these men in both body and
character, eliminating the softness of “easy going civilian
life” while instilling military values and discipline.”40
The theme of gaining strength and, thus, masculi-
nity, was another recurring theme of John’s early writings.
His insistence that training was somehow too easy was
a common occurrence and throughout basic training he
continued to relay to his family that he was getting stron-
ger and fitter, sometimes to the point of contradiction.
Writing to Joan, he exclaimed that “last Friday was the
THE INFLUENCE
OF MASCULINE
IDEALS ON NEW
RECRUITS
J
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![worst day I ever put in – we drilled all day, and it must
have been at least 110 out there in the broiling sun. There
were five ambulances going all the time as about 60 or
70 men heeled over – however I felt fine and it seems to
take off some lard.”41
Despite the shocking account of over
sixty men collapsing from the heat, John found it essential
not only to assure his sister that he was strong enough
to feel fine after the ordeal, but also to casually mention
that he found it helpful in trimming down his waistline.
Similarly, when writing to his mother, he stated flatly that
he was “getting too used to the workouts now – so I wish
they would really give us the works as I know I’m far from
top shape and would like to be physically perfect before
41 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 6 June 1943.
42 John Moynagh to Mrs. Irene, 13 June 1943.
43 McClelland Barclay, "Man the Guns, Join the Navy" (1942), found in Jarvis, Male Body at War, 13.
44 Colonel Tom Woodburn, "Defend Your Country, Enlist Now" (1940), found in Jarvis, Male Body at War, 41.
going into a combat area.”42
Throughout these letters,
John is attempting to toe the line between bragging and
complaining about his experiences. The reality of the Ar-
my’s training regimen was that it was a grueling and diffi-
cult task that John felt the need to vocalize. But there was
a pressure put on the recruits to live up to the propaganda
produced by the army. To show that they were building
themselves up to match the image of the ideal American
soldier. Because of this, John’s writings reveal a conflict as
he attempts to voice his displeasure at the training while
simultaneously proving to his family that he is succeeding
in becoming the ideal soldier.
John’s insistence that his physical performance
was rapidly increasing was not just an effort to impress
his family. The stories told by enlisted men that military
life rapidly scrubbed cadets clean of their civilian “sof-
tness” were wildly popular, and the military had long
taken over the reins from the FAP in producing pro-
paganda to showcase this new belief. By 1942, artists
had replaced images of barrel-chested workers holding
jackhammers in their arms with portraits of similarly
built sailors effortlessly slinging enormous shells into
the breech of guns, underscored by commands to “Man
the Guns – Join the Navy.”43
This new ideal for what
the military man looked like likely encouraged John to
prove to his family that he was on par with the men
the propaganda depicted. Even Uncle Sam, much like
Roosevelt, was given a face lift. Unlike the famous “I
Want You” posters of the 1917 Army, Army propagan-
dists rebranded Uncle Sam with his jacket shed, sleeves
rolled, and fists bared, daring those who looked on to
“Defend Your Country.”44
Even movie directors and
Broadway playwrights bought into ensuring that the
new image of masculinity in America was not complete
without a uniform. One of the top grossing musicals
of the forties, before being adapted for the screen, was
titled This is the Army. Its opening number finds newly
drafted cadets being dragged on stage in mismatched
clothes and marching clumsily in line while singing
about their first experience with their sergeant. By the
end of the number, the men had not only transformed
in their appearance, shedding their ragged and over-
sized civilian clothes for crisp Army dress uniforms,
but in their physique as well. They no longer slouched
McClelland Barclay's 1942 Navy recruitment poster
shows the use of the working man's physique to project
the same masculine traits onto soldiers.working-class
and America's unified effort to fight back against the
depression. [4]
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![or stumbled but instead marched in perfect unison to
the music before exiting the stage in tight formation.
The reaction of the on-screen audience to the men was
staged: they laughed and jeered at the stumbling civi-
lians in the beginning and gave a standing ovation to
the soldiers at the end. The men watching the choreo-
graphed reaction in the theater would have received
the message as well. If a man was to become worthy of
praise or applause within wartime America, he needed
to be in uniform.
By the time John joined the Army in 1943, it
had become clear that though a uniform was a step-
ping-stone on the way to societal acceptance, it was
no longer enough to simply be in the service. As the
nation embraced its war-efforts and millions of men
had joined the various branches of service, the stan-
dards of masculinity shifted. It became common to see
American men in uniform and new hierarchies sepa-
rating the ideal servicemen from the sub-par began to
form. Though the old standards of I-A and IV-F re-
mained, in a society where every man was dressed in
standard-issue gear, the rank on the sleeve held more
meaning than the uniform it was attached to. John’s
45 John Moynagh to Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 13 May 1943.
46 John Moynagh to Mr. John R Moynagh, 16 May 1943.
first acknowledgement of this hierarchy came within
a month of arriving at basic training. Writing to his
mother about his week and his training progress, John
concluded, “well this army life is swell as far as I am
concerned, but I’ll like it a lot better when I learn of
what my chances of advancement are.”45
John made it
clear: the higher the rank he could achieve, the better.
Between May and July, John sent eight letters home to
his parents. Within every single letter he made some
reference to his attempts at getting into a program for
advancement. Some references were simple comments
about his feelings of optimism towards promotion, but
other references took up pages. In a four-page letter to
his father, John spent over three-quarters of it descri-
bing the interview process he underwent. He wrote in
detail about the results of his officer aptitude test, in-
cluding that his score of “127 [was] a very good mark”
and that “I made out well in all my other tests here[…]
it was written on my card that I was a candidate for the
Army Specialized Training Program” (ASTP).46
This
was the longest letter John sent throughout his four-
year correspondence; the fact that it contains so much
information on the prospects of his advancement indi-
A newspaper clipping included in John's July 21, 1943 letter which describes the arrival of ASTP students to
school at New York University. [5]
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![cates how important the program was to John. But the
ASTP was not the end goal, as he reminded his father:
“the point to be remembered is that once I am enrolled
in that school I can then apply for OCS [Officer Can-
didate School] in any branch I desire which would be
the engineers or infantry. Now I just wait for a while as
another interview about the ASTP is coming soon.”47
The ASTP was not the usual path of advance-
ment for enlisted men like John, but the incredible wave
of manpower that flooded the Army in 1942 and 1943
had created a leadership crisis. As historian Louis Kee-
fer describes, the ASTP was “conceived in mid-1942
to meet the Army's avowed need for university-trained
officers”48
to supplement the millions of newly enlisted
men. As a result, universities across America like New
York University were commandeered by the U.S. mi-
litary to train soldiers in technical fields. By 1943 the
ASTP’s mission of turning enlisted men into candidates
with potential for Officer Candidate School was well
under-way. For men like John, who scored higher than a
115 on the officer aptitude test, the ASTP allowed them
to forego the usual means of climbing the enlisted rank
ladder by instead attending these schooling programs
with the supposed promise of an OCS commission upon
completion. As such, John faced a decision in June. In a
letter to his mother, he explained that he “took over the
Drill Master job and put the men through their paces –
it certainly felt swell, I would apply for the job but I think
I’ll just await the outcome of my interview which should
come this week.”49
The assignment to the Drill Master
position was a sign to John that he was a candidate for
advancement to ranks like Private First Class, Corpo-
ral and eventually even a Sergeant. It could be presumed
that John included the assignment to show his parents
that he had alternatives for advancement if the inter-
views fell short. But it was clear from John’s hesitation to
accept that he felt that the ASTP was a better option for
a faster and more prestigious path to ranks like Lieute-
nant or Captain; a far cry from a lowly Private First Class
or Corporal rank.
47 John Moynagh to Mr. John R Moynagh, 16 May 1943.
48 Louis E. Keefer, "Birth and Death of the Army Specialized Training Program," in Army History, no. 33 (Washing-
ton D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History, 1995), 1.
49 John Moynagh to Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 13 June 1943.
50 "500 Army Students to Study at The Heights Under New Specialized Training Program," unattributed newspa-
per clipping, ca. July 1943, in possession of author.
51 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 21 July 1943.
52 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 21 July 1943.
OHN'SLETTERTOhisparentsdatedJuly
21, 1943 shared the news of his acceptance
into the ASTP and included a newspaper
clipping hastily cut out and folded together
with the class schedule for his first semester. The head-
line read “500 Army Students to Study at The Heights
Under New Specialized Training Program”50
and de-
tailed the influx of new ASTP enrollees from around the
country. John relayed to his parents that “everything is
fine although we have a full schedule” stocked with the
typical civilian college courses of chemistry, history, and
calculus. Despite the workload, John was optimistic and
seemed to enjoy the fact that though “most of us are kept
pretty busy, it is pleasant to walk down to the corner at
night and have a milkshake without having to get per-
mission.” Despite the luxuries offered by permission-free
milkshakes, John was sure to include reassurances to his
parents that his goals had not changed. He described the
orientation talk given by a Lieutenant Colonel and in-
formed his parents that “we are definite potential officers
if we make the grades as only a very small number [of
officer candidates] will be taken from the field from now
on.”51
Despite the seemingly civilian life, John wanted
his parents to know that he was there to move forward
with his army career. In fact, he had already begun to
show his advancement up army ranks through his dress.
He wrote that “because of our superior position [as stu-
dents preparing for OCS] the finest department is ex-
pected[…]we are dressed in Class A's [dress uniforms]
all the time and have no details.”52
Class A’s were deco-
rative, meant to be worn only for special events and other
prestigious occasions. The fact that John now wore them
MISLEADING
PROPAGANDA AND
ITS EFFECT ON
ASTP ENROLLEES
J
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![all the time showed the prestige of his program to his
family. It also elevated John from his recent recruit status
at basic training, where dress uniforms were unsuitable
for the intense physical training recruits went through.
The Class A’s signified a cleaner, more intelligent, and
more prestigious side of the Army that John was now a
member of, and he made an effort to show this off.
Whether through misconstrued language of the
Lieutenant Colonel or the over-eager assumptions of
John and other ASTP candidates, the promises of OCS
offered by the ASTP were less concrete than John des-
cribed to his parents. Keefer notes that the statement by
the War Department said that ASTP only made trainees
53 Keefer, "Birth and Death," 3 emphasis mine.
54 Keefer, "Birth and Death," 3.
55 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 August 1943.
56 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 20 August 1943.
57 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 20 August 1943.
58 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 20 August 1943, emphasis mine.
“available to attend Officer Candidates School.”53
This
was mistaken by most enlisted men as a formal commit-
ment. Throughout the program’s run time “Secretary of
War Stimson, took great pains directing that ASTP-ers
not be called “cadets” and that they be considered sol-
diers first, students second.”54
This meant that the threat
of transfer was constant, and rigorous testing ensured
that those who could not keep up were shipped off to fill
manpower shortages. John’s concern for this possibility
soon bled into his writing. In August 1943, he wrote to
his parents that “we had a big chem test Saturday and
a math test this morning[…]on the basis of these and
past marks it will be determined who is to stay after next
week and who is to depart so we shall see.”55
By looking
at just one letter, this might be overlooked as concern
for a specific test, but over the course of the next several
months John’s cautionary rhetoric to his parents conti-
nued. John’s assertion that he was constantly on thin ice
may have been true but could also have been in response
to Secretary Stimson’s warnings that John and the other
ASTP enrollees were always under threat of being used
as filler material. This thought would have likely scared
John, who had turned down enlisted advancement for
the ASTP and was now threatened with the program
being taken away. His cautionary rhetoric could have
been a way to let his parents, and himself, down easy if
his path to OCS became suddenly blocked.
By the end of August, just three months after he
enrolled in ASTP, the tone of John’s letters had changed
drastically. A series of delays and extensions to the course
lengths prompted John to write to his parents that he
was getting restless. He made sure to acknowledge that
he “love[d] the military training in much of the course”56
but quickly followed these assurances up by reinforcing to
his parents that his “ambition has not changed, that is to
get to OCS and really go to war.”57
In some ways that am-
bition had already begun to come true, as he had climbed
the ranks to become “an acting Corporal now, armband
and all, and of course addressed by the officers as such.”58
Just a week later in a follow-up letter, he informed them
that he had been to the company Commander about get-
ting to OCS and found out that “we all have to wait till
Col. Tom Woodburn's 1947 Army recruiting poster
depicts a younger, stronger , more aggressivelly
postured Uncle Sam than his 1917 counterparts. [6]
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![the three months are up and then are disposed of in any
way the colonel sees fit.”59
This discovery prompted some
of the strongest language found in these usually reserved
letters, as John exclaimed that though he “would very
much like to go to OCS at that time[…]I'll go back to
the field and sign up for immediate overseas duty before
I'll go another term of this. I positively hate mathemati-
cal subjects!”60
Whether the frustration borne out in this
letter was actually the result of calculus is up for debate;
the true issue that prompted the outburst likely stemmed
from John feeling stuck at home while every other man
was abroad and engaged in combat. Compounding the
frustration was the fact that as the war progressed, many
films coming from Hollywood focused on the heroics
and sacrifices of the U.S. military abroad. When John
went to watch films such as Bataan, he would have seen
the last stand of Sgt. Bill Dane, firing his machine gun
from his own grave at waves of incoming Japanese in-
fantry and being confronted with the ending card stating
that “the final sacrifice of the defenders of Bataan helped
slow the Japanese advance, making possible America's
final victory in the Pacific War.”61
These images must
have made John second-guess the importance of his time
in the ASTP for many reasons. The heroes shown to the
American people on screen were not dressed in Class-A
uniforms like John or his peers, nor were they officers
like the ASTP enrollees hoped to become. Instead they
were gritty, Khaki-clad enlisted men on the screen, epi-
tomes of bravery and self-sacrifice to Americans in the
theaters. These new idols, as well as the failure of the
ASTP to fulfill John’s expectations, likely led to the frus-
tration this letter expresses.
Though this anger within the August corres-
pondence seems tame, John’s feelings were common at
the time and shared by many others within the ASTP.
Though the carrot of advancement within the Army was
a tempting one, many felt that the ASTP was causing
them to miss the war. Though the term “miss the war”
was widely used colloquially by Army trainees the fear was
very real and was amplified for ASTP students like John.
As Keefer explains, most trainees were “well aware of the
59 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 20 August 1943.
60 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 26 August 1943.
61 Bataan, directed by Tay Garnett, aired June 3, 1943 (MGM; United States Office of War Information, 1943), film.
62 Keefer, "Birth and Death," 6.
63 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 21 September 1943.
64 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 21 September 1943.
65 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 15 February 1944.
66 Keefer, “Birth and Death,” 5.
good situation they had been enjoying and felt slightly
guilty, knowing that many of their high school classmates
were already fighting (and dying) overseas.”62
These facts
had to be faced in every aspect of the ASTP trainees’ life.
By September of 1943, the war in the Pacific was in full
swing, Italy had surrendered to the Allies, and the casualty
lists reported in every major U.S. newspaper were growing
daily. While these major actions were taking place, John
sent word to his parents that there was “no chance of going
to OCS after these first three months” and that after nine
months he would only receive a specialist commission.
The dream of Officer Candidate School had vanished,
and he was still stuck within the program until he was
transferred out or the war ended.63
Reading of the successes of the Army in the news-
paper every day while entrenched in civilian classes wei-
ghed heavily on John’s thoughts. John was still desperate
to participate in the war effort, as seen when he wrote to
his parents wondering why “you didn't mention in your
last letter anything about me buying your next bond for
you,” claiming that he “[had] to do something by the end
of the month or [he’d] look sad.”64
Though war bonds
were a common item within American homes during the
time, for John and all the trainees stuck in ASTP their
purchasing was an important salve for their sense of duty.
It allowed them to feel like they were still participating
in the war effort while they were in school and as such it
often became a point of contention as to who could put
the most into these bonds. His parents either learned their
lesson about the involuntary nature of this participation or
other means of persuasion were used to encourage it, as
John only mentioned the bonds one other time in his wri-
ting; briefly mentioning in February 1944 that the bond
his parents ordered “will be on its way shortly.”65
The guilt John and the other thousands of ASTP
candidates felt about missing the war would soon be
abated as the manpower crisis of the war reached its
peak. As Keefer notes, by the end of 1943 “riflemen were
the Army’s greatest need, not men of ‘special abilities.’”66
Within the course of a few months, nearly half of ASTP
candidates had exchanged their pencils for M-1 rifles.
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![However, for John and many others there was one more
hurdle in the way of their ticket to combat: the Army
physical and the determination of whether they were
classified as I-A. For John, this hurdle was impassable,
as he ended up being classified as I-B(L): Limited Duty
due to his poor eyesight.
Writing to his sister, John brushed off his failure
with humor: “Well! They caught up with me Sunday at
the physical so I'm limited service. However I still move
out with the rest on Sunday.”67
Despite the fact that John
brushed off the failure of his physical and moved on to
describe his enjoyable last few days in New York, it is
clear that this must have been a heavy blow for him. For
years, the social standard for a fit man had been one in
uniform, with a I-A classification, a rifle in hand, and a
rank on his sleeve. The demotion to I-B(L), on top of
having the aspirations of being an officer stripped away,
must have made John’s transition more difficult; the
train ride west was a long one.
PON ARRIVING AT Camp Carson in
Colorado, John elaborated further on the
situation he found himself thrust into so ra-
pidly. He again wrote to Joan that “due to
my failing eyesight, I’m in the Medics at least for a four
week training period.”68
To his parents, his language was
more severe and he wrote, crammed on a postcard, that
“they hastily classified us on the spot[…]I don’t know
how many of us are due to be stretcher bearers – not for
me!”69
The overall disappointment for John reached a cli-
67 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 22 March 1944.
68 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 3 April 1944.
69 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 31 March 1944.
70 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 5 May 1944.
71 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 5 May 1944.
72 Keefer, “Birth and Death,” 3.
73 Unknown Artist, That’s the New Man from ASTP, “Vanguard Section – Blood and Fire,” July 8, 1944,
found in Keefer, “Birth and Death,” 4.
74 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 3 April 1944.
max in a letter on May 5, 1944 in which he complained
to his parents that “for the time being I have been as-
signed to the litter-bearer platoon which is just about the
bottom of the barrel so just inform anyone who asks that
I’m in the medics and let it go at that.”70
At this point, it
is clear that John was so embarrassed by his new position
that he would rather his parents hide his role in the war
effort, because to him the truth was too shameful. His
frustration bled out further in the letter as he explained
that “in all branches our men [ASTP men] are being
thrown in as privates, [and] naturally the older men will
feather their own nest first.”71
These feelings of betrayal
are noted by Keefer in his study that “even fifty years la-
ter, many former ASTP-ers harbor[ed] the feeling that
the Army lied to them about their futures.”72
Besides feeling betrayed by their commanding
officers and the War Department, ASTP candidates had
to deal with the mocking that came with being replace-
ments from a failed program. Enlisted soldiers who had
marched all the way from boot camp felt that ASTP-
ers had tried to take the easy way out, attempting to
bypass the rank hierarchy through a loophole instead of
toughing it out by climbing through the enlisted ranks,
and thus sacrificing their masculinity in the eyes of their
fellow soldiers. This disapproval from the enlisted men is
best illustrated by a cartoon from the 63rd Infantry’s regi-
mental newspaper in which the new ASTP replacement,
notably wearing glasses, has massively overengineered a
foxhole.73
The bewilderment on the face of the enlisted
soldier facing the reader, and the shocked expression of
the sergeant facing the foxhole, were meant to commu-
nicate that the new man, a bespectacled and over-edu-
cated “infantryman,” belonged in a laboratory instead of a
battlefield. Beyond the enlisted men’s disdain of ASTP-
ers, there were still plenty of other divides to create strife
between the men. After arriving at Camp Carson, John
wrote to Joan that he found the men to be “mostly a
rugged, uneducated lot from the Southwest[…]all nice
fellows unless one is unfortunate enough to become em-
broiled – not me!”74
The perception by John and other
CONFRONTING
MASCULINE IDEALS
AND ADAPTING TO
LIMITED SERVICE
U
84
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![ASTP-ers that the men at Carson who weren’t from
ASTP were somehow less educated created two compe-
ting ideals of masculinity, yet John’s disappointment in
his limited service status made it clear that the enlisted
men’s ideal of combat-effectiveness was more impressive
than the one of education. The remarks on being “rug-
ged and uneducated” were disheartened jabs at those he
found to be in some way superior to himself. Concluding
the May 5th letter to his parents, he insisted that “I’m
not despondent[…]for as long as we do our best[…]and
maintain our sense of humor we can consider the sacri-
fice of our dignity minute over the supreme one that over
30,000 of our comrades have already made.”75
John’s fee-
lings of losing his dignity run parallel with his position in
the masculine hierarchy of the Army. In the span of just
a few weeks John had gone from the prestigious high of
an ASTP enrollee bound for officer’s rank to the low of
a I-B(L) classification and filler in a medical unit. Ins-
tead of being clad in fine Class A’s he was now watching
men deemed fitter than him drilling for combat while he
75 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 5 May 1944.
76 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 14 May 1944.
77 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 4 June 1944.
78 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 June 1944.
79 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 10 April 1944.
80 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 25 May 1944.
watched on the sidelines in a support unit. All of these
emotions bled into his May correspondence and led to
another revelation for John; that his family may not be as
understanding of his position as he hoped they would be.
John’s May 5th letter marks an anomaly in his
writing as it breaks from the usually emotionally re-
served and cautiously optimistic view of army life that
John curated throughout his correspondence with his
parents. The blatant voicing of frustrations and the se-
vere complaints were enough to worry his parents, as
well. Within his response to them on May 25th is an
attempt to assuage their fears that he is falling into a
depression. He writes that “whatever happens to me is
really inconsequential until the war ends so don’t think
I’m ever depressed, by the way I had KP [Kitchen Po-
lice] last Sunday and we really had a fine time.”76
The
May correspondences marked the end of John’s com-
plaints to his parents about his army life. He instead
shifted the focus of his writing back to the relative
safety of descriptions of his physicality. His writing be-
gan to draw parallels to his initial letters of optimism in
basic training. He wrote of how he was the fastest man
in the company with “300 yards in 39 seconds!”77
He
gave them his opinions of the D-Day landings when
news reached Camp Carson, giving a formal analysis
where he assured them that “some violent counterat-
tack will be forthcoming shortly” and that the capture
of the “fine port of Cherbourg will enable us to trans-
port some heavy artillery, men and supplies […] which
will perhaps turn the tide.”78
Despite almost a letter a week to his parents,
John mentions very little about the intricate details of
army life he found so “swell” in 1943. He reserved all
the details about his training, as well as the small gripes
that came with it, for his sister Joan. It was while wri-
ting to her that he recounts his stories of the infiltration
course where “5 machine guns pour lead 30 inches off
the ground so you have to crawl pretty low,”79
or how his
medical company treated the wounded during simula-
tions until two in the morning, when they “curled up in
a blanket and tried to sleep, but froze instead.”80
Perhaps
he hid these experiences out of an abundance of caution
JA cartoon from the 63rd Infantry's regimental
magazine shows the shock and bewilderment of
enlisted soldiers as they watch an ASTP recruit
overengineer a foxhole. This was meant to de note
that ASTP-ers did not belong on the battlefield. [7]
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![for his parents’ concern for his well-being, though it is
more likely that his change of tone was due to the em-
barrassment he felt at his position in the Medical corps
and his parent’s swift reaction to his display of dissatis-
faction. By writing to his sister, John was able to distance
himself from the expectations he had set for himself and
his parents about his officer training in ASTP and the
subsequent dashing of those expectations with his as-
signment to what he thought of as an inferior unit. As
much is seen in his letter to them in August, where his
voice shifted again to the optimism displayed when he
began his transfer into the ASTP program. The return
address on the letter reads “T/5 – John R. Moynagh”
and the writing within described to his parents that “as
you see by the envelope, I have started up my army career
at last.” After explaining to them that he received his
commission as a Medical Technician Fifth Grade and
relaying that he “felt quite proud to be one of the first
new men receiving Army recognition,” he concluded his
remarks by claiming that “it’s not the position I cared
about but now I’m immune from KP and other details
unless I’m put in charge of one.”81
81 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 August 1944.
82 John Moynagh to Mrs. Catherine Fennelly, 4 December 1944.
Despite the modesty of this conclusion, it is
hard to believe his claim that he did not care about his
promotion. From the beginning of his letters in the
Army, John made it clear that his goal was to get to
Officer Candidate School and then climb the officer
ranks. His overwhelming dissatisfaction at the delays
and cancellations of the ASTP and his palpable em-
barrassment about his physical classification and sub-
sequent delegation to the medical corps all point in
this direction as well. Even the opening phrase of the
letter in which he finally found it acceptable to relay
personal feelings about his army experience reflected
this. The fact that he felt that his career was just now
beginning, nearly two years since his enlistment in the
reserves, meant that the rank of Technician, despite
being far lower than the Lieutenant’s bar promised
to him by the ASTP, was immensely important to
him. So important, in fact, that he included one of his
rank patches within the letter, as physical proof for his
parents—and himself—that he was now officially an
Army man.
OHNMAINTAINEDhisrankthroughout
his campaigns in Europe. Over the course of
195 consecutive days of combat, John and
his medical company were charged with the
task of tending to all the horrors a battlefield could wreak
as they slogged through France and on to the German
town of Inden. There, John found the time to write a
letter to his grandmother. Maybe the knowledge that
his letter would pass under the rubber stamp of “Army
Examiner 43268” restricted his thoughts, but despite 88
days of combat John’s letter was relaxed. He supposed
that “if I was at home this time of year, it would be quite
a job for me to get out of the house without doing some
shoveling,” and noted that the weather had been kind to
them so far.82
He then described to her the situation that
A SHIFT IN IDEALS
AND AN OVERSEAS
PERSPECTIVE
ON SERVICE
J
John's Medical Technician Grade 5 stripes denoting
the equivalent rank of Corporal were included within
a letter to his parents regarding his promotion. [8]
86
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![German towns were in: “you would think these people
would give up before we destroy all of Germany. Most
of the people in the villages we capture are glad it’s over
for them even though defeated.”83
He wrapped the let-
ter hoping that Santa was good to her and included a
Christmas present of a handkerchief with the flags of the
allies surrounding a German shield with the words “Sou-
venir De Belgique” painted above them, writing “since I
was in Belgium.”84
The relaxed nature of John’s writing
and the somewhat ironic phrase on the handkerchief
painted his experience as one of relative ease.
Though the December letter is the only written
correspondence from John’s time in active combat, it
provides a glimpse into the therapeutic effects that let-
ter-writing can have for soldiers. The letter shows a shift
away from the introspections seen in many of his letters
from training. Instead, John focused on his surroundings
and the mindset of the German civilians around him.
The only mention of himself comes in the form of his
opening remark about shoveling snow, which could be
viewed simply as a way to find some common ground.
One can infer that writing about his personal expe-
riences was difficult for John, especially knowing that
disclosing too much information in a letter could mean
it was literally cut off the paper by a censor. But writing
about the destruction around him was permissible, and
the gratitude shown by the civilians must have proved to
be a positive experience for him, as he felt it necessary to
include it within his letter. The shift away from himself,
and onto the experiences of others, is an important one
for understanding how John has grown since his early
days in the army. His deployment overseas allowed him
to distance himself from the pressures of the homefront
and Army training, and his engagement in combat shif-
ted his focus onto more pressing and humanitarian mat-
ters. This type of growth would continue in John’s cor-
respondence overseas.
A common line among Army strategists is that
there is always a plan until the fighting starts. John’s
plan of climbing the rank ladder was put on hold once
he stepped off the ramp in France to begin his over-
seas duty. Despite the relaxed nature of his letter to his
83 John Moynagh to Mrs. Catherine Fennelly, 4 December 1944.
84 John Moynagh to Mrs. Catherine Fennelly, 4 December 1944.
85 John Moynagh, Officer’s Commission, 1945.
86 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 December 1945.
87 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 December 1945.
88 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 December 1945.
grandmother, by 1945 he had seen the worst that Eu-
rope had to offer. From the Liberation of the Nether-
lands to the Battle of the Bulge to the Mittelbau-Dora
concentration camp, the chaos of constant battle pro-
vided no opportunity for John to advance up the ranks.
Yet as the fighting wound down in Europe, a final op-
portunity arose. Lessons learned from the ASTP led
the Army to develop a method of officer training for
enlisted men who had shown potential during their
combat experience. The Officer Candidate Course
(OCC) was established in April of 1945 at Napoleon’s
summer residence of Fontainebleau. In May, John was
accepted to join the program, graduating eight weeks
later on July 7th with a commission as Second Lieute-
nant, U.S. Army Infantry.85
Though no written corres-
pondence survives from this moment, it can be readily
assumed from John’s August 1944 letter that he would
have told his parents the good news as soon as he could.
As an officer, he could now accept a command post,
and he would not have to wait long. On September 17,
John was assigned as Executive Officer in Labor Ser-
vice Company 1703, a camp for German POWs. By
November 6, he was promoted to Commanding Offi-
cer. In a letter to his parents dated December 9, 1945,
John’s tone changed again from the letters written du-
ring his time in training. He opened with a report of
the cold weather they received in the past week and
noted that “the Germans get an allowance of wood
that is none too adequate, but we pick up fuel here and
there.”86
He continued this thread by asking if his pa-
rents would send him a pack of “15 or 20 of the small
tins of tobacco – no, not [for] the black market, I use
them as prizes for the best jobs done by my charges.”87
He also asked for a box of razor blades as well, as “they
make quite a bonus.”88
He concluded the letter with
Christmas wishes and a promise to try and call them
on New Year’s.
The difference between this letter and the usual
tone of John’s letters from 1943 and 1944 is stark.
Though John must have taken considerable pride in the
fact that the return address on the air-mail envelope read
“Lt. John Moynagh Jr.,” there was almost no discussion
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![maintained a focus on the positive aspects of physical
growth and the visual status portrayed by dress and
visual cues of prestige. All of these mundane com-
ponents come together to create a detailed picture of
John’s identity, which, when passed under an analyti-
cal lens, show that his evolution is a result of society’s
evolving standard for model manhood, and John’s po-
sition within that standard.
Gill explains that “all members of a society
represent their society, each member contain[s] the
essence of the group that has formed them.”92
When
John says goodbye to his parents on August 13th,
1944 he tells them that “I’ve never felt better in my
life, and fully equipped and garbed for anything that’s
in store for me.”93
The statement is reflective not only
of John’s emotions, but an affirmation of the messages
coming from the Army that their soldiers are the
fittest men in the country. Though it seems that John
truly believed that the Army had trained him well, it is
also obvious that John’s rhetoric follows the messages
that every news outlet in the country had propagated
for years. The scope of influence of these messages is
only seen through the jigsaw puzzle-like biography
that over four years of personal correspondence can
create. To examine a play or newspaper from the war-
time era shows us that there was a well-maintained
culture that provided a pro-military ideal. But the
minds of analysts seventy-five years in the future will
never independently understand the influences of the
subliminal messages these campaigns created. Biogra-
phy through letter-writing provides us with the clarity
to understand how the messages were interpreted by
a single person. Letters allow for an opening into the
mind of an individual but reflect the views of the so-
ciety within their thoughts. The deep dive into one
person’s experiences allows for a much more focused
analysis of the experience of a nation.
It seems naïve to think that a set of letters
from one man can grant us some vast insight into the
experience of an entire country; this is because histo-
rians typically focus on the macroscopic. Tomes and
volumes are written about the deeds of nations and,
if we are lucky, a few men and women that historians
deem “great.” But scholars often toss ordinary citizens
together into an anonymous mass, whose views are
analyzed as a collective. A set of letters, even from just
92 Gill, How We Are Changed by War, 46.
93 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 16 August 1944.
a short span of time, provides us valuable information
about that anonymous mass at a personal level. Unlike
newspapers or books, authors wrote letters as a private
discourse. They were not intended for an audience wi-
der than the recipients. They wrote a private discourse
meant for a select few, and their letters offer a version
of events from a more vulnerable viewpoint than his-
torians regularly recognize. The massive mobilizations
of manpower during WWII are common knowledge.
The ways that this mobilization was achieved are les-
ser known but still attainable. How these programs
affected those involved, however, how they shaped
the identities of millions one at a time is underappre-
ciated. Personal correspondence provides documenta-
tion that allows for the analysis and appreciation of
the changes these events created. Buried under the
minutiae of daily life is the reasoning for why those
minutiae have become a part of a routine, and if one
person is performing those actions, or thinking those
thoughts, it is understandable that others may be as
well. The change in direction of an entire nation does
not happen with one voice, it is a collection of mil-
lions of individual voices who decide to change in si-
milar ways, and letters allow us to find out why.
HIS PROJECT WAS born out of a de-
sire to uncover the truth about my grand-
father’s service in World War Two and
to try to understand a man I have never
met. Over the past four years I have pieced together
over 100 letters, postcards and photos from John’s sis-
ter Joan, my great aunt, and other family members to
create his story. His writings influenced me to stu-
dy abroad in Berlin and travel through Germany, the
Netherlands, and Belgium to see the places he saw
and wrote about. When I returned home, I crafted
this paper to present an example of how a historian
can use the private writings of a person they’ve never
met, to find out more about them and their lives than
they could ever expect to know.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
T
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![Barclay,McClelland.Man the Guns,Join the Navy.1942.
Bataan. Directed by Tay Garnett. Aired June 3, 1943.
MGM; United States Office of War Information
1943. Film, 114 minutes.
Lehman, Harold. The Driller, 1932, (Rikers Island,
New York).
Moynagh Jr., John R. Letters. In possession of author.
1941-1945.
Reiss, Winold. Untitled, 1933, (Cincinnati Union Ter-
minal: Cincinnati, Ohio).
Talburt, H.M. March Lion. March 10, 1933.
Unknown Artist. That’s the New Man from ASTP. July
8, 1944.
U.S. Congress. United States Code: Selective Training
and Service Act of , 50a U.S.C. §§
302-315 Suppl. 1. 1940. Periodical. https://www.loc.
gov/item/uscode1940-005050a003/.
Woodburn, Colonel Tom. Defend Your Country, Enlist
Now. 1940.
Crow, Tracy. On Point A Guide to Writing the Military
Story. Lincoln, Nebraska: Potomac Books, 2015.
Denzin, Norman K. Interpretive Interactionism. 2nd
edition.Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2001.
Evans, Redd. He’s 1-A in the Army and He’s A-1 in My
Heart. Helen Frost. October 29, 1941. Vinyl Disc.
https://www.historyonthenet.com/authentichis
tory/1939-1945/3-music/03-Defense/19411029_
Hes_A-1_In_The_Army-Harry_James.html
Foucault, Michel. "Society must be defended:" lectures
at the Collège de France, 1975-76. Translated by
David Macey. New York: Picador, 2003.
Gill, Diana C. How We Are Changed by War: A Study of
Letters and Diaries from Colonial Conflicts to Oper-
ation Iraqi Freedom. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Hapke, Laura. Labor’s Canvas: American Working-Class
History and the WPA Art of the 1930s. Newcastle:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.
Jarvis, Christina A. The Male Body at War. DeKalb, Illi-
nois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004.
Keefer, Louis E. "Birth and Death of the Army Spe-
cialized Training Program." Army History, no. 33
(1995): 1-7.
Kimmel, Michael S. Manhood in America: A Cultural
History. New York: Free Press, 1997.
Shenk, Gerald E., and Henry C. Dethloff. Citizen and
Soldier: A Sourcebook on Military Service and Na-
tional Defense from Colonial America to the Present.
New York: Routledge. 2011.
[1] Reiss, Winold. Untitled, 1933, (Cincinnati Union
Terminal: Cincinnati, Ohio).
[2] Talburt, H.M. March Lion. March 10, 1933.
[3] Lehman, Harold.The Driller, 1932, (Rikers Island,
New York).
[4] Barclay, McClelland. Man the Guns, Join the
Navy. 1942.
[5] Woodburn, Colonel Tom. Defend Your Country,
Enlist Now. 1940.
[6] In possession of author?
[7] Unknown Artist.That’s the New Man from ASTP.
July 8, 1944.
[8] In possession of author.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Image Sources
90
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![SPRING 2021
''TIOCFAIDH ÁR LÁ,
OUR DAY WILL COME''
Tracing the Origins of Ireland’s Support for Palestine
by Alyssa Durnil, St. Edward's University '20
Written for History Capstone: Writing British History
Advised by Professor Lauren Banko
Edited by Louie Lu, Daevan Mangalmurti, and Natalie Simpson
Solidarity Mural featuring
the flags of Ireland and
Palestine. [2]
ON THE NEXT PAGE
A protest led by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC). [1]
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
91](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/yhrspring2021-211020115003/85/YHR-Spring-2021-96-320.jpg)
![HERE ARE TWO richly painted walls
on each side of the intersection of Beech-
mount Avenue and Falls Road in Belfast,
Northern Ireland. The smaller wall, visible
on the right-hand side as one enters Beechmount Ave-
nue, today commemorates the role of women in the first
Irish parliament. But that mural is only the most recent
in a line of at least twenty-three that have covered the
wall and illustrated the concerns of residents of this
heavily Catholic portion of Belfast over the years.1
During the Troubles, the period from the 1960s
to the 1990s during which Irish republicans sought to
unify the island of Ireland, Beechmount Avenue was
better known as RPG Avenue, “after the rocket-pro-
pelled grenade launcher often fired from there.”2
It was
in 1982, during these years of violence, that the first
mural in Northern Ireland with an international theme
was painted on the Beechmount wall. Fittingly, it de-
picted “two male insurgents, from the PLO [Palestine
Liberation Organization] and IRA [Irish Republican
Army], jointly holding aloft a Russian rocket-propelled
grenade launcher, a weapon that both groups used. Un-
derneath was the slogan ‘One struggle.’ ”3
Whether
groups like the PLO and IRA were considered ter-
rorists, guerrillas, or freedom fighters was a matter of
perspective. Initially, the IRA sought to vindicate their
own violent political opposition by aligning themselves
with similar movements around the globe as a means of
portraying Irish republicanism as part of an internatio-
nal struggle against imperialism.
The partition of Ireland in 1920 created a fissure
between the North and the South, and two Irish identi-
ties began to emerge as Irish collective memory was in-
terpreted differently in accordance with current events.
Elisabetta Viggiani asserts that “opposing public narra-
tives of national identification […] victimhood, moral
1 "Beechmount/Falls Corner," Extramural Activity, https://extramuralactivity.com/ beechmountfalls-corner/.
2 Danny Devine, "Growing Up in Belfast: 'I Saw British Soldiers Holding Guns Every Day so I Must Have Copied
Them,'" The Guardian, Dec. 1, 2017.
3 Bill Rolston, "'The Brothers on the Walls': International Solidarity and Irish Political Murals," in Journal of Black
Studies 39, no. 3 (Thousand Oaks, Illinois: SAGE Publications, 2009), 461.
4 Elisabetta Viggiani, Talking Stones: The Politics of Memorialization in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland (New York:
Berghahn Books, 2014), 7.
5 Erik David Nelson, "Memory, Narrative, and Identity Shifts in Modern Ireland," in Undergraduate Honors Theses
(Williambsburg: William & Mary, 2016), 34.
justification for the use of violence and stigmatization
of the adversary are projected by means of careful use
of imagery, symbols, language and a process of selective
remembering and social amnesia.”4
In Northern Ireland,
republicans sought to replicate the Irish independence
movement of the early twentieth century in hopes of
unifying the Emerald Isle. Taking notes from the Cel-
tic Revival,which “provided the basis for the nationalists’
political movement” of the 1910s and 1920s, Irish re-
publicans began adopting Gaelic phrases as a means of
promoting cultural nationalism.5
In the mid to late twentieth century, Irish na-
tionalist symbols, images, language, and flags began to
be applied to or used in conjunction with left-wing na-
tionalist movements across the world.The phrase “Tioc-
faidh ár lá,” a Gaelic chant which translates to “Our day
will come,” was popularized in Northern Ireland in the
1970s, the early years of the Troubles. This phrase has
since been used in reference to similar revolutionary mo-
vements such as the Palestinian nationalist movement.
The phrase signifies both hope and retribution: a promise
that these ethnic groups will one day be free from forei-
gn occupation of their homelands.This sense of a shared
history stemming from parallel experiences is what de-
fines the Irish-Palestinian connection. Ireland's support
for the creation of an independent Palestinian state was
first championed by the Provisional Irish Republican
Army, which worked in conjunction with the Palestine
Liberation Organization in the early 1970s, and by Irish
civilians who campaigned for the government of Ireland
to support Palestinian self-determination over Israeli
settler colonialism. Following the outbreak of the Le-
banese Civil War in 1975, when Irish soldiers were de-
ployed to South Lebanon as peacekeepers for the United
Nations, accusations of excessive force by Israeli soldiers
against members of the Irish battalion inflamed tensions
between Ireland and Israel, inadvertently reinforcing
pro-Palestinian sentiments in Irish society. In response
to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s efforts to di-
sassociate itself from terrorist networks and appeal to
INTRODUCTION
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![European countries through diplomatic channels, Ire-
land called for a sovereign Palestinian state and led the
European Economic Community to endorse Palestinian
self-determination,thus enshrining in Irish foreign poli-
cy a steadfast commitment to human rights, internatio-
nal law, justice, and peace.
CHOLARLY RESEARCH ON Ireland’s
foreign relations with Palestine and Israel
is rather limited. Ireland’s role as a neu-
tral power in foreign conflicts through the
twentieth century may explain why twentieth century Iri-
sh historians generally focus on Ireland’s domestic affairs.
The Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Irish
Civil War,followed by theTroubles,present numerous cri-
tical research opportunities. Research on Ireland’s foreign
policy tends to focus on the country’s prominent role in
the European Union and the United Nations “despite its
small size and location on the margins of the European
continent, its policy of military neutrality, and its com-
plex and often contradictory relationship with the United
Kingdom.”6
In Palestine, instability of the Middle East
combined with the Palestinian refugee crisis has severely
hindered academic research,as archival material may have
been lost, destroyed, or difficult to preserve.The most ac-
cessible resources concerning Palestinians typically cover
political matters; therefore, this paper does not seek to
compare Irish and Palestinian cultures as it would be diffi-
cult to obtain a complete picture.
The first comprehensive scholarly attempt to
analyze Irish-Palestinian relations was undertaken by
Rory Miller, a professor at Georgetown University in
Qatar who continues to be the leading scholar on this
issue. Miller’s research analyzes Ireland’s relations with
Israel and Palestine since 1948, when Ireland formally
declared itself to be a republic and when the state of Is-
rael was established. Miller argues the following:
6 Rory Miller, Ireland and the Palestine Question: 1948-2004, (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2005), 1.
7 Miller, Ireland and the Palestine Question, 1-2.
8 John Doyle, "Irish Nationalism and the Israel-Palestinian Conflict," in Ireland and the Middle East: Trade, Society
and Peace, ed. Rory Miller (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007), 1.
9 Doyle, "Irish Nationalism," 4.
10 Doyle, "Irish Nationalism," 7.
The nature of the Irish struggle for independence from Bri-
tain […] created an innate Irish hostility towards partition
as a solution to territorial conflict […] Combined with [the]
belief that Ireland could claim a unique perspective on the
Arab-JewishconflictwastheconvictionthatIrelandoccupied
a unique, distinctly moral, place in the international system
that gave it both a right and a duty to contribute to the search
for peace and harmony in international affairs.7
Lacking in Miller’s research is a thorough exa-
mination of the IRA’s role in shaping Irish-Palestinian
relations. While Miller provides great insight into the
history of Irish-Israeli diplomatic relations, much of his
analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict tends to favor the
Israeli perspective, failing to fully account for Palestinian
beliefs and motivations.
John Doyle, director of the Institute for Interna-
tional Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction at Dublin
City University, wrote a chapter focusing on Ireland’s
identification with Israel and Palestine titled “Irish Na-
tionalism and the Israel-Palestinian Conflict”for Ireland
and the Middle East: Trade, Society and Peace, edited by
Rory Miller. Doyle approaches this from two angles: the
Republic of Ireland’s foreign policy and radical Irish na-
tionalists’ utilization of Palestine as a comparison in po-
litical discourse.8
Doyle asserts that “Irish foreign policy
on Palestine is also a reflection of and consistent with
support for other strong themes within modern Irish fo-
reign policy—a concern with conflict resolution, strong
support for the United Nations,for international law and
for human rights.”9
To Doyle, the Republic of Ireland’s
support for Palestine is largely based on the principles of
justice and morality, whereas the more radical Northern
Irish party Sinn Féin,often linked to the IRA,has tended
to justify the militant nature of the IRA and PLO as part
of an international anti-imperial movement.10
In Civil Society, Post-Colonialism and Transnatio-
nal Solidarity: The Irish and the Middle East Conflict, Ma-
rie-Violaine Louvet examines Irish solidarity with the
Palestinian cause through the lens of post-colonial theory.
Louvet asserts that Ireland’s identification with colonia-
lism lends itself to “a sense of a shared history, however
HISTORIOGRAPHY
S
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![constructed, between Ireland and Palestine.”11
According
to this theory,Irish civil society’s commitment to transna-
tional solidarity is conditional on individuals’ perceptions
of their history and how it relates to ongoing conflict in the
Middle East.12
Louvet observes that Irish and Palestinian
similarities “are anchored in: resistance to a colonial force;
the building of an identity in resistance against the pre-
vailing system; the rejection of a territory’s partition; and
the struggle against the inscription of discrimination in a
legislative system based on the defence of human rights.”13
She also notes that the rise of Palestinian nationalism in
the 1970s coincided with both the emergence of Ireland as
an international player and the development of revisionist
Irish histories.Louvet’s interpretation of Irish-Palestinian
relations falls short, however, due to her disregard for the
considerable impact the Lebanese Civil War had on Ire-
land’s perception of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the evo-
lution of Ireland’s relationship with Palestine from 1970
through the early 1980s in order to demonstrate how
the relatively moderate government of the Republic of
Ireland came to adopt a cause that was sponsored ini-
11 Marie-Violaine Louvet, Civil Society, Post-Colonialism and Transnational Solidarity: The Irish and the Middle East
Conflict, (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016), 5.
12 Louvet, Civil Society, 7-8.
13 Louvet, Civil Society, 9-10.
tially by the radical factions of Irish society. While Mil-
ler, Doyle, and Louvet present compelling arguments,
each scholar uses a single framework to encapsulate the
complex Irish-Palestinian relationship based on what
each perceives to be ingrained Irish beliefs. Conversely,
I aim to navigate the intricacies of this relationship by
distinguishing between IRA and Irish civilians’ percep-
tions,illustrating the evolution of the Palestinians’tactics
to gain Irish support, and analyzing how factors such as
Ireland’s role on the world stage, the 1967 Six Day War,
the Troubles,the Lebanese Civil War,and Ireland’s colo-
nial history each contributed to Ireland’s solidarity with
Palestine. Furthermore, this paper illustrates diplomacy’s
critical role, evidenced by the antagonism between Tel
Aviv and Dublin and by the influence Ireland was able
to have on European foreign policy. Several comparative
studies between Ireland,Israel-Palestine,India,and Sou-
th Africa have been undertaken by academics, but I do
not seek to compare experiences of partition, apartheid,
and oppression. Rather, these experiences are presented
in order to emphasize the importance of Irish collective
memory in shaping foreign policy.
IRA-PLO Mural in Northern Ireland, date unknown. [3]
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![HE PROVISIONAL IRA arose as a reac-
tionary movement in the early days of the
Troubles, following the violent suppression
of an Irish Catholic-led civil rights cam-
paign by local Protestants and British troops. The civil
rights movement of the 1960s brought about a renewed
commitment among Northern Irish Catholics to gain
independence from Britain, but this was derailed by the
militarization of Irish nationalists.Left-wing republicans
believed a sustained protest campaign would eventually
lead to the creation of a democratic socialist republic that
encompassed the entire island of Ireland.14
Initial pro-
tests in the Northern Irish cities of Derry and Belfast
were organized by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights
Association (NICRA), which took cues from Mar-
tin Luther King Jr.'s policy of civil disobedience in the
United States. For some, however, the demonstrations
were “a way for republicans to expose the true character
of the Northern Irish state […] If the authorities res-
ponded with hostility and repression, nationalists would
then be open to more radical ideas, and the IRA might
once again come to the fore, this time with the popular
support that had been lacking.”15
The British attempt to
violently suppress the civil rights movement enabled the
rise of the Provisional IRA, which split from the Offi-
cial IRA in 1969.Finn,in reference to Northern Ireland,
states that “the Irish republican movement had two main
components, an underground armed wing and a legal
political party, formally separate although they were of-
ten led by the same people.”16
The IRA training manual,
commonly referred to as the "Green Book", proclaimed
its violent tactics to be a morally justified crusade against
14 Daniel Finn, One Man’s Terrorist: A Political History of the IRA, (New York: Verso, 2019), 47.
15 Finn, One Man’s Terrorist, 44. The IRA had unsuccessful campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s.
16 Finn, One Man’s Terrorist, 3.
17 Irish Republican Army, The Handbook for Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army: Notes on Guerilla Warfare
(Northern Ireland: 1977).
18 Finn, One Man’s Terrorist, 2.
19 Brian Hanley, "'But then they started all this killing': Attitudes to the I.R.A. in the Irish Republic since 1969,"
Irish
Historical Studies 38, no. 151 (New York: Cambridge Univertsity Press, 2013), 441.
20 Finn, One Man’s Terrorist, 89-93; Andrew Hough, "Prisoners in Northern Ireland 'Subjected to Waterboarding by
British Army Officers,'" The Telegraph, December 22, 2009.
21 Hanley, "Attitudes to the I.R.A.," 443, 456.
foreign occupation. Gaining public support from a his-
torically conservative Catholic community required the
IRA to engage in a defensive propaganda campaign,fra-
ming IRA members as vigilantes dedicated to liberating
the Irish people.17
The legitimacy of the IRA’s violent tactics was
contentious among Northern Irish and those living in
the Republic. In Northern Ireland, the IRA’s political
party Sinn Féin was supported by approximately a third
Irish Catholic population in each election.18
Many Nor-
thern Irish viewed the IRA’s armed struggle as a natural
continuation of the Irish War of Independence,in which
the Original IRA staged an insurrection to gain freedom
from British rule.19
Moreover, in Northern Ireland, the
Irish Catholic minority continued to experience discri-
mination from the British Protestant majority and re-
pression at the hands of the British military. Irish Ca-
tholics suspected of supporting the IRA were subject
to internment where prisoners were tortured through
beatings, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding.20
The
frequent arrest of innocent civilians, often students and
civil rights activists, radicalized the Northern Irish com-
munity, who felt obliged to protect their families and
neighbors through any means necessary.
This is not to say, however, that Irish citizens in
the Republic were not sympathetic to the cause. Hanley
argues that “support for the IRA was often more wides-
pread than many were prepared to admit and there were
periods when aspects of the armed struggle could be to-
lerated […] In late 1971 Irish military intelligence esti-
mated that there were‘20/40,000 active supporters’of the
I.R.A. in the Republic.”21
In the Republic, Irish civilians’
toleration of insurgency violence oscillated based on the
state of affairs in the North and whether the violence
was preemptive or retributive.The early 1970s saw a rise
in public sympathy as “incidents like Bloody Sunday and
policies like internment without trial helped the PIRA
win the popular support of the Catholic population in
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PROVISIONAL IRA
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![Northern Ireland, as well as the passive and active sup-
port of followers in the Republic of Ireland.”22
The Irish
government in the Republic worked diligently to disas-
sociate itself from the radical factions of Irish politics.
Despite this, the success of the IRA relied on a certain
degree of tacit consent from the civilian population, and
these sympathizers frequently wrote letters to the Irish
Times condemning imperialism, colonialism, Zionism,
and the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
N 1964, THE Palestine Liberation Or-
ganization was established to promote
the Palestinian nationalist movement and
to serve as an umbrella for numerous or-
ganizations and factions. Palestinian guerrillas, or fe-
dayeen, are among those represented by the PLO. The
fedayeen’s rise in popularity in the 1970s grew out of
Arab resentment from the 1967 Six Day War and coin-
cided with the rise of the Provisional IRA. Within a
few years, Fatah, the largest fedayeen organization, ef-
fectively controlled the PLO and therefore Palestinian
politics. In a 1972 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
report, American intelligence noted that “Fatah pre-
sents itself as an organization of strugglers who batt-
le in the front lines for their ‘occupied homeland’ […]
[and] Fatah’s image as a moderate organization unen-
cumbered by ideology was studiously promoted by its
propaganda to permit Fatah to gain broad-based politi-
cal acceptance.”23
Much like the IRA, Fatah, the PLO,
22 Christopher Paul et al., "Northern Ireland, 1969-1999," in Paths to Victory: Detailed Insurgency Case Studies
(Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2013), 327.
23 Central Intelligence Agency, "CA Propaganda Perspectives September 1972," September 1, 1972, CREST, Gener-
al CIA Records, Released August 5, 1998, 5.
24 Claire Sterling, "Terrorism: Tracing the International Network," New York Times, March 1, 1981.
25 Sterling, "Terrorism."
26 CIA, "CA Propaganda Perspectives," 3.
27 Finn, One Man’s Terrorist, 5.
and smaller fedayeen organizations worked to portray
their actions as a necessary and righteous fight against
their oppressors.
Initial contact between the two organizations was
made as part of the international arms trade in the 1960s.
Terrorist organizations across the globe developed an in-
formal underground network to facilitate the black market
weapons trade and recruit would-be militants for terrorist
training camps.The PLO formed training centers in Sy-
ria, Lebanon, Jordan, South Yemen, Algeria, and Libya,
and IRA members were noted to have first attended trai-
ning camps in Jordan in 1969.24
In a report on internatio-
nal terrorism,the New York Times reported:
In May 1972, IRA leaders sat in at the first interna-
tional terrorist summit, organized by George Habash
in Baddawi, Lebanon. And two months later, in Paris,
Habash’s Palestinian Front and the armed bands of 12
other nationalities signed a formal ‘Declaration of Sup-
port’ for the Provisional IRA. Fifty Provos were selected
for advanced guerilla training in Lebanon. Before long,
there was a steady flow of IRA men to South Yemen for
work with Wadi Haddad.25
The IRA-PLO relationship soon became mu-
tually beneficial. The PLO was willing to smuggle im-
ported Soviet weapons to the IRA, and in exchange, the
IRA carried out terrorist operations in Europe as direc-
ted.26
The bond between Irish republicans and Palesti-
nian guerrillas was strengthened due to the pair’s com-
mon enemies and methods of resistance.
Both the PLO and the IRA were able to
downplay some of the violence carried out by their or-
ganizations by framing their actions in terms of a grea-
ter, righteous fight for self determination, often invoking
socialist and Marxist principles.27
To gain sympathy and
avoid being branded as terrorists,the IRA sought to pro-
mote its cause by portraying the Irish nationalist move-
ment as part of a worldwide struggle against colonialism
and imperialism. In the case of Fatah, the CIA argued
that “the only philosophical basis required to establish
I
"ALLIANCE FOR
VIOLENCE": THE
NATURE OF
THE IRA-PLO
RELATIONSHIP
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![international connections is a common conviction
in terrorism and violent revolution as the means to
destroy the established order.”28
By positioning these
nationalist movements as a unified front against co-
lonialism, the IRA and PLO gained sympathy from
populations that suffered under oppressive forei-
gn rulers and drew attention from foreign leaders
seeking to destabilize Europe and the Middle East.
The New York Times reported that by the end of 1971,
“the I.R.A. was getting to be a focus of worldwide
revolutionary interest second only to the Palesti-
nian resistance.”29
In efforts to undermine Western
democracy, the Soviet Union and Libya bankrolled
the IRA and PLO through direct funding and vast
weapons shipments.30
The utilization of socialist doc-
trine therefore granted the PLO and IRA legitimacy,
created common enemies, and increased the scope of
their future operations.
The PLO and the IRA developed a symbio-
tic relationship rooted in anti-imperialist ideology.
Many Palestinians, having been driven out of their
homeland following British occupation, perceived
armed struggle to be the only viable option to re-
claim their national identity and homeland.31
The
British spearheaded the partitions of both Ireland
and Palestine, and the IRA-PLO relationship found
its footing on the legacy of separation. Britain’s fai-
lure to establish an independent Palestinian state
and refusal to grant Northern Ireland independence
created the conditions necessary for the empower-
ment of violent revolutionaries.
Irish civilians, having experienced racial dis-
crimination, religious intolerance, and oppression at
the hands of the British, saw the Palestinian strug-
28 CIA, "CA Propaganda Perspectives," 2.
29 Sterling, “Terrorism.”
30 "Weapons and Technology," Inside the IRA, The IRA and Sinn Fein, Frontline; Sterling, “Terrorism.”
31 "The British Army in Palestine," National Army Museum. After World War I Britain was granted the Mandate of
Palestine and maintained control of the region for 30 years. In 1917 Britain had promised that a Jewish homeland would
be created in Palestine, and when the Ottoman Empire fell, the British gained control of Palestine and oversaw the immi-
gration of 100,000 Jews there. After World War II, the UN drew up a partition plan for Palestine, and the British withdrew.
Israel declared independence in 1947, but the promise of an independent Arab state fell short.
32 Aonghus MacDonnell, "War in the Air," Irish Times, Letters to the Editor, September 12, 1970.
33 Carole O'Reilly, "Review ofThe IrishTimes: 150Years of Influence," Reviews in History.
34 Kevin J. O'Reilly, "Fighting Their Corners," Irish Times, Letters to the Editor, July 6 1972.
gle as analogous to their own. As Israel grew stron-
ger after the Six Day War in 1967, sympathy for the
Israelis, prevalent after the Holocaust, diminished
among the Irish. Israel’s expansion led to a sharp
influx of Palestinian refugees in neighboring coun-
tries, leading Irish citizens to see the Zionists as
another colonizing force. In defense of Palestinian
guerrillas one Irishman wrote a letter to the editor
of the Irish Times, proclaiming:
What help was world sympathy and popular
support in repatriating the Palestinian refugees
since 1948? […] The artificially-created State of
Zionist Israel was founded in essence on force, and
it will not collapse under the weight of hostile inter-
national opinion but with military defeat […] [The
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] opted
for a military solution in place of a futile attempt
to win over ‘the hearts and minds’ of the enlighte-
ned Zionists. 32
Irish newspapers reporting on unrest in the
Middle East often wrote from a pro-Arab stance,
which helped steer the public to sympathize with
the Palestinian cause. Western criticism of Israel was
fueled by Irish citizens who wrote letters to Ireland’s
leading newspaper, the Irish Times. The Irish Times
served as a barometer of Irish society and politics
in the latter half of the twentieth century, occupying
“a unique position of influence in Irish society.”33
In
a letter to the editor published in 1972, the writer
criticized the newspaper for “[trying] to justify Is-
raeli aggression [...] in the face of an almost unani-
mous condemnation by the [UN] Secrity Council.”34
As the 1970s progressed, Irish newspapers became
increasingly and unapologetically critical of Israel,
partially in response to complaints that the Western
media was failing to report on atrocities committed
Israel-Palestine Through the Irish
Postcolonial Lens—1967-1974:
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![by Israelis due to the perception of Israel as a Wes-
tern foothold in the region.
Through the mid to late 1970s, Irish citizens
continued to voice their opposition towards the Israeli
government and often characterized Israel as a neoco-
lonial state. Left-leaning Irish civilians decried Zio-
nism, or Jewish nationalism, as a form of racism.35
In
an extensive opinion piece written in 1975, one Irish
citizen wrote:
If Zionism meant or implied the seizure of Palestine
from its Arab inhabitants in order to establish there an
exclusively or preponderantly Jewish State, then inesca-
pably it stands convicted of racism […] If on the other
hand, this is not what Zionism meant, then the Jewish
seizure of Palestine is revealed as a naked act of colonia-
list aggression.36
The term "Zionist" became highly poli-
ticized, and Israelis were often referred to as im-
migrant squatters.37
The increasing popularity of
right-wing politics in Israeli politics after the Six
Day War further amplified criticism from left-lea-
ning Irish citizens. Israel’s aggressive expansionism
and creation of settlements in occupied territories,
in direct violation of international law, corroborated
Irish citizens’ accusations that Zionism was merely
a front for settler colonialism.38
In 1969, the Irish-Arab Society was for-
med in Dublin to promote trade between Ireland
and the Arab world. The Society utilized its plat-
form to push a political agenda that included the
35 David J Smyth, "UN Voting,"
Irish Times
, Letters to the Editor, July 9, 1979.
36 Atif Atouk, "Zionism Merely a Cover for Israeli Imperialism," Irish Times,Opinion, December 30, 1975.
37 John Tozer, "Arab Rights,"
Irish Times
, Letters to the Editor, July 12, 1975.
38 "Israel Refuses to Halt Settlements in Occupied Areas," Irish Times,February 27, 1978.
39 Marie-Violaine Louvet, "Shedding Light on the Arab World: the
Irish-Arab News,1975-85,"
Irish
Studies in International Affairs23, no. 1 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2012), 191.
40 Louvet, "Irish Arab News," 200.
41 Louvet, "Irish Arab News," 201.
42 Louvet, "Irish Arab News," 197.
creation of an independent Palestinian state.39
The
Society’s founding members were postgraduate
doctors, and they advocated for Palestinians from
a more nuanced perspective than the IRA. There
was some overlap, however, between the Irish-Arab
Society and the IRA, as “the main force behind [the
Irish-Arab Society’s] foundation was Sean Ryan, a
Dublin businessman who had earlier been interned
[…] [under the] Special Powers Act during the
IRA campaign in the 1950s.”40
Sean Ryan’s past as-
sociations therefore undercut the Society’s success,
due to suspicions that it was functioning as an in-
termediary between the IRA, Libya, and terrorist
organizations.41
The Irish-Arab Society did, however, play a
role in shaping public debate on Palestine through
published letters to the editor in the Irish Times.
In the Society’s magazine, the Irish-Arab News, the
founders argued that “‘Israeli propaganda presented
a one-sided picture of the Arab-Israeli struggle that
was uncritically accepted by the Irish people as a
whole, and in the mass media remarkably little in-
terest in, or sympathy with, the Arabs were shown’,
and this had to be changed.”42
In reality, through
the 1960s the Irish public was sympathetic to both
the Israelis and the Arabs, and Irish newspapers at-
tempted to balance the two perspectives. The ag-
gression displayed by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Is-
raeli War compelled the Irish to be concerned for
the Palestinians, and this newfound sympathy was
likely seen as an opportunity by the Irish-Arab So-
ciety’s founders to foster relations between Ireland
and the Arab world. The Society helped shift Irish
public opinion to become more critical of Israel and
ensure that the Palestinian issue remained at the
forefront of Ireland’s foreign policy concerns.
Zionism as Neo-Colonialism:
Irish Civil Society's Criticism
of Israel, 1975-1979
The Irish-Arab Society
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![S A COUNTRY that experienced rather
than imposed colonialism, in geopolitics
Ireland was often trusted as a neutral
force to help stabilize and restore sove-
reignty to war-torn regions. After gaining indepen-
dence from Britain in the early twentieth century,
Ireland maintained a policy of neutrality in forei-
gn affairs through the 1950s. In 1955, Ireland was
granted admission to the UN and began defining
its political role on the international stage through
“participation in peacekeeping missions and service
on the [UN] Security Council at times of great in-
ternational tension.”43
In the period of decoloniza-
tion after World War II, European countries wit-
hdrew from the Middle East, but the outbreak of
the Arab-Israeli conflict destabilized the region.
Many European countries were hesitant to inter-
vene, but the UN began a series of peacekeeping
missions. In 1958, Ireland contributed fifty soldiers
to the United Nations Observer Group in Leba-
non, initiating a nontraditional approach to inter-
ventionism based on humanitarianism.44
This poli-
cy of “Active Neutrality [envisioned] a non-aligned
Ireland acting as a bridge between the developed
and developing world.”45
Ireland further distingui-
43 "One Hundred Years of Irish Foreign Policy," Royal Irish Academy, last modified October 15, 2019.
44 Óglaigh na hÉireann, Irish Defense Forces, "Middle East Past Missions," Overseas Deployments.
45 "Ireland - Foreign Relations," Global Security. Ireland's "triple lock" policy requires UN authorization and approval
from the Irish government and parliament before Irish soldiers can be deployed overseas.
46 Noel Dorr, "Ireland at the United Nations: 40 Years On,"
Irish Studies in International Affairs7, no. 1 (Dublin:
Royal Irish Acedemy, 1996), 46.
47 Dorr, "Ireland at the United Nations," 41.
48 Jeremy Bowen, “1967 War: Six Days that Changed the Middle East,” BBC, June 4, 2017.
49 Berry and Greg Philo,
Israel and Palestine: Competing Histories,(London: Pluto Press, 2006), 48-49.
50 Berry and Philo,
Israel and Palestine, 49.
51 The 1973 Arab-Israeli War is commonly referred to as the Yom Kippur War, the Ramadan War, and the October
War, as the war began on Jewish holiday Yom Kippur in October 1973. Ramadan, Islam’s holy month of fasting and
prayer, also occurred in October of 1973. The war will be referred to as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War in order to avoid sug-
gesting a pro-Israeli/pro-Arab stance and to mitigate any confusion.
shed itself from other Western UN member states
in 1960 through strong support for the Declara-
tion on the Granting of Independence to Colonial
Countries and Peoples.46
Ireland’s national identity
was significantly influenced and shaped by the Iri-
sh people’s experiences under British rule; thus the
country sought to defend the right of self-determi-
nation for weaker states. 47
Hostility between Israel and the Arab world
escalated following the 1967 Six Day War between
Israel and allied Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. The ag-
gression that Israel displayed tarnished the country’s
image. Israel’s unexpected victory led to the occu-
pation of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the
Golan Heights, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem
and displaced nearly 400,000 Palestinians.48
Euro-
pean sympathy for the Palestinians arose out of this
refugee crisis, as many Palestinians “had sought re-
fuge in the West Bank and Gaza after having to
abandon their homes in 1948-49.”49
The Israeli
Defense Forces’ (IDF) treatment of Palestinians
sparked outrage, and between 1967 and 1971, the
UN estimated that the Israelis had destroyed over
16,000 Palestinian Arab homes in the territories
seized during the Six Day War in addition to “35
villages in the occupied Golan Heights that were
razed to the ground.”50
International perception of
Israel shifted drastically during this time, as the
seemingly vulnerable state became the aggressor.
Western Europe began to take more decisive
stances on the ongoing conflict in the Middle East
following the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.51
In 1973, Ire-
land, the United Kingdom, and Denmark joined the
European Economic Community (EEC), a multi-
national organization established by the Treaty of
Rome in 1957. The organization was founded by
ACTIVE
NEUTRALITY:
IRELAND'S ROLE
ON THE INTER-
NATIONAL STAGE
A
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![France, Italy, Belgium, West Germany, the Nether-
lands, and Luxembourg in order to promote eco-
nomic cooperation and establish a common market
in western Europe.52
The EEC was “directly affec-
ted by the consequences of the [1973 Arab-Israeli
War] […] In order to force the Western countries
to put pressure on Israel […] the Arab oil-produ-
cing countries cut exports to Europe and Ameri-
ca.”53
After a ceasefire was declared, the EEC rea-
lized that a comprehensive solution to restore peace
in the Middle East would be necessary. The EEC
called for Israel to return the occupied territories
forcefully acquired in the 1967 war and recognized
that “in the establishment of a just and lasting peace
account must be taken of the legitimate rights of
the Palestinians.”54
The ambiguity of the statement
concerning Palestinian rights ultimately was a re-
flection of the EEC’s various and often conflicting
geopolitical interests.
52 "The History of the European Union," About the EU, European Union, last modified July 28, 2020. Since 1993,
the EEC has been incorporated into the EU. The EEC is generally considered to be the predecessor of the EU. Despite
its name, the EEC exercised control over political matters as well.
53 "The EEC as a Major Player in International Relations," 1969-1979 Completion, Deepening and Widening, Histor-
ical Events in the European Integration Process (1945-2014); "Relations with the Middle East and the Oil Crises," 1969-
1979 Completion, Deepening and Widening, Historical Events in the European Integration Process (1945-2014).
54 "Declaration of the Nine Foreign Ministers of 6 November 1973, in Brussels, on the Situation in the Middle
East," Joint Statement by the Governments of the EEC (6 November 1973).
N THE MID-1970s, Ireland was not
yet ready to officially endorse Palestinian
statehood,but the Irish government believed
the Palestinians should have the opportunity
to observe UN proceedings. At the same time, Yasser
Arafat, founding member of Fatah and Chairman of
the PLO, embarked on a new approach to gain Pales-
tinian statehood by appealing directly to countries dee-
med sympathetic to the cause. When Ireland joined the
EEC in 1973, Irish politicians began using this platform
to advocate for pro-Palestinian policies. Member states of
Free Palestine Murals in Belfast. [4]
IRELAND AT THE
UN: GIVING THE
PLO A SEAT AT
THE TABLE
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![the EEC were beginning to believe that “a solution to the
wider Arab-Israeli conflict necessitated a resolution of
the Palestine problem.”55
In particular, Ireland, Italy, and
France adopted positions in favor of the Palestinians, but
each country’s purpose for doing so differed. Jacob Aba-
di states that “Italy’s proximity to the Arab world and its
vulnerability not only to the Arab boycott but also to Pa-
lestinian terrorism”encouraged Italy to vote in favor of the
Palestinian cause, and this policy also helped to appease
left-wing members of its Parliament who sought to foster
positive relations with Arab nations.56
Similarly, France’s
Palestinian support was fueled by self-interest, as France
“perceived the advocacy of […] Palestinian rights to be
the best means of supporting French interests, which in-
cluded the protection of access to Middle East oil, arms
sales to the region, regional security through a just peace
settlement, and the maintenance of French political in-
fluence and independence.”57
Ireland distinguished itself
by approaching foreign policy from a moral perspective
which encouraged impartiality.
In 1974 Arab states voted unanimously to reco-
gnize the PLO as the official representative of the Palesti-
nians.58
The same month,the United Nations voted in favor
of allowing the PLO to participate in the Assembly as an
observer.Ireland,Italy,and France voted in favor of this re-
solution,sparking outrage among Israeli leaders.59
The Irish
government maintained its support,asserting that they held
“a ‘nuanced’view […] [The government] does not approve
of the terrorism of the PLO, but [believes] the PLO is ca-
pable of being ‘nudged’into right directions and nothing is
gained by pretending the PLO does not exist.”60
In other
words, Ireland hoped by providing support and allowing
Palestinian voices to be heard that the PLO in turn would
become more moderate, and the Irish government suspec-
ted that ignoring the PLO would lead to further radica-
lization. The ongoing conflict in Northern Ireland likely
influenced this approach.Throughout the Troubles, British
55 Miller,
Ireland and the Palestine Question
, 74.
56 Jacob Abadi, "Constraints and Adjustments in Italy’s Policy toward Israel," Middle Eastern Studies 38, no. 4 (Ox-
fordshire, UK: Taylor & Francis, 2002), 64.
57 Pia Christina Wood, "France and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Mitterand Policies, 1981-1992," Middle East
Journal 47, no. 1 (Washington D.C.: The Middle East Journal, 1993), 21.
58 Henry Tanners, "Arab Leaders Issue Call for a Palestinian State; Arafat Given Main Role," New York Times,
October 29, 1974.
59 Miller,
Ireland and the Palestine Question
, 79.
60 American Embassy Dublin, Ireland. Telegram to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, U.S. Department of State,
American Embassies Algeria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya,
Luxembourg, Mauritania, Northern Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates,
United Kingdom, and Yemen. "Euro-Arab Meeting in Dublin," September 16, 1976, WikiLeaks.
attempts to censor and eradicate the IRA often resulted in
a surge in the IRA’s membership and deadly retaliation.The
Irish government sought to foster a sense of understanding
of the PLO’s motives from its own experience and avoid
instigating violence.
N THE LATE 1970s, Ireland’s interces-
sion on behalf of the Palestinians escalated
from rhetorical to a fixed commitment as the
Irish Defense Forces agreed to be a part of
the UN’s intervention in Lebanon. The outbreak of the
Lebanese Civil War in 1975 made evident the ramifica-
tions of the failure to resolve the Palestinian issue. Many
displaced Palestinians lived in South Lebanon near the
Israeli border, and the PLO based many of their opera-
tions there. PLO raids into Israel destabilized Lebanon,
leading to internal power struggles as seen in a series of
violent confrontations between Lebanese Christians and
Palestinian Muslims. A ceasefire was brokered by Syria,
and Arab states agreed to place peacekeeping troops in
Lebanon. Lebanon was divided: West Beirut and sou-
thern Lebanon were controlled by the PLO, and East
Beirut and northern Lebanon were controlled by Chris-
tian militia groups and Syria. The PLO resumed its at-
tacks from the Lebanese border into Israel, and Israel
retaliated by invading Lebanon in March 1978. The
UN quickly intervened, creating the United Nations
CAMP SHAMROCK:
IRISH
EXPERIENCES IN
LEBANON
I
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![Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to ensure Israel’s
withdrawal and reinforce the Lebanese government’s
authority within its own borders.61
Ireland contributed members of the Irish Army
to UNIFIL,continuing the Irish Army’s tradition of ser-
ving in peacekeeping missions. UNIFIL peacekeepers
were intended to serve as a buffer between Palestinians
and Israelis, oversee the withdrawal of IDF forces from
southern Lebanon, and restore Lebanese sovereignty.62
61 "UNIFIL Fact Sheet," Current Operations, United Nations Peacekeeping.
62 United Nations,
U.N. Security Council Resolution
425, March 19, 1978.
63 Robert Fisk,
Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 135.
64 Fisk,
Pity the Nation,136-138. Naqoura is a city in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border and within the se-
curity belt formed by Christian militiamen and Israelis.
65 Philip O'Connor, "Palestine in Irish Politics, A History: The Irish State and the 'Question of Palestine' 1918-2011,"
Sadaka Paper no. 8, The Ireland Palestine Alliance, July 2011, 16.
66 Miller,
Ireland and the Palestine Question, 98-99.
67 Fisk,
Pity the Nation,152.; Olivia O’Leary, "Hostility Grows as Israeli Envoy Attacks Ireland," Irish Times,
The successful execution of the UN mission was
thwarted, however, due to “the arrogant assumption
that the UN was so august a body that no one—least of
all the militias of Lebanon or their regional superpower
allies—would dare contradict it.”63
This fallacy became
apparent as Christian militiamen formed a security belt
along a strip of land in southern Lebanon reaching the
Israeli border, in accordance with IDF orders. This en-
abled the Israelis to occupy southern Lebanon under
the guise of the militias. UNIFIL attempted to reins-
tate order by setting up its base of operations in Naqou-
ra but found itself surrounded and outnumbered.64
The
uneasy relationship between Israel and Ireland worse-
ned as “Irish soldiers [faced] the daily arrogance of the
Israeli Army, and [grew close] with the Palestinian and
Lebanese peoples.” Irish Senator Mick Lannigan as-
serted that “it was the experiences of thousands of or-
dinary Irish soldiers in Lebanon that lay at the root of
the widespread Irish popular sympathy for the Palesti-
nians.”65
As Irish UN peacekeepers were routinely tar-
geted and killed by Christian militiamen, resentment
proliferated back in Ireland.
In April 1980,a series of hostage crises in the Irish
UNIFIL sector in At Tiri further impaired the tenuous
relationship between Ireland and Israel. Israeli-backed
militias accused the Irish of allowing the PLO to set up
bases within the sector, and militiamen and Irish soldiers
had several violent clashes. In a two-week period, Chris-
tian militiamen took a total of fifteen Irish soldiers hos-
tage.On April 18,Privates John O’Mahony,Thomas Bar-
rett, and Derek Smallhorne were taken by militia forces.
O’Mahony was shot and abandoned while Barrett and
Smallhorne were first held hostage and killed later that
day.66
Shlomo Argov,the Israeli ambassador to Britain and
Ireland, fueled feelings of hostility during an interview on
a Dublin radio station when instead of condemning the
men responsible for the deaths of Irish UN peacekeepers,
Argov “lectured the Irish on their Christian duties in Le-
banon.”67
At the funeral of Private Stephen Griffin,“Irish
officers among the mourners spoke angrily of Israel’s ‘com-
Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Liberation
Organization giving a speech at the UN General
Assembly in 1974. [5]
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
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![104
TIOCFAIDH ÁR LÁ
plicity’ in the killings.”68
Perception of the Irish batta-
lion’s role in Lebanon also influenced Irish foreign policy
on the wider Arab-Israeli conflict. Miller attests that the
hostage crises in April 1980 swiftly crippled Irish-Is-
raeli relations, marking “the beginning of two decades
during which time tensions over Israeli actions in Leba-
non would have a major influence on Irish political and
diplomatic attitudes towards the Palestine question.”69
Ireland released a Cabinet statement following the Iri-
sh soldiers’ deaths wherein the government emphasized
Ireland’s critical role in UN missions to promote peace
and, in reference to Israel, condemned the calculated at-
tacks on Irish troops by militia groups “supplied, trained,
advised,and supported from outside by a United Nations
member state.”70
The Irish were enraged, as they viewed
their role in UNIFIL as vital for regional peace and sta-
bility,and the Irish battalion had a reputation as the most
tolerant and even-tempered of the UN’s troops.71
Des-
pite this, Irish peacekeepers had the highest number of
fatalities out of all countries that served in UNIFIL, and
Ireland held Israel responsible for approximately a third
of these deaths.72
Irish and Israeli newspapers sharply criticized one
another routinely,and Irish public opinion of Israel became
increasingly negative as the Israelis failed to display sym-
pathy for Irish casualties. Fisk argues that following Irish
foreign minister Brian Lennihan’s recognition of the PLO
in February 1980,“the Irish [were] singled out for vilifica-
tion by the Israelis. Journalists working out of Jerusalem
were treated to long and supposedly humorous discourses
on the whiskey-drinking Irish, or the ‘Johnny Walker Irish’
as the Israelis and their militia allies dubbed the UN bat-
talion.”73
Furthermore, Israeli newspapers accused the Iri-
sh battalion of being partisan and demonizing the Israelis
and their allies.In May 1980,an article in the Jerusalem Post
declared: “‘the pro-Palestinian bias of ordinary soldiers in
Ireland’s UN force has been no secret,’” and accused Irish
Catholics of supporting the internationalization of Jerusa-
lem to appease the Vatican.74
April 21, 1980.
68 Fisk,
Pity the Nation,153.
69 Miller,
Ireland and the Palestine Question
, 97.
70 Government of Ireland to United Nations Secretary-General, April 20, 1980.
71 Robert Fisk, "Irish Open Fire after Gun Attack," Irish Times, April 12, 1980.
72 "United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon," Wikipedia; O'Connor, "Palestine in Irish Politics," 16.
73 Fisk,
Pity the Nation, 154.
74 Fisk, Pity the Nation, 153-154.
75 Charles Devereaux, "PLO Pledge on IRA Accepted,"
Irish Times,January 14, 1980.
76 Louvet, "
Irish Arab News,
" 202.
S IRELAND BEGAN adopting more
concrete pro-Palestinian policies,Arafat wor-
ked to distance himself and the PLO from
their previous associations with the IRA. In
January 1980, Arafat pledged that the PLO would no
longer be involved with the IRA, as doing so would jeo-
pardize diplomatic relations with Ireland.75
This suggests
that the PLO was willing to concede previous harsh
stances in an attempt to gain legitimacy as a political
body among the international community. Whether or
not Arafat’s pledge was genuine has been debated. As
the leader of the PLO,Arafat was associated with several
terrorist groups in earlier years. However, this change in
approach, from cutting ties to terrorist networks to wor-
king through official diplomatic channels, indicates that
Arafat knew that in order to gain the support he needed,
the PLO must at least appear to be above board.In 1980,
at a joint conference for the Palestine National Council
and the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Coo-
peration, the PLO reemphasized their abandonment of
the IRA cause, stating that “the Palestinians would not
cease their armed struggle to achieve the creation of a
Palestinian state, ‘but in the process of campaigning for
the backing of European governments and establishing
respectability, they have dropped all support […] for the
provisional IRA and all such groups.’”76
The PLO imple-
SEEKING
STATEHOOD:
YASSER ARAFAT'S
PUBLIC RELATIONS
CAMPAIGN
A](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/yhrspring2021-211020115003/85/YHR-Spring-2021-109-320.jpg)
![mented this strategy in order to gain credibility, hoping
that Palestinian insurgents would be seen as freedom fi-
ghters rather than terrorists.
RELAND STRONGLY believed that the
Palestinian people had a fundamental right
to establish an independent state and argued
that diplomatic recognition of the PLO was
in accordance with the Palestinians’right to choose their
own representative.77
A few weeks after Arafat pledged
that the PLO would dissolve its links to the IRA, Irish
Foreign Minister Brian Lenihan issued a joint statement,
commonly known as the Bahrain Declaration, alongside
Bahraini Foreign Minister Shaikh Muhammad Bin
Mubarak Al-Khalifa recognizing the PLO as the offi-
cial representatives of the Palestinian people and calling
77 "Haughey Claims Good RTE Relations," Irish Times,February 27, 1980.
78 Irish Foreign Minister Brian Lenihan and Bahraini Foreign Minister Shaikh Muhammad Bin Mubarak Al-Khalifa,
"The Bahrain Declaration," February 10, 1980, Manama, Bahrain.
79 O'Connor, "Palestine in Irish Politics," 16.
80 Louvet, Civil Society, 3.
for an independent Palestinian state.78
In an interview
following the release of this statement, Israeli Prime
Minister Menachem Begin “[declared] the Declaration
‘a hostile act’ by Ireland against Israel and tantamount
to acceptance of the PLO’s ‘right to destroy the Jewish
state.’”79
However, rather than appeasing the Israelis, the
Irish government doubled down on its support for the
Palestinian state by working to gain the support of the
EEC. Louvet asserts:
With [the Bahrain Declaration] acknowledging the
rights of Palestinians to self-determination, Ireland was
a precursor in the European Economic Community, as
this statement was made a few months before the Venice
declaration (June 1980) was issued by the nine member
states of the European Community, making much the
same commitment.80
The Venice Declaration upheld the same prin-
ciples as the Bahrain Declaration, marking a transition
in the EEC’s position on Palestine. Rather than trea-
ting the Palestinian issue as simply a refugee crisis, the
EEC recognized that a comprehensive peace agreement
Respects paid to UNIFIL Irish Peacekeepers who lost their lives in the 1980s, April 2021. [6]
BAHRAIN AND
VENICE
I
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
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![“UNIFIL Fact Sheet.” United Nations Peacekeeping.
https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/mission/unifil.
“United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon.”Wiki-
pedia. https://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit
ed_Nations_Interim_Force_in_Lebanon#cite_
note-A-54.
United Nations, Security Council, Letter dated 21 April
1980 from the Acting Permanent Representative of
Ireland to the United Nations addressed to the Secre-
tary-General, S/13901 (20 April 1980), available
from undocs.org/en/S/13901.
Viggiani, Elisabetta. Talking Stones: The Politics of Me-
morialization in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland. 1st
ed. Berghahn Books, 2014. JSTOR.
Wood, Pia Christina. “France and the Israeli-Pales-
tinian Conflict: The Mitterrand Policies, 1981-
1992.” Middle East Journal 47, no. 1 (1993):
21–40. JSTOR.
[1] Peter Muhly,A protest led by the Ireland-Palestine
Solidarity Campaign (IPSC), The New Republic,
May 20, 2014.
[2] Keith Ruffles. “Palestinian Solidarity Mural,” Oc-
tober 6, 2013.
[3] “Arafat-Sharon Mural,”The Palestine Poster Proj-
ect Archives, 2002.
[4] Ian M. Butterfield, “Palestine Murals in Belfast,”
Alamy Stock Photo.
[5] AP, “UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY ARAFAT,”
November 14, 1974.
[6] “RESPECTS PAID TO 5 UNIFIL IRISH-
PEACEKEEPERS FALLEN IN THE LINE
OF DUTY,” UN Photos/ Corporal Lee Coyle,
April 21, 2021.
Image Sources
VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021
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YHR: Spring 2021
- 1.
- 3. EDITORIAL BOARD Esther Reichek,BR '23 Managing Editor The Yale Historical Review is published by Yale students. Yale University is not responsible for its content. With further questions or to provide feedback,please email us at: YALEHISTORICALREVIEW@GMAIL.COM THE YALE HISTORICAL REVIEW AN UNDERGRADUATE PUBLICATION The Yale Historical Review provides undergraduates an opportunity to have their exceptional work highlighted and encourages the diffusion of original historical ideas on college campuses by providing a forum for outstan- ding undergraduate papers covering any historical topic. Spring 2021 Volume XI Issue I Grace Blaxill, PC '23 Jisoo Choi, DC '22 Editors in Chief Daniel Ma, BF '23 Louie Lu, BR '23 Executive Editors Lane Fischer, MC '23 Production & Design Director Aaron Jenkins, SY '22 Emma Sargent, TC '22 Gage Denmon, TD '22 Gabby Sevillano, TD '22 Katie Painter, TD '23 Lee Johns, BF '25 Natalie Simpson, GH '23 Assistant Editors Alex Battle Abdelal, TC '25 Alex Nelson, SM '25 Deirdre Flanagan, BR '23 Eming Shyu, SM '25 Emma Yanai, DC '25 Katie Painter, TD '23 Logan Ledman, TC '24 Lucy Gilchrist, MC '24 Oliver Huston, TC '25 Copy Editors Alex Nelson, SM '25 Daevan Mangalmurti, TC '24 Linh Pham, JE '24 Sharmaine Koh-Mingli, SM '22 Production & Design Editors Cover by Alex Nelson, SM '25 i THE YALE HISTORICAL REVIEW Maya Ingram, MC '23 Social Media Chair Marcus McKee, TC '23 Director of Humanities Now
- 4. LETTER from the EDITORS VOLUMEXI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 ii Welcome to the Spring 2021 Issue of the Yale Historical Review. With this issue, we return to campus and to print publication, having bid farewell to previous editors and welcomed many new ones to our ranks. As managing editors,we inherited an organization with many strengths,but by far our greatest asset was our robust, dedicated, and talented team of editors. After one of the strangest years in its decade of existence, this issue marks our third term of editing an issue remotely. With more editors and readers than ever before, we moved our editorial process online, Zooming with authors and each other over the long months of the spring and summer to bring these papers to you. The product of those long pandemic months is an issue that features five extraordinary works of undergraduate research, each with a strong reliance on and innovative use of primary source media among other strengths. Liam Sheahan analyzes a collection of letters written by one American soldier in World War II to explicate how the large scale events of the war were affecting his individual psychology. Helen Zhang weaves together testimonies of Korean and Chinese “comfort women” during and after the Japanese occupation, giving a voice to traumatic experiences and delicately challenging the politics of memory and trans- lation in the process. Alyssa Durnil investigates Irish support for Palestinian self-deter- mination, tracing a movement that began with radical political factions but left a lasting impact on the government of Ireland. Libby Hoffenberg zooms in on the early life of X-ray technology and examines its rise during a medical and industrial turning point in American history. Sophie Combs delves into the history of the Franco-American Orphanage in Lowell, Massachusetts, demonstrating how a state institution became a battleground for modern ideas of immigration, welfare, and community activism. We plan to build on the foundations we’ve laid in an unprecedented year of publishing. Expect an increase in original online content, continued conversations with the Yale commu- nity, and more ways to engage with us both online and in person. We’re proud to present to you five examples of excellence in undergraduate historical research. We’re even more excited for you to see more excellence from us in 2022. Sincerely, Grace Blaxill, Editor in Chief Jisoo Choi, Editor in Chief
- 5. CONTENTS Technology and Paradigm: TheX-Ray, Electrical Therapeutics, and the Consolidation of Biomedicine by LIBBY HOFFENBERG How Comfort Women Speak: The Politics and Social Norms in the Narrations of Comfort Women’s Experiences by HELEN ZHANG ''Tiocfaidh Ár Lá, Our Day Will Come'': Tracing the Origins of Ireland's Support for Palestine by ALYSSA DURNIL Pushing The Envelope: How Personal Correspondence Can Shape Our Understanding of National Events by LIAM SHEAHAN iii THE YALE HISTORICAL REVIEW The Franco-American Orphanage: Immigrant Community and the Development of the Modern Welfare State, 1908–1932 by SOPHIE COMBS PAGE 1 PAGE 15 PAGE 32 PAGE 70 PAGE 91
- 6. SPRING 2021 THE FRANCO-AMERICAN ORPHANAGE ImmigrantCommunity and the Development of the Modern Welfare State,1908–1932 by Sophie Combs, University of Massachusetts Lowell '20 Classroom of “orphans” circa 1920. [1] Written for a Directed Study Advised by Professor Robert Forrant Edited by Esther Reichek and Aaron Jenkins VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 1
- 7. N 1908, OWNERSHIPof the Frederick Ayer Mansion in Lowell, Massachusetts passed from a millionaire investor to a com- munity of immigrant workers. This change corresponded to the industrial city at a moment of social reckoning.At the time that organizers from St.Joseph’s pa- rish fundraised to buy the property from the Ayer’s estate,li- ving conditions and wages had degraded to abject lows.This sprawling fortress—four stories tall, complete with stained glass,pillars,and67rooms—wasatestamenttothefortunes amassed in local mills and,subsequently,became a home for the children of mill workers.In place of an elaborate house, the French-Canadian church established an orphanage for the care and education of children with working families. The Franco-American Orphanage (FAO), first a manor and then a childcare facility, can be considered emblematic of the dual versions of Lowell created by industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries.1 Lowell’s orphanage was the result of local acti- vism and can be understood as a formalized structure of mutual aid. Financially, the FAO was symbiotic with its community, both catering to and supported by the im- migrant population of the city’s Little Canada.Founders intended that the institution to provide short- and long- term childcare services for families; in remembrance of this objective,board members articulated,“In those days, orphans did not receive any special consideration by the civil authorities and the burden of education and caring for those unfortunate children fell on the shoulders of relatives.”2 By situating the FAO within the legacy of American mutual aid, this paper asserts an alternative interpretation of the orphanage in which the institution 1 This paper relies upon archival documents translated by the author from the original French. Additionally, the character of the orphanage was assessed through several interviews of a former resident by the author. "Cul- tural Resource Inventory – History of Ayer Home incl. Photos," Box 1 Franco-American Orphanage/School collec- tion, Center for Lowell History. 2 Most influential in plans for the FAO was Reverend Joseph Campeau, who considered the orphanage his "dream." For most of the FAO’s early life, board members were active members in St. Joseph’s Parish and/or local busi- nessmen while the daily activities of the orphanage were run by women. "Fr. Campeau brings Grey Nuns to Orphan- age," Box 1 Franco-American Orphanage School collection, Center for Lowell History. 3 Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (London: Heinemann, 1902. Reprint, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2012), 7-8. 4 Donations varied in size and originated entirely from the Greater Lowell area. "Album Historique: Paroisse St. Joseph Lowell, Mass. 1916," Box 1 Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. was the product of grassroots collaboration rather than philanthropy in the patronizing sense.This reconceptua- lization of the institution deviates from an individualistic narrative of progress to one where the contributions of working families are central.As expressed by the original theorist of mutual aid, Peter Kropotkin, in 1914: The leaders of contemporary thought are still inclined to maintain that the masses had little concern in the evolu- tion of the sociable institutions of man, and that all the progress made in this direction was due to the intellectual, political, and military leaders of the inert masses. […]The creative, constructive genius of the mass of the people is required whenever a nation has to live through a difficult moment in its history.3 Ordinary people were responsible for the exis- tence of the FAO.Notably,a donation campaign in 1914 to pay the $30,000 mortgage exceeded its goal by nearly $10,000 and owed its success in large part to the contri- butions of other immigrant groups.4 In following years, the orphanage accepted increasing numbers of children with Irish, Italian, and Syrian backgrounds. The FAO was at once an institution rooted in its immigrant com- munity, dedicated to the preservation of French-Cana- dian heritage, and instilled with an ethos of multicultu- ralism. As such, the orphanage can serve as a crucial case study in grassroots organization. In a broader context, social relief that was built up from the grassroots had a long-standing effect on the landscape of American welfare.In line with scholarship by Matthew Crenson and Peter Fritzsche (1998), this paper bolsters their claim that “welfare echoed charity and its child-centered character recalled the institutio- nal purpose of the orphanage itself,” positing that or- phanages were the foundation, functionally and ideo- INTRODUCTION I 2 THE FRANCO-AMERICAN ORPHANAGE
- 8. logically, for subsequentdevelopments in public relief.5 Jessie Ramey (2012), in the same vein, emphasizes the agency of working-class people in establishing insti- tutions thereafter absorbed into governmental struc- tures. “Families were active participants in the history of institutional childcare, making decisions and choices that affected the development of early social welfare,” Ramey notes.6 It is this process, wherein governmen- tal structures are based in the charities that precede them, which creates the decentralized, variable systems of welfare coined by Alan Wolfe (1977) as a “franchise state.”7 Michael Katz (1986) adds that “the boundaries between public and private have always been protean in America.The definition of public as applied to social policy and institutions has never been fixed and unam- biguous.”8 The FAO exemplified this ambiguity; it was at once a private organization and one that received funding from the Massachusetts government for acting on its behalf. Institutions such as the FAO were the product of mutual aid and later, to varying degrees, ab- sorbed into the state. Mutual aid and American welfare 5 Matthew Crenson and Peter Fritzsche, Building the Invisible Orphanage: A Prehistory of the American Welfare System (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 325. 6 Jessie Ramey, Child Care in Black and White: Working Parents and the History of Orphanages (Chicago: Univer- sity of Illinois Press, 2012), 1. 7 Alan Wolfe, The Limits of Legitimacy: Political Contradictions of Contemporary Capitalism (New York: Free Press, 1977). For further reading on decentralized welfare vis-à-vis orphaned children, see: S.J. Kleinberg, Widows and Orphans First: The Family Economy and Social Welfare Policy, 1880-1939 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006). 8 Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: The Social History of Welfare in America (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 2. have in this way a historically porous relationship. While immigrants created the model for com- munity assistance in Lowell, top-down governmental reform aimed to discriminate against immigrants dee- med unassimilable into white society.In Massachusetts, policymakers espousing eugenic and nativist beliefs were instrumental in dismantling generalized institu- tions of relief and replacing them with specialized insti- tutions of rehabilitation. Reorganization of the welfare state relied upon an ideological dichotomy between “deserving” and “undeserving” paupers, with the lat- ter subject to new apparatuses of policing. This paper highlights the interrelation of ideology and structu- ral implementation as articulated by John Mohr and Vincent Duquenne (1997), who state: Most historical accounts of social-welfare institutions suggest that (1) the institutional logic of relief is com- posed of two elements—a system of differentiated re- lief practices (outdoor relief, the poorhouse, etc.) and a system of symbolic distinctions consisting of various The Ayer Mansion turned orphanage at an unknown date. The original 1859 house, the extension built in 1913, and the grotto for religious ceremonies are visible. [2] VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 3
- 9. normatively defined categoriesof the poor, and that (2) these two systems are mutually constitutive in the sense that changes in one corresponds to and constitutes changes in the other.9 Contradiction,therefore,was built into the Mas- sachusetts welfare state of the 20th-century. From the top down, legislators and social workers organized sys- tems of relief in accordance with racist objectives and, from the bottom up,immigrant workers established mu- tual aid societies that were later integrated into the state. Immigrant communities were responsible for many of the earliest forms of assistance; simultaneously,the emer- ging welfare state was shaped by policy work steeped in contempt for immigrants themselves. In Lowell,the FAO existed as a community-fun- ded childcare service. Despite the mainstream concep- tion of the orphanage, the FAO was an institution that provided temporary care for children with living families. This paper’s analysis of administrative documents and over 3,000 orphan records determines that (a) approxi- mately 97% of children at the FAO had family members paying dues and (b) 55% of orphans stayed at the institu- tion for less than one year.“Orphans”were not forgotten nor parentless children. Immigrants, already the engines of economic growth for Lowell’s industries, were at the forefront of bold initiatives to survive within harsh in- dustrial conditions.10 These are the strands worth following from the single orphanage in Lowell.The first section of this paper investigates the political context of the FAO from local and national perspectives,delving into currents of eugenic thought that interwove 20th-century social work.An exa- mination of Massachusetts legislative documents, notes from state committee meetings, and contemporary litera- ture points to a conception of poverty that was the basis for enduring governmental reform.The second section de- tails the situation of immigrants in Lowell, including the health crisis brought on by industrial poverty, the history 9 John W. Mohr and Vincent Duquenne, "The Duality of Culture and Practice: Poverty Relief in New York City, 1888-1917" in Theory and Society 26, no. 2/3 (New York: Springer, 1997), 313. 10 Statistics calculated by author from financial records and over 3,000 admission records dated 1908 to 1932. The 97% of orphans with paying family members was calculated from figures dated the year 1920. Despite inconsis- tent records of orphans paying and not paying dues, the 1920 statistic appears representative of the FAO between 1908 and 1932. "Compter de l’Année," Box 3 Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History; "Recorded Meetings of the Members of the Executive Committee of the Orphanage," Box 3 Franco-American Orphan- age/School collection, Center for Lowell History; "Admission Records," Box 4 Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. 11 United States Children's Bureau, Child Care and Child Welfare; Outlines for Study (Washington: Federal Board of French-Canadian presence in mill work, and the social networks that sustained the community during economic upheaval.Third, a statistical analysis of over 3,000 orphan records at the FAO between 1908 and 1932 reveals the function of the orphanage in the lives of Lowell’s working people. Orphan ethnicities, parental occupations, city ori- gins, and length of stay shed light on New England's mill city at a moment of significant change. T THE TIME of the FAO’s foun- ding, Massachusetts was in the process of constructing its welfare system. Within the span of 60 years, Massachusetts establi- shed a State Reformatory for Juveniles (1847), several schools for “feeble-minded” children (1848), the State Board of Inspectors (1851), the State Board of Charities (1863), a Massachusetts Infant Asylum (1867), a State Primary School for Dependent and Neglected Children (1866), the State Board of Health (1879), an Industrial School for Girls and for Boys (1908), and along with many others. Specific categories of people—such as “ju- veniles” or “feeble-minded youth”—were relegated into institutions for rehabilitation.11 Simultaneously, facilities that catered to broad swaths of the population,including almshouses, were in the process of dismantlement. A fe- deral report in 1921 understood this process as: LICENTIOUS MOTHERS AND MENACING CHILDREN Political Context of the Orphanage A 4 THE FRANCO-AMERICAN ORPHANAGE
- 10. Increasing differentiation andclassification of those re- quiring care, together with the tendency toward centra- lization under State control of provision for these classes, and the use of the family home instead of the institution as a means of providing for dependent,neglected,and certain classes of delinquent children.12 Classification of welfare recipients for the pur- pose of separating, specializing in,or denying care was foundational to Massachusetts reforms throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Paupers were divided into official categories: The poor are of two classes:first,the impotent poor,in which dominion are included all who are wholly incapable of work, through old age, infancy, sickness, or corporeal debi- lity. Second, the able poor, in which denomination are in- cluded all who are capable of work, of some nature or other, but differing in the degrees of their capacity and the kind of work of which they are capable.13 It was the understanding of this 1821 report that the“evils”of poverty originated from the“difficulty of dis- criminating between the able poor and of apportioning the degree of public provision to the degree of actual im- potency.”14 In the same vein,an 1866 annual report from the Massachusetts State Board of Charities asserted that “it is better to separate and diffuse the dependent classes than to congregate them,” while providing instructions for a “system of observation” in which to “collect all the valuable facts” necessary for classification.15 In Lowell, politicians regularly made distinctions between the “worthy poor” and their unworthy counterparts, fretting for the “idlers” who took advantage of state provisions. Mayor James B. Casey expressed, “the giving of aid […] for Vocational Education, 1921). 12 United States Children's Bureau, Child Care and Child Welfare; Outlines for Study, 1921. 13 Massachusetts Legislative Committee, The Josiah Quincy Report of 1821 on the Pauper Laws of Massachu- setts, Written for the Massachusetts Legislative Committee (Boston: Massachusetts Legislative Committee, 1821). 14 Massachusetts Legislative Committee, The Josiah Quincy Report of 1821 on the Pauper Laws of Massachu- setts, Written for the Massachusetts Legislative Committee, 1821. 15 Massachusetts Board of State Charities, Second Annual Report, January 1866 (Boston: Massachusetts Board of State Charities, 1866). 16 Hon. John F. Meehan, Inaugural Address to the Lowell City Council (Lowell: Buckland Publishing Company). 17 DavidWagner, Ordinary People: In and Out of Poverty in the Gilded Age (NewYork: Paradigm Publishers, 2008), 17, 28. 18 Massachusetts State Board of Lunacy and Charity, Twenty-Eighth Annual Report (Boston: Wright and Potter Printing Co. State Printers, 1906). 19 William H. Slingerland, Child Welfare Work in California: A Study of Agencies and Institutions (New York: Spe- cial Agent Department of Child-Helping, Russell Sage Foundation, 1916), 195. 20 Robert A. Davis, Mentality of Orphans (Boston: Gorham Press, 1930), 164, 198. as an injury is not only worked upon the family, but to the community as well.” The objective of the state board, Casey emphasized, was to ensure that charity only went to paupers with no potential of self-sufficiency. Methods of differentiating care were contingent on the idea that some paupers were intrinscally unworthy.16 This conception of poverty was the ideological foundation of the orphanage. A resolution from the Massachusetts Board of Charities in 1864 warned of “the unfavorable influences of [adult paupers], which, if a child be long subjected to them, will always haunt his memory,” and surmised that reform was only possible for children. By 1895, Massachusetts had become the first state to switch to a foster-care system that placed children into rural families; such a move was justified by fears for the “contaminating influences”of “licentious mothers.”17 Reiterated in 1906, the Massachusetts State Board of Charity and Lunacy pushed for “the separation of the children at [the] institution from the more or less contaminating influences of the adult inmates, most of whom are from the lowest strata of life.” Adults coded as “immoral” were disproportionately those from immi- grant and working-class backgrounds.18 Anti-immigrant sentiment was not incidental to welfare reform, but deeply integral to its design. In expli- cit language, academic studies linked the “importation of foreign laborers”to “dependency among adults and child- ren,”and asserted as fact that “low class laborers,generally of foreign birth or descent” have “menac[ing]” children.19 A professor from the University of Colorado warned of both the“army of immigrants”and“army of human energy among the ranks of the orphan population.” A “clear line of demarcation,”he suggested,was the only solution to this problem.20 The psychologist G. Stanley Hall remarked in 1916 that “from the standpoint of eugenic evolution alone VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 5
- 11. considered, [certain immigrantgroups] are mostly fit for extermination in the interests of the progress of the race,” and was quoted in a study by the Russell Sage Foundation on orphan children.21 Echoed in governmental reports,of- ficials expressed that immorality was “inherited,” and as- sessed that “vice and crime” were “forced upon [orphans] by those whose blood courses in their veins.” Definitions of worthy and unworthy paupers, upon which hinged the creation of entire governmental entities, were steeped in white supremacist convictions.22 To this point, a committee formed in 1851 entitled the Massachusetts Board of Commissioners in Relation to Alien Passengers and State Paupers conflated the threat of homeless paupers with immigrant residents.The intention of this organization was to “ascertain the names of all forei- 21 Slingerland, Child Welfare Work in California, 38. 22 Massachusetts Senate, Report of Committee on Public Charitable Institutions on Visits to Several Public Chari- table Institutions Receiving Patronage of the State, no. 79, (Boston: Massachusetts Senate, 1851). 23 Massachusetts General Court, An Act to Appoint a Board of Commissioners in Relation to Alien Passengers and State Paupers, May 24, 1851, chap. 347, (Boston: Massachusetts General Court, 1851). 24 Massachusetts General Court, An Act in Relation to Paupers Having No Settlement in This Commonwealth, May 20, 1852, chap. 275, (Boston: Massachusetts General Court, 1852). 25 New York Board of State Charities, Twenty-first Annual Report of the New York State Board of Charities: Special Report of the Standing Committee on the Insane in the Matter of the Investigation of the New York City Asylum for the Insane (New York: New York Board of State Charities, 1887); Massachusetts Commissioner of Mental Diseases, Annu- al Report of the Massachusetts Commissioner of Mental Diseases for the Year Ending November 20, 1924: Report of Director of Social Service (Boston: Massachusetts Commissioner of Mental Diseases, 1924). gners [...] and also procure all such further information in relation to age,etc.[...] in order to identify them in case they should hereafter become a public charge.”23 Following suit, 1852 witnessed the criminalization of vagrant paupers and systemic deportations of the homeless; no less than 7,005 paupers were deported from Massachusetts between 1870 and 1878.24 Adjacent to welfare,the expansion of a diagnos- tic apparatus saw to the practice of psychiatric evaluations andthecollectionofpersonaldatainasylumsandprisons— not dissimilar from processes for pauper classification and the record-keeping of vagrants.The carceral state was for- med in tandem with welfare.25 Amid these national trends, Lowell in the early 20th century operated as a self-contained welfare ap- paratus. In the years leading up to the federalization of Beds for children in the interior of orphanage, unknown date. [3] 6 THE FRANCO-AMERICAN ORPHANAGE
- 12. welfare in theNew Deal, Lowell assumed responsibility for impoverished children and adults within its boun- daries. In 1901, for example, the city invested a total of $46,791.45 in relief, including expenses for ambulances, food, medicine, surgeons, and coffins.26 The following year, Lowell allocated $4,605.21 for the support of 98 orphans. Expenditures for dependent children ranged between $1.25 (per orphan, per week) at St. Peter’s Or- phan Asylum and $7.00 (per orphan, per week) at the Children’s Hospital in Boston. Interestingly, Lowell’s charitable budget made accommodations “on account of Lowell’s paupers residing [elsewhere],” with payments totaling $68.28 to Beverly, $482.25 to Lawrence, and $542.28 to Boston in the year 1902.27 This system of lo- calized responsibility can be understood as incentivizing the tracking and policing of paupers, particularly with programs geared toward behavior modification. In this way, the framework for Massachusetts’ state welfare sys- tem predated the “big bang” of Roosevelt’s New Deal and was initially a localized process. Contradiction was built into the DNA of Mas- sachusetts welfare from the beginning.The fundamental tenets of welfare—in which poverty was both a chari- table cause and a moral failing to be discouraged—were locked in existential conflict. As Michael Katz (1984) has explained in his research on almshouses: Built into the foundation of the almshouse were irre- concilable contradictions.The almshouse was to be at once a refuge for the helpless and a deterrent to the able-bo- died. It was to care for the poor humanely and to dis- courage them from applying for relief. In the end, one of these poles would have to prevail.28 Development of the welfare state was shaped by conflicting and discriminatory conceptions of care. Demographic anxiety underpinned moves toward cen- tralization and classification. Specialized institutions of rehabilitation replaced generalized institutions of relief 26 Lowell City Council, Auditor's Sixty-Sixth Annual Report of the Receipts and Expenditures of the City of Lowell, Massachusetts. Together with the Treasurer’s Account and the Account of the Commissioners of Sinking Funds for the Financial Year Ending December 31, 1901 (Lowell: Buckland Publishing Company, 1901). 27 In turn, Lowell received funding from neighboring municipalities for their claimed paupers. Lowell City Council, Report of the Secretary of the Overseers of the Poor for Lowell, January 1, 1902 (Lowell: Buckland Publishing Company, 1902), 24. 28 Michael B. Katz, "Poorhouses and the Origins of the Public Old Age Home," in The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly. Health and Society (Hoboken: Wiley, 1984), 118. 29 David Vermette, A Distinct Alien Race: The Untold Story of Franco-Americans, Industrialization, Immigration, and Religious Strife (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2018), 98-111. in order to omit care to low-income, non-native popula- tions.As a result,immigrants in Lowell relied upon their own community networks to build systems of assistance. HE INTERRELATION OF industry and immigration remains key to understanding the economic context for French-Cana- dians in Lowell. As early as the 1840s, mill recruiters scoured depressed areas of Quebec for inex- pensive labor, attracting wage-earners with the promise of opportunity and personal betterment.A ten-day strike following the reopening of Lowell mills after the Ci- vil War further accelerated recruitment in Canada. By 1900, 24% of all cotton mill workers nationwide were French-Canadian New Englanders;workers with at least one French-Canadian parent comprised 44% of textile operatives at this time.29 The dimensions of French-Ca- nadian identity in the U.S. were, from the beginning, economic in addition to cultural.In a presentation to the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, the editor of the newspaper Le Travailleur elucidated this connection: The Canadians are peaceful, law-abiding citizens; and they accept the wages fixed by the liberality, or sometimes the cupidity and avarice, of the manufacturers. […] Ca- nadians have been great factors in the prosperity of ma- nufacturing interests. Steady workers and skilful [sic], the manufacturers have benefited by their condition of THE FINEST MILLS AND THE DIRTIEST STREETS Economic Context of the Orphanage T VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 7
- 13. poverty to reducewages and compete favorably with the industries of the Old World.30 Upon arrival to Lowell,French Canadians faced deteriorating working conditions, living conditions, and nativist backlash. Public officials who referred to French-Canadians struck a careful balance between demonization and appreciation of their contributions. Simultaneously, immigrants were a “horde of indus- trial invaders” and “indefatigable workers” supporting the city’s most lucrative industries. Condemnation and exploitation were not opposing forces but two sides of the same coin. David Vermette (2018) demonstrates that the degradation of industrial conditions coincided with the shift from Yankee women to immigrants as the principal source of labor in Lowell.The defamation of French Canadians, such that they were referred to as “sordid” and “an inferior race,” was both symptomatic of and justification for the inhumane environment in which they lived.31 Vermette explains, It was the othering of the distinct, alien races in the mills that made possible this dehumanization, the identifi- cation of human beings with interchangeable machine parts. Care and empathy extended to those within the tribe and French-speaking Catholics of Quebec were not members of the Yankee tribe.32 Downstream, poverty wages and the retrac- tion of mill-subsidized housing had created a health crisis. In 1882, the Lowell Board of Health reported that the French-Canadian neighborhoods of Little Ca- nada were an “unwholesome quarters” where “sanitary 30 Le Travailleur was a French-Canadian newspaper based in Worcester, Massachusetts. Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, "Resolve Relative to a Uniform System of Laws in Certain States Regulating the Hours of La- bor," in Thirteenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, chap. 29 (Boston: Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor). 31 DavidVermette, A Distinct Alien Race, 207, 250. Notably, the degradation of working conditions at this time coincided with an overall increasing population of immigrants in Lowell. Statistics compiled by the Lowell Board ofTrade report that 40% of the city’s population circa 1916 was native born.The remaining 80% of residents were of either foreign or mixed heritage. Lowell Board ofTrade, Digest of the City of Lowell and its SurroundingTowns (Lowell: Lowell Board ofTrade, 1916), 5. 32 Lowell Board of Trade, Digest of the City of Lowell and its Surrounding Towns, 116. 33 George Frederick Kenngott, The Record of a City: A Social Survey of Lowell, Massachusetts (New York: Mac- millan Company, 1912), 68-71. 34 Yukari Takai, Gendered Passages: French-Canadian Migration to Lowell, Massachusetts, 1900-1920 (New York: Peter Lang Publications, 2008), 50. 35 Statistics calculated from survey data. Children's ages ranged between 1 and 5. G. Frederick Kenngott, The Record of a City: A Social Survey of Lowell, Massachusetts (New York: Macmillan Company, 1912), 68-71, 133-34. 36 Frederick Kenngott, The Record of a City: A Social Survey of Lowell, Massachusetts, 108. 37 Alfred Laliberté, "L’école paroissiale," in [Rev. Adrien Verette] La Croisade Franco-Americaine (Manchester, laws [were] grossly violated. As a result, “many of these innocents [have] died from lack of nourishment, care, cleanliness, and pure air.”33 Two years prior, the Lowell Daily Citizen described the city as having “the finest mills and the dirtiest streets," marked by foul odors and animal matter. In 1881, a physician visiting Litt- le Canada found “the family and borders in such close quarters, that the two younger children had to be put to bed in the kitchen sinks.”34 At this time, Lowell’s Little Canada constituted the second densest neighborhood in the country after Ward 4 of New York City.The pre- carity that French-Canadian immigrants experienced was most evident in their heightened mortality rates; between 1890 and 1909 the likelihood of French-Ca- nadian children passing away before the age of 5 ranged from 14% to 18% compared to 3% for native children. In 1890, adult French-Canadians experienced more than double the 15% mortality rate of their non-immi- grant counterparts. The stakes for mutual aid societies in Lowell were demonstrably high.35 Shared culture was the foundation for facilitating intra-community relief in Lowell. By 1880, French-Cana- dians in New England had founded 63 parishes, 73 natio- nal societies, and 37 French-language newspapers, often directly and indirectly involved with charitable causes. By 1908, 133 parochial schools attending to 55,000 students had been instituted.36 As the artist Alfred Laliberté has ar- ticulated:“the parish school remains the cornerstone of our national survivance in the United States.We can have pari- shes,societies,newspapers,and efforts of all kinds,but if our children do not attend parochial schools, we [will] lose all that.”Survival was a matter both literal and cultural.37 8 THE FRANCO-AMERRICAN ORPHANAGE
- 14. Interestingly, Little Canadawas an enclave no- table for its French-Canadian roots and internal de- mographic diversity. Yukari Takai (2008) finds that the neighborhoods attracted workers of various backgrounds; a former resident recalled, “Everyone spoke French, in- cluding several families with names such as O’Beirne, O’Flahavan,Moore,Murtagh,Thompson,O’Brien,Lord, Sawyer, Thurber, Sigman, Tumas, Protopapas, Brady, and Grady.”38 It is this complexity—that the city was a place where immigrants could affirm their identities, be absorbed into other identities, and one where cultural he- terogeneity was celebrated among the workers—which offers a glimpse of a multicultural ideal specific to Lowell. Before instituting the FAO, the Grey Nuns were certain to include the clause: “while the orphanage is essentially Franco-American,we will not exclude other nationalities.” Children from Italian,Irish,and Syrian backgrounds were accepted throughout the subsequent decades.39 Indeed, the development of the FAO as a mutual aid organization was in many ways the mirror inverse of restructuring that occurred at the state level.The orphanage was established to be specifically French-Canadian and later expanded to cater for a more general, diverse population; Massachu- setts policymakers, on the other hand, worked to restrict access to more specific and narrowly defined categories of paupers.American relief,in this way,has historically been a site of contestation and contradiction.The FAO may have been the pride of French-Canadians, but it was also a re- source made deliberately available to anyone who needed it. N.H.: L’Avenir National, 1938), 256. 38 This was likely because of Little Canada's proximity to local mills. Takai, Gendered Passages, 55. 39 "Correspondence of Grey Nuns 1908" Box 1 in Franco-American Orphanage/School collection at the Center for Lowell History; "Admission records," Box 4 of Franco-American Orphanage/School collection at the Center for Lowell History. 40 "Compter de l’Année," Box 3 Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. 41 The FAO remained at full occupancy every year between 1908 and 1932. There was an expansion of the or- phanage's facilities in 1913 that can account for a surge in orphans cared for by the FAO. This coincided with both a deadly pandemic and the first world war; Statistics calculated by author from admission records 1908-1932. "Admission Records," Box 4 Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. 42 To further the conversation on industrialization and immigration as interrelated processes, it is worth noting HE FAO CAN be conceptualized as both a mutual aid society and an agency opera- ting on behalf of the emerging welfare state. As early as 1910, the FAO received funding from the Massachusetts Bureau of Charity that ranged between $300 and $700 annually and amounted to ap- proximately 1-2% of the orphanage’s income. Between 50-80% of the institution’s revenue was derived from “child’s pensions”paid by the orphans’families. Payment varied according to means; of the 291 children in 1920, 188 paid $3 per week,84 paid $2.25,and 19 paid nothing. As stipulated in the Grey Nuns’contract,“if an unknown orphan is admitted to the orphanage, Monsieur le Curé of [St. Joseph’s] parish would pay his pension […] to be reimbursed by the parishioners.” Contributions through Oeuvre du Pain,the fundraising initiative,peaked in 1923 at $5,567.12 and dropped to an all-time low of $99.55 in 1933.40 Orphan families, the French-Canadian commu- nity,and the state of Massachusetts account for the FAO’s survival at a time of economic recession and depression. The term “charity”ascribed to the orphanage understates both its proximity to the state and the contributions of ordinary people to its success. A statistical analysis of the FAO’s admission records dating 1908 to 1932 further illuminates the institution’s role in the community. Information inclu- ding the orphan’s birthday, parental occupations, home address, ethnicity, date of entry, and date of departure was dutifully recorded by the Grey Nuns when avai- lable.41 As depicted in Figure 1.1, most orphans had French-Canadian heritage despite minor diversification in the 1920s. Between 1908 and 1920, a considerable 97% of orphans were French-Canadian compared to 85% between 1920 and 1932. Figure 2.1 examines the representation of orphans from industrial cities, with exactly 69.7% from Lowell and the remainder with ties to Lawrence and Haverhill. In total, 94% of children were born in Massachusetts.42 ORPHANS WERE NOT PARENTLESS Inside the Franco-American Orphanage T VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 9
- 15. Demonstrated in Figure3.1, the plurality of parental occupations for children at the FAO were mill workers and journaliers (“day workers”). Most interes- tingly, the 3% of orphans with “none”parents—including those listed as “dead,” “unknown,” or “unemployed”—re- veals that 97% of orphans, the overwhelming majority, had living and working parents.43 The documented du- rations-of-stay for orphans at the FAO, depicted in Fi- gures 4.1 and 4.2, bolster this discovery. Between 1908 and 1932, over half—55%—of children were dropped off and picked up within the span of a year. Approximately 78% of orphans resided at the FAO for less than 3 years. The average length of stay was 21 months compared to the median of 9 months. Most orphans at the FAO (a) had living,working parents,(b) were financially supported by their families, and (c) returned to their families after a temporary leave. This is a reconceptualization of what it meant to be an orphan in the early 20th century.44 In the case of a Syrian workman,George Alias,a decision was made to keep his son Philippe and daugh- ter Eva at the orphanage for 22 days. Edmund Pinard, a carpenter in a nearby neighborhood, dropped off and picked up his son Joseph three times between 1926 and 1931. The three sons of Emile and Rose Duchanne, si- milarly, stayed for a two month stretch in 1930 and for a four-month stretch the same year. Parents, it is clear, were not abandoning their children. The FAO provided a service for surviving industrial life.45 HE FAO IN Lowell was an organization inseparable from its industrial context. This paper’s discovery that orphans were supported by families and given tempora- ry reprieve at the institution can reconceptualize the that the mill cities of Haverhill, Fall River, Lawrence, and Lynn were locations with large immigrant populations; "Admis- sion Records," Box 4 Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. 43 Journaliers worked primarily in seasonal and temporary job. Additionally, between 1908 and 1932, only 22 children were placed into adoptive care. This was primarily to other family members. "Admission Records," Box 4 Fran- co-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. 44 "Admission Records," Box 4 Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. 45 "Admission Records," Box 4 Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. 46 C.L., "Little Canada," oral interview, May 3, 1975, typewritten transcript. Center for Lowell History, French-Ca- nadian Oral Histories, 5, 22. 47 Richard Santerre, La Paroisse Saint-Jean-Baptiste et les Franco-Americains de Lowell, Massachusetts, 1868- 1968 (Manchester, N.H.: Editions Lafayette, 1993), 43-44. meaning of early 20th century charity. The FAO is analogous to contemporary systems of mutual aid and can demonstrate the indirect, localized mechanisms by which the Massachusetts state distributed relief. The myth of orphanages as repositories for abandoned children remains an outdated stigmatization of wor- king-class parents; indeed, this paper outlines the ways in which orphanages were resources created by neighborhoods in collaboration with each other. Fur- thermore, the centrality of immigrant identity—both as the framework for organizing within working com- munities and as a site of backlash by nativist intel- lectuals—to the development of American welfare is posited to be a significant dimension of analysis and one that merits future research. The FAO is proof of the interdependent rela- tionships that defined the French-Canadian community in Lowell.As has been articulated by a former resident of Lowell’s Little Canada: The Population was so big in Little Canada that the blocks were real[ly] close. But all families got along beau- tiful[ly] and we were all French people. […] Everybo- dy helped everybody, which is not done nowadays like it was then, but people that had the money—if one needed help that means they would get together and they would come over and help. [...] If you look back to it, I still think I’d like to be there.46 The FAO demonstrates the self-determination of French-Canadians within a context of structural inequality. As Richard Santerre (1993) has put into words, “people found emotional sustenance, psycho- logical security, and a sense of meaning in Little Ca- nada of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” This meaning and security was built from the bottom up by working families.47 CONCLUSION T 10 THE FRANCO-AMERICAN ORPHANAGE
- 16. Figure 1.1 OrphanEthnicities 1908-1912 1913-1917 1918-1922 1923-1927 1928-1932 % Overall 384 1010 703 550 473 96.0% Fr. Canadian 0 11 10 11 20 1.6% Irish 0 0 3 35 10 1.4% American 0 15 15 59 33 0.1% Italian 4 17 6 76 63 3.9% Other The “Other” category represents the small number of Syrian and Belgian children at the orphanage. [5] Figure 2.1 Top City Origins of Orphans 1908-1912 1913-1917 1918-1922 1923-1927 1928-1932 % Overall 277 627 634 404 311 69.7% Lowell 11 93 4 19 15 4.4% Lawrence 14 24 12 47 10 3.3% Haverhill 1 13 4 31 57 3.3% Salem 4 43 12 8 33 3.1% Lynn 8 6 5 22 7 1.5% Boston [6] Figure 3.1 Top Parental Occupations of Orphans 1908-1912 1913-1917 1918-1922 1923-1927 1928-1932 % Overall 136 249 109 142 106 36.1% Mill workers 121 189 75 42 72 24.2% Day workers 16 57 37 22 24 7.6% Machinists 22 24 23 31 16 5.6% Carpenters 8 33 11 32 16 4.9% Shoemakers 8 21 6 12 18 3.2% Painters 0 21 7 9 27 3.1% Clerks 2 7 6 21 5 2.0% Metalsmiths 1 5 3 12 18 1.9% Drivers 13 2 3 23 25 3.2% None “Day Workers” consisted of seasonal and temporary laborers, primarily working in mills, construction, and agriculture. The “None” category signifies the number of parents designated as “absent,” “unemployed,” “sick,” “deceased,” or "handicapped." Note: not all parental occupations are represented on the table. Other professions include electricians, grocers, farmers, bakers, barbers, and plumbers. [7] VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 11
- 17. Figure 4.1 Lengthof Stay at Orphanages (Percentages) 1908-1912 1913-1917 1918-1922 1923-1927 1928-1932 Total 5.2% 14.9% 13.8% 8% 8.9% 10.6% 5+ years 0.6% 8.6% 18.5% 10.3% 14.9% 11.6% 3-5 years 21.4% 4.8% 32.5% 24.5% 28.1% 22.7% 1-3 years 14.5% 8.3% 11.8% 18.7% 14.5% 13.7% 6-12 months 17.9% 14.3% 6.3% 15.7% 12.3% 12.7% 3-6 months 41% 49.5% 17.5% 23% 21.7% 28.6% <3 months [8] Figure 4.2 Length of Stay at Orphanage (Mean and Median) 1908-1912 1913-1917 1918-1922 1923-1927 1928-1932 Total 11.2 20.4 28.4 19.7 21.6 21.4 Mean 3 3 21 9 12 9 Median Units in months. [9] BIBLIOGRAPHY C.L., “Little Canada,” Oral interview, May 3, 1975, typewritten transcript. Center for Lowell History, French-Canadian Oral Histories. Casey, Hon. James B. 1906. Inaugural Address of His Honor to the City Council. Lowell: Buckland Pub- lishing Company. Hathitrust.org. Crenson,Matthew A.and Peter Fritzsche.Building the Invisible Orphanage: A Prehistory of the American Wel- fare System.Boston: Harvard University Press,1998. Davis, Robert A. Mentality of Orphans. Boston: Gor- ham Press, 1930. Hathitrust.org. Franco-American Orphanage. Admissions Records. Center for Lowell History, Franco-American Orphanage/School Collection Box 4. Franco-American Orphanage. “Compter de l’Année.” Center for Lowell History, Franco-American Orphanage/School Collection Box 3. Franco-American Orphanage. “Franco-American Orphanage Housed in Famous Old Home.” Un- identified Newspaper Clipping. Center for Low- ell History, Franco-American Orphanage/School Collection Box 2. Franco-American Orphanage.“Franco-American Orphanage.”Center for Lowell History, Fran- co-American Orphanage/School Collection Box 1. Franco-American Orphanage.“Recorded Meetings of the Members of the Executive Committee of the Orphanage.”Center for Lowell History, Fran- co-American Orphanage/School Collection Box 3. Franco-American Orphanage. “Une Lettre par Sr. Théodore, Septembre 1917.” Center for Lowell History, Franco-American Orphanage/School Collection Box 2. Katz, Michael B. In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: The So- cial History of Welfare in America. New York: Basic Books, 1986. Katz, Michael B. "Poorhouses and the Origins of the Public Old Age Home." The Milbank Memori- al Fund Quarterly. Health and Society 62, no. 1 (1984): 110-40. doi:10.2307/3349894. Kenngott, G. Frederick. The record of a city: a social sur- vey of Lowell, Massachusetts. New York: Macmillan Company, 1912. Hathitrust.org. Kleinberg, S. J. Widows and Orphans First: The Fami- ly Economy and Social Welfare Policy, 1880-1939. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Kropotkin, Peter. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. London: Heinemann, 1902. Reprint, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2012. Citations refer to the Dover edition. 12 THE FRANCO-AMERICAN ORPHANAGE
- 18. Laliberté, Alfred. “L’ecoleparoissiale,” in [Rev. Adrien Verette] La Croisade Franco-Americaine. Man- chester, N.H.: L’Avenir National, 1938. Lowell Board of Charities. 1908. “Financial State- ment of Charity Department for Year 1908,” Annual Report of the Superintendent for the State Charities. Lowell: Buckland Publishing Compa- ny. Hathitrust.org. Lowell Board of Charities. 1910. “Financial State- ment of Charity Department for Year 1910,” Annual Report of the Superintendent for the State Charities. Lowell: Buckland Publishing Compa- ny. Hathitrust.org. Lowell Board of Trade. 1916. Digest of the City of Low- ell and its Surrounding Towns, published August 1, 1916, by the Executive Committee of the Lowell Board of Trade. Lowell: Lowell Board of Trade. Hathitrust.org. Lowell City Council. 1901. Auditor’s Sixty-Sixth Annual Report of the Receipts and Expenditures of the City of Lowell, Massachusetts. Together with the Treasurer’s Account and the Account of the Com- missioners of Sinking Funds for the Financial Year Ending December 31, 1901. Lowell: Buckland Publishing Company. Hathitrust.org. Lowell City Council. 1902. Municipal Register Con- taining Rules and Orders of the City Council and a List of the Government and Officers of the City of Lowell. Lowell: Buckland Publishing Company. Hathitrust.org. Lowell City Council. 1910. Municipal Register Con- taining Rules and Orders of the City Council and a List of the Government and Officers of the City of Lowell. Lowell: Buckland Publishing Company. Hathitrust.org. Lowell City Council. 1902. Report of the Secretary of the Overseers of the Poor for Lowell, January 1, 1902. Lowell: Buckland Publishing Company. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts Board of State Charities. 1866. Second Annual Report, January 1866. Boston: Massachu- setts Board of State Charities. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts Board of State Charities. 1914. Argu- ments Presented March 12, 1914 by the Massachu- setts State Board of Charity Through its Secretary, Robert W. Kelso, to the Legislative Committee Against Proposals of the Massachusetts Commission on Economy and Efficiency, Senate Document 440. Boston: Massachusetts State Board of Charities. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1880. “Resolve Relative to a Uniform System of Laws in Certain States Regulating the Hours of Labor,” Thirteenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, chap. 29. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1881. Resolutions Protesting Against Certain Portions of Carrol D. Wright’s Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics. Boston: Massachusetts Bureau of Statis- tics of Labor. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts Child Council. 1939. Juvenile Delin- quency in Massachusetts as a Public Responsibility; An Examination into the Present Methods of Deal- ing with Child Behavior, its Legal Background and the Indicated Steps for Greater Adequacy. Boston: Massachusetts Child Council. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts Child Labor Committee. 1910. “Child Labor in Massachusetts.” Annual Report of the Massachusetts Child Labor Committee. Bos- ton: Massachusetts Child Labor Committee. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts Child Labor Committee. 1912. “Child Labor in Massachusetts,” Annual Report of the Massachusetts Child Labor Committee. Bos- ton: Massachusetts Child Labor Committee. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts Child Labor Committee. 1921. Hand- book of Constructive Child Labor Reform in Mas- sachusetts. Boston: Massachusetts Child Labor Committee. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts Commissioner of Mental Diseases. 1924. Annual Report of the Massachusetts Com- missioner of Mental Diseases for the Year Ending November 20, 1924: Report of Director of Social Service. Boston: Massachusetts Commissioner of Mental Diseases. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts General Court. 1851. An Act to Ap- point a Board of Commissioners in Relation to Alien Passengers and State Paupers, May 24, 1851, chap. 347. Boston: Massachusetts GeneraL Court. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts General Court. 1852. An Act in Re- lation to Paupers Having No Settlement in This Commonwealth, May 20, 1852, chap. 275. Boston: Massachusetts General Court. Hathitrust.org. VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 13
- 19. Image and FigureSources Massachusetts Legislative Committee. 1821. The Josiah Quincy Report of 1821 on the Pauper Laws of Mas- sachusetts, Written for the Massachusetts Legislative Committee. Boston: Massachusetts Legislative Committee. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts Prison Commissioners. 1901. First Annual Report. Boston: Massachusetts Prison Commissioners. Hathitrust.org Massachusetts Senate. 1850. Report of Committee on Public Charitable Institutions on Visits to Several Public Charitable Institutions Receiving Patronage of the State, no. 79. Boston: Massachusetts Sen- ate. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts Senate. 1858. Report of the Joint Stand- ing Committee on Public Charitable Institutions as to Whether Any Reduction Can be Made in Ex- penditures for the Support of State Paupers, no. 63. Boston: Massachusetts Senate. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts State Board of Lunacy and Charity. 1906. Twenty-Eighth Annual Report. Boston: Wright and Potter Printing Co. State Printers. Hathitrust.org. Massachusetts State Board of Lunacy and Charity. 1919. Forty-First Annual Report. Boston: Wright and Potter Printing Co. State Printers. Hathi- trust.org. Massachusetts State Charities. 1859. Report of the Special Joint Committee Appointed to Investigate the Whole System of the Public Charitable Institutions of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, during the Recess of the Legislature in 1858: Massachusetts Sen- ate Document No.2. Boston: Massachusetts State Charities. Hathitrust.org. Meehan, Hon. John F. 1905. Inaugural Address to the Lowell City Council. Lowell: Buckland Publishing Company. Hathitrust.org. Mohr, John W., and Vincent Duquenne. "The Duality of Culture and Practice: Poverty Relief in New York City, 1888-1917." Theory and Society 26, no. 2/3 (1997): 305-56. www.jstor.org/stable/657930. New York Board of State Charities, Twenty-first An- nual Report of the New York State Board of Chari- ties: Special Report of the Standing Committee on the Insane in the Matter of the Investigation of the New York City Asylum for the Insane. New York: New York Board of State Charities, 1887. Phelps, Edward Bunnell. “Infant Mortality and Its Relation to the Employment of Mothers.” Washington: Government Printing Office, 1912. Hathitrust.org. Ramey, Jessie. Child Care in Black and White: Working Parents and the History of Orphanages. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2012. Slingerland, William H. Child Welfare Work in Califor- nia: A Study of Agencies and Institutions. Concord: The Rumford Press, 1916. Hathitrust.org. Takai, Yukari. Gendered Passages: French-Canadian Mi- gration to Lowell, Massachusetts, 1900-1920. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc, 2008. United States Children’s Bureau. “Child Care and Child Welfare; Outlines for Study.”Washington: Federal Board for Vocational Education, 1921. Hathitrust.org. Vermette, David. A Distinct Alien Race: The Untold Story of Franco-Americans. Montreal: Baraka Books, 2018. Wagner,David.Ordinary People:In and Out of Poverty in the Gilded Age.New York: Paradigm Publishers,2008 Wolfe, Alan. The Limits of Legitimacy: Political Con- tradictions of Contemporary Capitalism. New York: Free Press, 1977. [1] Box 12 of Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. [2] Box 12 of Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. [3] Box 4 of Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. [4] Box 4 of Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. [5] Box 4 of Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. [6] Box 4 of Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. [7] Box 4 of Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. [8] Box 12 of Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. [9] Box 12 of Franco-American Orphanage/School collection, Center for Lowell History. 14 THE FRANCO-AMERICAN ORPHANAGE
- 20. SPRING 2021 TECHNOLOGY AND PARADIGM TheX-Ray,Electrical Therapeutics,and the Consolidation of Biomedicine by Libby Hoffenberg, Swarthmore College '20 Written for an interdisciplinary honors thesis in History and Philosophy of the Body Advised by Professor Timothy Burke Edited by Daniel Ma, Gabby Sevillano, and Katie Painter An 1897 setup for taking an x-ray of the hand. [1] VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 15
- 21. N NOVEMBER OF1895, physicist Wil- helm Röntgen discovered a wavelength of electromagnetic radiation that came to be known as the “x-ray” or the “Röntgen ray.” Within months, experimenters and laypeople were pro- ducing x-ray images using a simple set of machinery. In order to make an x-ray exposure, one needed just three elements: a current source, a Crookes tube, and a pho- tographic plate.1 Although the process was relatively simple, material limitations made the apparatus brea- kable, bulky, and unreliable. Historians have referred to this phase of the x-ray’s existence as the “gas tube era,” which more or less ended in 1913 when stronger and more versatile equipment was developed.2 The unwieldiness of the x-ray machine as a phy- sical object mirrored its clumsy implementation in va- rious medical and non-medical enterprises. The x-ray was regarded with fascination as a device that clearly did something—it “miraculously” revealed the body’s inte- rior and produced outwardly observable effects on the body—but it had ambiguous uses and meanings. It was entertained as a therapeutic tool in treating everything from blindness to cancer,3 a photographic novelty that produced chic and “coquettish” images of women of means,4 and a way to substantiate prosecuted criminals’ claims to insanity,5 among many other uses. Historians have duly noted the dramatic public re- ception of the x-ray, as well as many of its initial experi- mental applications.Theorists in visual studies particularly emphasize the public’s reaction to the x-ray as “spectacle” and the capitalization of novelty by professionals of various standings to substantiate their authority. This interpreta- tion importantly complicates teleological narratives of the x-ray and articulates the multiple and unstable significa- 1 Matthew Lavine, "The Early Clinical X-Ray in the United States: Patient Experiences and Public Perceptions," in Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 67, no. 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 590. 2 Richard F. Mould, A Century of X-Rays and Radioactivity in Medicine: with Emphasis on Photographic Records of the Early Years (London: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1993), ch. 5. 3 "Wonderful X RayTests: Blind Man SeesThroughTop Of His Own Head," Chicago DailyTribune, January 2, 1897, 14. 4 "Her Latest Photograph: It Is An Electrical Picture," New York Times, May 29, 1898, 14. 5 "Electricity Consumption: The New Treatment Of Phthisis By The Use" Los Angeles Times, September 5, 1897, 16. 6 See Lisa Cartwright, Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine's Visual Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minne- sota Press, 1995); Joel D. Howell, Technology in the Hospital Transforming Patient Care in the Early Twentieth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995) for analyses of the x-ray’s implication in public visual culture and the development of the 20th century hospital, respectively. tions of a new technology.It upends the idea that the x-ray was,from its inception,destined to claim the authoritative place it holds in current healthcare practices. It affirms that technologies do not arise in response to pre-existing needs,but they become institutionalized by and in service of contingent relations of power.6 Most histories of the x-ray, however, consider its development as a diagnostic screening tool and fail to consider, or make only cursory reference to, its use as a therapeutic agent. These accounts obscure the epistemo- logical complexities implied by the selection of the nas- cent technology’s diagnostic use over its therapeutic one. In this chapter, the narrowing epistemic field of the x-ray is considered alongside the shifting contexts and contents of American medicine.Across approximately the first half of the twentieth century, multiple potentialities of the x-ray were winnowed to a single diagnostic use just as a modern scientific healthcare paradigm was emerging. In other words, the x-ray technology and its symbolic power evolved alongside changes in the knowledge practices sanctioned by modern healthcare. The negotiation of the x-ray’s potentialities can be contextualized by investigating how the uses for the x-ray were entertained in a medical context that was itself uncertain. Different philosophies, metaphors,and interests were called upon to justify its pri- vileged position as a device of specialized visibility. While the x-ray was invented in Germany, many novel uses of and deliberations over the technology took place in American hospitals, journals, and other sites of medical activity. The x-ray’s early days of use and expe- rimentation—from its invention in 1895 until roughly 1940—reveal an unruly history that broadly parallels na- vigations of ambiguity in the American medical system. The x-ray moved through a series of epistemological and professional paradigms, each of which shaped and were shaped by x-ray practice. The x-ray debuted in a medi- cal system that was largely constituted by idiosyncratic doctor-patient relationships, which were themselves INTRODUCTION I 16 TECHNOLOGY AND PARADIGM
- 22. relatively closed worldsof therapeutic practice. In the context of this testing ground,the x-ray proved amenable to a number of explanatory frameworks, as eclectic prac- titioners integrated the device into their own ideological priorities.Many early practitioners understood the x-ray’s therapeutic potential in relation to other therapeutic uses of electricity, thus revealing the technology’s absorption into vitalistic, or spiritualized, medical paradigms. During the x-ray’s “middle years,” approximately 1900 to 1918, the technology assumed an aura of pro- fessional appeal based on its capacity to authoritatively image the body’s interior. At this time, the x-ray became privileged for its capacity to produce certain scientifi- cally verified images. The ascendance of the x-ray’s dia- gnostic use sheds light on the growing primacy of visual knowledge, and specifically of mechanically-produced images, within medical practice. In its post-WWI years, the x-ray became embedded in large industrial-scientific medical institutions. It was in this context of broad redefinitions of healthcare that the x-ray assumed its diagnostic legitimacy, taking its place alongside a host of other organizational and information technologies that tethered together the practices of different physicians into a single system.At this time,healthcare was increasingly reconfigured as a business that was premised on the modern individual’s health-seeking efforts.The x-ray helped to produce the notion of the body as a site of conti- nual maintenance,as it made the authoritative visualization of the body’s interior a coordinating principle for diagnostic activity. Esteemed medical professionals increasingly aug- mented their medical judgment with the x-ray’s technolo- gically-advanced capacity to objectively discern the most fundamental structures of any individual. HE X-RAY EMERGED at a moment of confusion about how best to govern the body. In the latter part of the nineteenth 7 P.Thomas, “Homeopathy in the USA," in British Homeopathic Journal 90, no. 2 (NewYork:Thieme, 2001), 99-103. 8 James C. Whorton, Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 18. century and into the early twentieth century, the set of possibilities for this governance was expansive. The American medical community was actively deliberating between different paradigms for understanding and treating the body. A representative, though not com- prehensive, example of the uncertainty regarding me- dical paradigm was the dispute between allopathic and homeopathic philosophies of care.The tensions between the two illustrate the emergence of an ideologically bounded modern medicine, in relation to which other paradigms would be relegated to the domain of “alter- natives.” Homeopathy and allopathy coordinated their professional activities against one another: the American Medical Association formed in 1847 in response to the organization three years prior of the American Institute of Homoeopathy.7 And, increasingly, regulatory pro- visions were made to silo the fields from one another: written into the AMA charter was a consultation or ex- clusion clause, meaning that an orthodox doctor could not consult with a homeopath or help a patient who was under concurrent treatment by a homeopath. “Allopathy” was and remains a somewhat conten- tious term. It was coined by Samuel Hahnemann, the in- ventor of homeopathy, in 1807, to designate the opposing ideologies underlying the two medical practices. Homeo- pathic practitioners operated under the principle that “like cures”would cure “like symptoms.”They believed that mi- nute concentrations of a particular toxin would cure the symptoms that the same toxin produced in larger doses. Allopathic practitioners, on the other hand, prescribed cures that opposed the observed symptoms. They sought out substances that would counteract the toxins believed to be causing patients’ ailments.8 Hahnemann used the word “allopathic” to denigrate antagonistic remedies that he believed could only address symptoms and would ine- vitably fail to treat the underlying disease. Homeopathy and allopathy existed alongside one another in the nineteenth century and into the twen- tieth century,showing that not only were particular cures being deliberated, but the very idea of what constituted a cure was uncertain. The debate between paradigms of care reflected disputed assumptions about what kinds of substances or forces could act on the body to move it closer to health.The way that a body was seen to respond to forces and substances in turn reflected prevailing ways T MEDICINE BEFORE BIOMEDICINE VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 17
- 23. of understanding thephysical makeup of the world. In charting the unruly history of the x-ray across medical paradigms,different justifications for its use appear in re- lation to shifting ideas about the constitution of the ex- ternal world.The ways in which the x-ray is and has been authorized in medical practice reveal much about the assumptions that structure the practice of medicine.Me- dicine is a space where ideas about the world are concre- tized in bodies, and in the social and material relations that produce health and sickness. In tracking the way that certain explanatory paradigms take precedence over others, one can situate the priorities of medicine within a vast and contingent field of knowledge production and recognize the tensions that lie within it. N ASKING HOW practitioners made sense of the x-ray’s potentialities in the context of prevailing understandings of the world around them, it is helpful to look at the paradigms that shaped the x-ray’s early development. Historians of the x-ray have noted that practitioners of the new device drew on metaphors of light, as they “illu- minated” the interior of the body.The public would have been familiar with a number of other light therapies that existed at the time, including the Finsen light, the light bath, and a light bulb that would literally illuminate one’s body from within.These often unorthodox electrical the- rapies challenge the device’s reputation as a squarely mo- dern scientific tool. As a therapy that is continuous with both ‘occult’ traditions and distinctly modern ideas about causality,the potency of the x-ray could be situated in see- mingly contradictory ways of understanding the world. Uncertainty about the x-ray was in part mitigated by the American public’s familiarity with electrical thera- peutics.The x-ray was new in its ability to produce pho- tographic plates of the body’s interior, but the concept 9 Lisa Rosner, "The Professional Context of Electrotherapeutics," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 43, no. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). 10 Linda Simon, Dark Light: Electricity and Anxiety from theTelegraph to the X-Ray (Orlando: Harcourt Books, 2004), 11. of using electricity for medical therapies was not new. In addition to general public interest in new applications of electricity—newspapers featured regular columns on re- cent developments in all things electrical—medical pro- fessionals had been experimenting with “electrotherapy” for much of the latter half of the nineteenth century.9 Electrotherapeutics denoted a broad set of techniques used to run an electric current through a particular part of the body. The term was utilized by practitioners with a range of professional standings and was applied to a large array of technologies and apparatuses. Electrothe- rapeutic textbooks were published, colleges inaugurated, and journals convened, indicating that electrotherapy consisted of a fairly well-defined set of practices, coordi- nated by particular rationales for their use. Developments in electrotherapeutics were part of a long history of fascination with vital forces.Natural philo- sophersthroughoutthenineteenthcenturywereconcerned with identifying an animating force that would explain the aliveness of living things in the context of a purely physi- cal world. Vitalism, broadly defined, was this quest for a single life energy. The term “electrics” was coined in the sixteenth century in the context of naturalists’ “predilec- tion to sustain this notion of a life-giving energy,”10 and was used variously to talk about gravity, magnetism, and electricity. These mysterious forces were weightless and invisible, yet they could act on living matter. Theorizing the relationship between these forces and the human body, Sir Isaac Newton proposed that this ethereal substance also imbued nerves. Modifying Descartes’ understanding of the nerves as hollow tubes through which vital spirit flowed,Newton supposed,rather,that nerves were solid fi- laments that produced Animal Motion through vibration. This modified theory led eighteenth-century scientists to demonstrate the affinity between “artificial electricity” and “animal electricity”—the former externally-produced and the latter intrinsic to animate beings’ physiological makeup. A singular substance was understood to course through both living bodies and the external world; this was the mechanism whereby qualities of the external wor- ld animated the human body. In addition to being a pragmatic way to make sense of how forces inside the body were related to forces outside the body, electricity was also useful in thinking I ELECTRICITY AND VITALISM (1895-1900) 18 TECHNOLOGY AND PARADIGM
- 24. through the connectionbetween different parts of the body. Around the turn of the century, medical practitio- ners were theorizing the body as an integrated whole, coordinated by some set of unifying processes.11 Howe- ver, even prior to advances in fields like psychotherapy and endocrinology—both of which are based on theories of homeostasis in the body—electricity was used to conceptualize the way the body was harmonized. James Miller Beard,a neurologist and contemporary of Edison, popularized the term “neurasthenia”in 1869 as a disease that caused depression and anxiety in modern, intelli- gent people with fast-paced urban lives. In the paradigm of neurasthenia, the nervous system and electricity were closely related both causally and conceptually. Beard theorized that electricity was one of the reasons indi- viduals might develop neurasthenia, as electricity was a prominent feature of modern urban life; those living in cities could not escape the stimulation that was induced by constant artificial light.12 Electricity also allowed Beard to theorize the relationship between mental states and physiological activity through the nervous system, which was increasingly understood as the intersection of body and brain.13 As in both psychotherapy and endocri- nology,neurasthenia conceived of a relationship between mental states and the chemical or physical makeup of the affected individual’s body. Electricity enabled Beard to describe this movement between the material and the immaterial. Electricity seemed to coordinate the activity of the outer and inner worlds, generating bodily effects from non-living external objects. The effects of electricity on the body could be understood within the frameworks of both scientific medicine and unorthodox therapies. As electrotherapy became a popular modality, Beard supposed that elec- tricity could be used to cure neurasthenia.14 Although Beard was a noted skeptic of spiritualism, the idea that electricity could be simultaneously a cause and a cure for neurasthenia accorded with the homeopath’s assump- tion that the cure could be the same as the cause of a disease. Beard’s theory gained respectability for its focus 11 Stefanos Geroulanos and Todd Meyers, The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great War (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018). 12 Simon, Dark Light, 6. 13 Beatriz Colomina, X-Ray Architecture (Baden, Switzerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2019). 14 Simon, Dark Light, 152. 15 Dr. E. J. Fraser, Medical Electricity: a Treatise on the Nature of Vital Electricity in Health and Disease, With plain Instructions in the uses of Artificial Electricity as a curative agent (Chicago: S. Halsey, 1863). 16 Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Theosophical Glossary (London: The Theosophical Publishing Society, 1892), 13. Theosophy was an occultist religious movement begun in America in the late 19th century. on electricity as a feature of the modern world; it was credible to many who sought scientific explanations for the perceived effects of electrical devices. But it was also situated well within theories of causation that would soon be understood by allopathic medicine as primitive and unscientific. Electrotherapeutics appealed to the mysterious mediation of electricity between artificial and natural entities in the world. Practitioners of electrotherapeu- tics justified their modalities in ways that called upon electricity’s affinity with vital forces in the public imagi- nation. An 1863 pamphlet published by Dr. E.J. Fraser, who designates himself a “practical medico-electrician,” is entitled “Medical Electricity: A Treatise on the Na- ture of Vital Electricity in Health and Disease, With plain Instructions in the uses of Artificial Electricity as a curative agent.”15 Another pamphlet, this one from 1891, is entitled “Ethereal Matter, Electricity and Aka- sa.” Akasa, or Akasha, is a Sanskrit word that means “space”or “sky,”and in Theosophical understanding was seen as a spiritual primordial substance that pervades all of existence.16 The pamphlet’s contents include in- formation on new devices to detect “different condi- tions of ethereal matter,” “something new about the human organism,”“transmission of ideas to a distance,” and “occult tricks.” Vital forces were understood to operate in a hu- man organism governed by both physiological and men- tal states.The title page of a 1903 publication by the Phy- sico-Therapeutic Institute indicates that electricity was a candidate, alongside “water, air, heat, light, movement, ozone, oxygen, carbonic acid, etc.,” for treating a num- ber of conditions that were neither wholly physical nor wholly mental. The same title page features a quote by D.J. Rivieré, the publisher of the pamphlet (who did not indicate any professional credentials): “The object of the physico-therapeutic cure is to raise the nervous function when depressed, to put right the trophic functions when out of order. It raises the chemical activity of medicines and it insures the organic eliminations necessary to the VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 19
- 25. regular purification ofthe Economy.”17 Rivieré appeals to discourses of chemistry, neurology, physiology, and hormonal (“trophic”) functions to justify his therapeu- tic method.These multiple discourses, as well as his des- cription of the body as an “economy,” reveal the impulse within the medical community to theorize health and sickness as involving the equilibrium of the entire orga- nism.Electricity provided a pivot from vague understan- dings of the body based on the harmonization of its parts to scientific medicine’s updated models of homeostasis based on biochemical entities. Electricity connoted the vital force that coordinated activity but was also distinc- tly modern, a powerful tool with vast potential to know the world in ever more precise ways. 17 D. J. Rivieré, Annals of Physico-Therapy (Paris: Physico-Therapeutic Institute of Paris, 1903). 18 Herbet Robarts, The American X-Ray Journal 1, no.1 (1899). 19 Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health "200 Years of American Medicine (1776-1976)," an exhibit at the National Library of Medicine. Electricity was an enticing cure for a medical com- munity that was actively deliberating over the proper way to treat sick bodies. The flexible ontologies underlying electricity authorized its use as a therapeutic modality in both allopathic and homeopathic practices. The de- bate between allopathy and homeopathy as the most appropriate medical system roughly mirrored the de- bate between those who thought that diseases ought to be cured by treatments administered externally from the body and those who believed that the disease’s natural course of development in the body would cure the pa- tient. Allopathic practitioners sought different kinds of substances to administer to the body, while homeopaths supposed that the body naturally stored the entire phar- macopeia of substances it could need. Allopaths tended to celebrate the variety of pharmaceutical compounds that were being synthesized or discovered with increasing frequency. New therapies presented new tools to combat disease. Homeopaths tended to criticize the search for new compounds. Medical pamphlets and journals fea- tured both drug advertisements and polemics,written by and for doctors, against the use of drugs in medical care. In this space of contradictory mindsets, electricity could be configured as both external and internal; it was inte- gral to the matter of the natural world but also existed innately within the living body. The x-ray’s continuity with electrical modalities meant that its therapeutic potential could be justified by appeals to vitality and energy. The x-ray’s association with vitalism is evident in looking at the cover of the first issue ofThe American X-Ray Journal.This journal began in May 1897 with the stated intention “to give to its rea- ders a faithful resume of all x-ray work.”18 The American medical field saw an increase in the number of published medical journals in the nineteenth century as physicians returned from graduate training in Austria and Germany. They grouped themselves into professional associations and consolidated their reports of clinical and laborato- ry research in medical publications.19 However, even as x-ray practitioners began to coalesce around professional organizations,they did not abandon the vitalistic conno- tations of the x-ray. The cover of the first issue of The American X-Ray Journal depicts a figure administering the x-ray to the globe from outside the globe, indica- The cover of the first issue of The American X-Ray Journal. [2] 20 TECHNOLOGY AND PARADIGM
- 26. ting that thex-rays were seen to come from a mysterious, non-earthbound, place. The spiritual connotations of a figure floating above the earth connotes the idea of an immaterial substance that animates the physical world, flowing freely between living and non-living matter. ISTORIANS HAVE NOTED the uti- lity of the x-ray in consolidating the pro- fessional authority of allopathic doctors and radiological specialists—those in fields that would later professionalize in relation to the x-ray’s diagnostic capabilities.However,there has been conside- rably less attention given to the way that non-allopathic practitioners justified their authority through the x-ray, often continuing to use the machine for non-diagnostic purposes.After the x-ray had been wrangled as a specifi- cally medical instrument,but before it became a standar- dized diagnostic tool, various medical sects incorporated the technology into their practices as a method of legiti- mization. This period—approximately the first ten years of the twentieth century—represents a middle space in the x-ray’s early years that corresponds to the shifting context of professional medicine. Historians have noted practitioners’ self-legitima- tion through the use of the x-ray, as the device came to symbolize advanced scientific medicine. However, they have not engaged with the particular nature of this sym- bolism—the specific capacities that made the x-ray au- thoritative. The invocation of the x-ray’s authority by non-allopathic practitioners (those who would not go on to coordinate their activities in relation to this authority) shows that the regard given to the technology was not solely a response to its association with the kind of scien- tific biomedicine that would go on to dominate health- 20 "Electro-Therapeutics," Chicago Daily Tribune, July 23, 1899, 30. 21 Herbet Robarts, The American X-Ray Journal 1, no. 2 (1899), 30. care. Rather, its authority was premised on its ability to produce objective scientific images. Even when homeo- pathic practitioners used the x-ray in therapeutic vitalis- tic contexts,they legitimized their practice by recourse to the x-ray’s privileged capacity for visualization. After the x-ray had become widely known to the general public,but before it attained its diagnostic role in institutionalized biomedicine,it was seen as the most au- thoritative form of electrical healing. An 1899 article in the Chicago Daily Tribune chronicles the moment the x-ray became a privileged electrical therapy. After ex- pounding the various specialties in which electricity was useful and effective “in the hands of a skilled physician” —dentistry,medicine,surgery,cauterization,thermal and chemical effects—the author laments the hindering of the field’s development at the hands of “quackery prac- ticed in early days.”20 The authority of “regular practitio- ners,”he says,was threatened by individuals who peddled products like electric belts and electric hairbrushes. The author then suggests that legitimate practitioners, who previously refrained from publicizing electrical therapies, were becoming louder voices in the field.This “change in public sentiment,”he suggests,“[is] greatly stimulated by the discovery of the X ray by Baron Röntgen.” This ar- ticle also affirms that the x-ray was not considered a dis- tinctly new kind of machine. Articles in The American X-Ray Journal even continued to refer to the x-rays as “vibrations,” indicating the x-ray’s continued association with a broader set of other electro-therapeutic machines. An article in the same journal states that the x-ray had “brought more forcibly before the minds of physicians the value of the electric current as a therapeutic agent.”21 The x-ray, then, was beneficial not only in consolidating the authority of scientific medicine, but also in justifying the continued use of electrical therapeutics. The x-ray, out of all other electrical therapies, be- came associated with advanced scientific medicine be- cause it was the only electrical therapy that produced an image. The x-ray’s image-making capacity makes it a case study for the history of modern scientific medicine’s self-legitimation through the technique of specialized perception. In the eighteenth century, the epistemically authoritative gaze helped to standardize the interpreta- tion of the body’s interior, so that medical professionals could amass a stable body of knowledge about anato- H MECHANICAL OBJECTIVITY AND THE DOCTOR-PATIENT RELATIONSHIP VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 21
- 27. mical structures thatwere beyond the reach of ordinary perception.22 After the prior sanction against dissection was lifted,practitioners revealed and recorded the typical structures that existed below the surface of an individual’s symptoms and experience, thereby decreasing the need for the patient’s own narrative and symptomatology. Doctors’ordinary sight was augmented by a professional vision that relied upon the delineation of ideal types. The x-ray capitalized on the deep legacy of scien- tific visuality while also benefiting from the technology’s affinity with photography. Photography, which was in- vented 60 years before the x-ray,both allowed for “objec- tive” images to be produced mechanically and increased the number of images that individuals encountered, thereby contributing to a visual culture that associated knowledge with sight. The x-ray became authoritative because it could reveal the structure or ideal type—the skeleton—beneath the surface of the patient’s skin and could do so objectively. An early manual that delineates the parts of the x-ray machine and its potential use in surgery is subtitled “Photography of the Invisible,” im- plying that the technology helped to produce legitimate ways of seeing, and thereby knowing, what was beneath the surface of the body.23 Use of the x-ray was justified by its capacity to vi- sualize the body’s interior, even when it was not being used for diagnostic purposes. Rather, the x-ray’s associa- tion with scientific visuality allowed its continued use in multiple non-allopathic and non-scientific contexts. A feature in The American X-Ray Journal registers a mo- ment in which the vitalistic powers of the x-ray were called upon, even while the technique was also being valorized for the objective qualities associated with mo- dern scientific vision. An issue from March of 1898 fea- tures an article entitled “Is There a Relationship Exis- ting Between The X-Ray and the Luminating Power that Obtains in Telepathic Vision?”written by a “J.J. Fly, M.D.”24 (There were not rigorous standards for medical school at the time,nor would it have been unheard of for a non-doctor to claim medical credentials in the press,so the professional standing of the author is open to ques- 22 Michael Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic: an Archaeology of Medical Perception (London: Tavistock Publications Ltd., 1973), xii. 23 William James Morton, The X-Ray; Or, Photography of the Invisible and its Value in Surgery (New York: Ameri- can Technical Book Company, 1896). 24 J.J. Fly, "Is There a Relationship Existing Between The X-Ray and the Luminating Power that Obtains in Tele- pathic Vision?" in American X-Ray Journal 1, no. 5 (1898), 268. 25 Simon, Dark Light, 46. tion).The article narrates what the author considered to be the four great stages in the discovery of the qualities of light,with the last one being the x-ray.The forms of light discerned move “from the coarser to the finer, from the ordinary to the inordinary,”so that the x-ray was seen as a culminating “pulsating stream of ethereal atoms.” The molecules of the latter forms of light were thought to be farther apart so that the light could be compared to a gas or liquid.This characterization of the x-ray recalls earlier notions of electricity as a“fluid.”25 By describing the x-ray in terms of its ethereal qualities,the author explained the x-ray’s effects in vitalistic terms. In comparing the ray to gas and liquid states, he portrayed it as a substance that moves freely between bodies.However,this vitalistic x-ray energy was simultaneously configured as scienti- fically sophisticated. The x-ray, as an advanced stage in the “evolution of the phenomena of light,” allowed the “objective mind”to visualize what could not be seen with the “natural eye.”The x-ray was called upon for its power to augment everyday vision with a professionally-backed scientific sight. It is not clear what exactly the author saw as the possible relationship between the x-ray and telepathy. However, he clearly recognized the symbolic potency of the x-ray as an effective way to coordinate sight with knowledge.The author asks early in the article: “How is it that we know a thing? And how do we come to know? What is knowing?”In his account of the history of light, he articulates a form of knowing defined by the prio- rity of the visual in its ability to impress knowledge from the immaterial world onto the faculties of the mind.The x-ray was seen as the most sophisticated iteration of a revelatory light that was considered to act on the mind itself. As medical professionals were theorizing the rela- tionship between mind and body, between mental states and physiology, the x-ray was both vitalistic enough and scientific enough to authorize research into telepathy, what might have easily been deemed a “quack”practice. Having become squarely associated with the pri- vileges of objective scientific visuality,the x-ray technique was regarded as legitimate enough to explore suspected 22 TECHNOLOGY AND PARADIGM
- 28. relationships between invisibleor difficult-to-visualize entities in the world. The impulse might not have see- med so unreasonable, given that Thomas Edison himself thought that the x-ray would one day be able to read people’s thoughts.26 What is important is that the author justifies a practice based on thoughts or mental states, things that could not be seen, by appealing to the x-ray’s association with sight. The emphasis on sight becomes even more clear when he cites the potential for the x-ray to cure blindness, writing that “those who never knew what the sensation of sight was like, have been blessed for the first time in life with that knowledge.” Vision and its intimate connection to knowing were repeatedly called upon to legitimize the x-ray’s epistemic authority, even when the relevant practices involved entities that could not be visualized through the x-ray. Visuality became associated with scientific ma- nagement in the context of the shifting nature of the doctor-patient relationship between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As visuality became a privile- ged way of knowing the body, physical manipulations and diagnostic tests became less frequently used.The en- counter between the doctor’s body and the patient’s body took a radically different form, as the doctor’s physicality was diminished in favor of an objective diagnostic eye. Foucault’s analysis of the role of the stethoscope in Birth of the Clinic points to the way that the doctor-patient interaction was assimilated into the nexus of knowledge and perception inaugurated by the discovery of patho- logical anatomy. While the stethoscope was a listening device, it served to both diminish the amount of physi- cal touch in the doctor-patient consultation (by making hand palpitations obsolete) and enforce diagnosis based on images of the ideal healthy body.27 The x-ray occu- pied a similar role in the doctor-patient interaction, as it allowed the doctor to incorporate the expert percep- tion into the evaluation of the patient’s body. Doctors in the early years of the x-ray’s use expressed both enthu- siasm and trepidation over the way that the x-ray would change their interactions with patients. The x-ray’s dia- gnostic potential was immediately glimpsed, as doctors noted the use of x-rays to detect fractures, particularly in military contexts.While some doctors capitalized on this opportunity to substantiate their medical expertise,some 26 Colomina, X-Ray Architecture, 132. 27 Foucault, The Birth of the Clinic, 184-7. 28 Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, "The Image of Objectivity," in Representations 40 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), 81-128. expressed resistance toward using the x-ray for diagno- sis,arguing that manipulations of the bone by hand were more accurate. The x-ray’s image-producing capacity was condu- cive to the new role assumed by medical practitioners in the early years of the twentieth century. Whereas the doctor was previously an individual whose healing powers were intimately related to his or her own phy- sicality, around the turn of the century the doctor was reconfigured as a detached interpreter of the body and its processes.The shifting grounds of medical knowledge were conditioned by changing notions of scientific ob- jectivity. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, ob- jectivity came to be defined against the dangerous and even immoral subjectivity of the individual practitioner. The scientist,who in the past may have been admired for qualities of genius, inspiration, and interpretation, was now instructed to censure his or her personal subjectivity. Scientistswerecommandedto“letnaturespeakforitself,” a refrain also commonly heard in discourses around the early invention of photography. Images, in this scientific context, were thought to be the least vulnerable to “sub- jective intrusions,”and so became privileged signifiers of the emerging non-interventionist objectivity.28 And like the camera, the x-ray could purportedly generate images without the polluting individuality of the practitioner. These images would be important in both constituting and symbolizing stable bodies of scientific knowledge. Although early twentieth century x-ray practitio- ners called upon the visual authority of the device, the context in which they practiced medicine was still lar- gely the medicine of the nineteenth century. Nineteen- th-century medical practice in America was predomina- tely constituted by individual encounters between doctor and patient. There were few professional organizations, little regulation of medical education, and no standar- dized research protocols to speak of.The earliest volumes of The American X-Ray Journal consisted of a miscellany of anecdotes and curiosities about individual practitio- ners and experiments. And, because the components of the x-ray were easy to obtain, “practitioners” could re- fer to individuals of variable professional standing and with variable amounts of clinical medical experience.The journal itself was part of a movement within medicine VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 23
- 29. toward professionalization, butits contents indicate that knowledge about the x-ray as a medical device consisted of an accumulation of isolated, ad hoc experiments. NDIVIDUAL MEDICAL encounters afforded practitioners their own particu- lar notions of what constituted medical knowledge. This epistemological idiosyn- cracy changed in the twentieth century as the doctor-pa- tient interaction became situated within larger systems. Whereas treatments and protocols in the nineteenth cen- tury were generated idiosyncratically between the physi- cian and the patient, in the early twentieth century, this epistemological space expanded to include a multitude of specialists within complex hospital systems. Whereas medical knowledge in the nineteenth century was gene- rated through the doctor’s use of interpretive subjectivity over a living body, in the twentieth century the “per- ceptive act” moved “outside of heart and head and into the information systems and professional organizations that organize the bits of available knowledge and deve- lop guidelines and clinical pathways that inform clinical practices.”29 The doctor’s own mind and body were pre- sent in x-ray experimentation, particularly as they were predisposed to try out the new rays on their own bodies. But between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the shifting character of medical knowledge, and with it the legitimation of the x-ray as a producer of images, was personified in the changing roles of doctor and patient. As the doctor-patient relationship became embedded in complex systems of medical scientific management, the creation of medical knowledge was dispersed between a 29 George Khushf, "A Framework for Understanding Medical Epistemologies," in Journal of Medicine and Philoso- phy 38, no. 5 (Oxford: Oxford Univerrsity Press, 2013), 461-486. 30 Howell, Technology in the Hospital. 31 Martin Kaufman, Homeopathy in America: The Rise and Fall of a Medical Heresy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971), 166. 32 Frank W. Stahnisch and Marja Verhoef, "The Flexner Report of 1910 and its Impact on Complementary and Al- ternative Medicine and Psychiatry in North America in the 20th Century," in Evidence Based Complementary and Alter- native Medicine (London: Hindawi, 2012). 33 Howell, Technology in the Hospital, 130. profusion of actors. Radiologists, scientific researchers, and hospital bureaucrats assumed positions in a self- consciously scientific practice of medicine, thereby faci- litating the standardization and stabilization of objective medical knowledge.30 The rise of the modern hospital accompanied reforms that advocated for increased professiona- lism and scientism in medicine. In particular, the Flexner Report of 1910 was greatly influential in es- tablishing modern scientific medicine as the predomi- nant paradigm for healthcare in America. Abraham Flexner, who was trained in the natural sciences at Johns Hopkins University, promoted a scientific pa- radigm of academic education and research based on the German university system. He sought to elimi- nate “nonscientific” approaches to medicine, as he be- lieved that “alternative medicine” competed with and threatened appropriately scientific medical practices. He recommended higher admission and graduation standards for medical schools; standardization across curricula, including basic science courses; and centra- lization of medical institutions.The report had almost immediate effects both for establishing mainstream medical practice and for eliminating non-mainstream practices. Between 1900 and 1922, 18 of the country’s 22 homeopathic colleges were closed, along with colleges in electrotherapy.31 Some doctors who prac- ticed homeopathy, osteopathy, eclectic medicine, and physiomedicalism were jailed.32 In 1914, the board of managers of the Pennsyl- vania Hospital, one of the first recognizably modern American hospitals, made a decision to have all patients x-rayed.33 The scientific authority of the x-ray justified the professionalization and coordination of activity within the American hospital at the same time that the demands of professionalization and coordination standardized the use of the x-ray.Radiology emerged as a specialty in medicine in part because radiologists claimed that the x-ray, rather than being the fairly simple and easy-to-operate machine that could be used by amateur practitioners,was a complex I INFORMATION AND AUTHORITY (1918-1940) 24 TECHNOLOGY AND PARADIGM
- 30. and sophisticated pieceof technical machinery.The stan- dardization of radiology, and of hospital infrastructure in general,demanded that the x-ray be used in the same way by all practitioners.This need for replicability and reliabi- lity helped to institute the specific diagnostic capacity of the x-ray in medical practice. In their movement toward standardization, indus- trialization, and professionalization, hospitals adopted techniques of Taylorism, the strategy of scientific mana- gement designed in the nineteenth century to increase efficiency in factories. Specifically, hospitals looked to railroad companies’ use of cost accounting.34 Hospitals partly modelled their technologies and infrastructure on successful business strategies as a response to the fact that hospital occupants were no longer predominately the urban poor, but middle-class patients who were wil- ling to pay for hospital services. The division of activity into different departments reflected both the increased specialization of medical knowledge and the ease with which this specialization enabled accountants to track hospital costs. The functions of the hospital, then, were recalibrated along the lines of efficiency and rationaliza- tion.The x-ray and the business strategies adopted from successful companies were each complicit in the appli- cation of scientific and industrial discoveries to medical practice.Their simultaneous integration into the Ameri- can hospital system demonstrates the way that new the- rapeutic technologies accompanied and facilitated new technologies of power and organization. Changes in the role of the x-ray within the hos- pital were associated by changes in the technology it- self. The “gas tube era,” in which machines were large, loud,smelly,and imprecise,ended with advances in ma- chinery, particularly after World War I. In the gas tube era, the experience of being x-rayed was one of sensory overload; the patient experienced the emission of sparks and sounds, smelled ozone and nitrous oxide from the machine and gasoline from the generator, and perhaps tasted the barium in drinks that were prescribed in or- der to induce a visible radio-opaque effect. These dra- matic effects often made patients anxious or nauseous, and these side effects paled in comparison to the burns 34 Howell, Technology in the Hospital, 31. 35 Lavine, "The Early Clinical X-Ray in the United States," 607-611. 36 Lavine, "The Early Clinical X-Ray in the United States," 596. 37 Anne Hessenbruch, "Calibration and Work in the X-Ray Economy," in Social Studies of Science 30, no. 3 (Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, 2000). 38 Hessenbruch, "Calibration and Work in the X-Ray Economy," 412. and deaths suffered by early x-ray “martyr” experimen- ters.35 Thomas Edison himself swore off x-ray experi- mentation after he nearly lost his vision, and his assis- tant, Clarence Dally, developed a carcinoma leading to the amputation of an arm. Following these unforeseen consequences, Edison announced to a reporter from New York World: “Don’t talk to me about X-rays… I am afraid of them.”36 The public’s growing unease with the unrelia- bility and danger of the x-ray, as well as the embed- ding of radiology in complex hospital systems, led to improvements in every element of the x-ray appa- ratus in the 1910s and 1920s. The increasing call to administer scientifically rigorous and experimentally replicable treatments also led to a standardization of the way that the x-ray’s effects were measured.37 The amount of radiation administered had previously been measured by observing visible effects on the patient’s skin. However, as medical practice became less idio- syncratic and medical practitioners endeavored to ag- gregate information about care into large, centralized institutions, radiologists developed instruments to precisely measure radiation exposure.38 Measurements of radiation, as well as of allowable risk, standardized the practice across practitioners. These developments, in addition to the fact that by 1918 a much greater portion of the population had become accustomed to being x-rayed, led to a decrease in the spectacle and novelty of the machine. The diminishing physicality of the x-ray, and the consequent decrease in its visible effects on the body, facilitated its placement in an increasingly consu- mer-oriented paradigm of health management. The x-ray as a therapeutic agent was predicated on its ability to demonstrate the activation of vitality in the human body, an ability which necessitated the proximity, and relative insularity from bureaucracy, of the individual doctor and patient. As healthcare became dispersed across large institutions and administrative apparatuses, the x-ray assumed its role as a mode of producing in- formation that would lead to diagnoses.The capacity to visualize the interior of the body was conducive to an VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 25
- 31. increasingly prevalent mandateto maintain individual health—an imperative that called for continual dis- cernment of the hidden structures and mechanisms of the body. The category of diagnosis was useful in subs- tantiating a paradigm wherein the patient sought not an immediate cure but information with which to make decisions about long-term health. Although the x-ray was just one piece of tech- nology within a complex healthcare system, and the physical presence of the machine itself was diminished, the aesthetic of the technology remained significant. In the years after World War I, the x-ray symbolized not only modern scientific visuality, but modern indus- trial machinery generally. Radiologists appealed to the x-ray’s aura of technological sophistication to justify their role in hospital systems as qualified professionals. In the hospital’s integration of multiple medical prac- tices into a single system, there was sometimes tension between radiology departments and the demands of a large business-oriented hospital. A 1934 article pu- blished in Radiology, a professional journal started in 1929, identified a “peculiar relationship between hospi- tal and roentgenologists,” in which the hospital owned the equipment and facilities that the radiologist used, but the radiologist performed services that he/she saw as involving distinct technical expertise. Hospitals, on the other hand, believed that they could produce “roentgenograms” without the help of the radiologist and that the radiologist simply provided interpretation of the images. This discrepancy resulted in confusion over how to divide compensation between the hospital and the radiologist.39 A 1935 article in the same journal lamented that “many physicians consider the roentge- nologist a mere photographer.”40 The “domestication” of the x-ray machine from a cumbersome instrument to a modern and efficient technology embedded in the hospital threatened the radiologist because he or she could no longer demons- trate the miraculous powers of the x-ray. Previously the side effects, even when they were unpleasant or fatal, proved that the x-ray was working. One radiologist in 39 Leon Menville and Howard Doub, "The X-ray Problem and a Solution: A Discussion of the Proposed Separation of the X-ray Examination into Technical and Professional Portions," in Radiology 23, no.5 (Oak Brook, Illinois: The Radio- logical Society of North America, 1934). 40 Emmet Keating, "Fee Tables and the Roentgenologists," in Radiology 24, no. 3 (Oak Brook, Illinois: The Radiolo- gy Society of North America, 1935). 41 Lavine, "The Early Clinical X-Ray in the United States," 612. 42 Hessenbruch, "Calibration and Work in the X-Ray Economy," 414. the gas tube era noted that he even “ma[de] it a point in every case to produce a burn,” as the visible effects of the rays indicated its curative efficacy.41 Radiologists after WWI, on the other hand, did not attempt to pro- duce visible effects, nor was the public nearly as willing to tolerate them.Instead,they fashioned their authority as technicians who provided the service of interpreting information produced by sophisticated machines. They claimed their professional status in reference not to the patient’s body as a site of visible effects but to the x-ray machine itself and its ability to produce diagnostic in- formation. The radiologist modified the role that was vacated by the individual doctor as a demonstrator, or even entertainer, who produced observable therapeu- tic effects, and became the interpreter of mechanical- ly-produced scientific images that could then be used to generate a diagnosis. Much of the appeal of the x-ray in the years after WWI lay in its mechanical sophistication. X-ray techno- logy became a mass industry as companies in the U.S.and Germany marketed their high-quality equipment domes- tically and abroad.Radiology epitomized mass production, with its “investment in apparatus and its striving to rou- tinize labour” and its call for “elaborate plants, machinery and other equipment, and consequently for heavy invest- ment.”42 Radiology and the x-ray industry, along with the hospital, increasingly fit into paradigms of big business undergirded with the appeal of advanced technology. The conception of the x-ray as a sophisticated ma- chine, and the radiologist as a sophisticated machine technician, accorded well with the emerging view of the body as a machine.The machine metaphor was prevalent in the work of Fritz Kahn, a German physician who was known for his widely-circulated popular science books and illustrations. He published an image entitled Der Mensch als Industriepalast, or Man as Industrial Pa- lace, that depicted the human body as a modern chemi- cal plant. In the image, the interior of the human body consists of a network of parts that correspond to func- tions. Unlike the metaphor of the body as an economy, which understood the body as an interconnected whole 26 TECHNOLOGY AND PARADIGM
- 32. coordinated by immaterialforces, the factory metaphor proposed a functional relationship between parts of the body and the body as a whole. Whereas the ‘economy’ of the body was regulated by the flow of material-im- material substance between undifferentiated parts, the body as ‘machine’integrated the specific functions of the parts into a system optimized for efficiency. The body, like the modern hospital, was conceived along the lines of a factory, where labor was divided so as to maximize the production of power. Other captions for Fritz Kahn’s illustrations in- clude “Comparison of force transmission in a car and the outer ear”and “the basic forms and functions of the bones and joints in man’s body are very similar to our own architectural and technological constructions.”43 Kahn’s graphics portray the modern preoccupation with the body as an energy system designed for maxi- mum efficiency.44 The body was a machine engineered for efficiency, but, like the x-ray machine, it required the expertise of trained technicians to maintain it. This expertise existed not in the space between the patient’s and the doctor’s bo- dies, as it had in the first years of x-ray treatment. Rather, expert medical opinion was produced in reference to an increasingly large body of knowledge that was generated between hospitals and research facilities and between va- rious departments within the hospital. In the context of the proliferation of scientifically-backed research studies and the dispersal of care between multiple departments and practitioners, health evaluations were increasingly produced in reference to stable bodies of knowledge that existed outside of the doctor’s experience and judgment. The patient’s own symptoms and accounts of illness played a smaller role in orienting diagnosis and treatment.Rather, medical evaluation was increasingly conducted through measurement and statistics. Blood tests, urinalysis, and other diagnostic tests became more prevalent,as did stan- dardized written forms that allowed practitioners to easily extract and compare patient information.45 By the 1940s, the Eastman Kodak Company ad- vertised its radiographic equipment by its ability to “pro- vide inside information.” A pamphlet circulated by the 43 National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division, National Institutes of Health, “Dream Anatomy” online gallery. 44 Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992). 45 Howell, Technology in the Hospital. company proclaimed that radiography “in modern in- dustry” was useful for its ability to procure “a wealth of Fritz Kahn's illustration entitled Der Mensch als Industriepalast, or Man as Industrial Palace, depicting the human body as a modern chemical plant. [3] VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 27
- 33. invaluable data.”46 Nowhere inthe ad was the body of either the patient or the practitioner depicted; rather, the ad featured pictures of the machine and its parts and of diagnostic images produced by the machines. Emphasis had shifted to the x-ray’s ability to pro- duce data or information, a function that suited the information-centric organization of emerging medi- cal institutions. The x-ray, as a machine both symbolic of and functional to the priorities of American medicine, articulated a new conception of health in modern life. Rendered a site of constant calibration and maintenance, the body was “an entity in the pro- cess of becoming, a project to be worked at and ac- complished as part of an individual’s self-identity.”47 The project was to make the body beautiful and ef- ficient, as good health was associated with both a certain conspicuous consumption and the capacity for work. The activity of health was not confined to the hospital; the imperative to produce and main- tain a healthy body permeated all manner of physi- cal and psychic spaces. The x-ray, from its inception, emphasized not just the exposed body, but the body being exposed. It was seen as a threat to privacy in its power to re- veal the inside of the body; the body revealed was often the body of a woman, and the still-discernible contours of her skin reminded the viewer that this was an intimate act.48 The x-ray’s association with the voyeuristic gaze was reinforced as modern archi- tecture adopted the x-ray aesthetic by incorporating transparent glass and exposed frames that revealed the activity of those inside the building. (Pyrex and other transparent consumer goods became popu- lar in the same years). Modern architecture, which is dated as beginning around the same years as the x-ray was invented, was predicated on the sick body, as the private space of the home was configured as a sanatorium. Sanatoriums were becoming status symbols, places where the wealthy went to escape the city. The same white surfaces, glass windows, and ac- 46 Kodak, “3 Ways Radiography Can Provide Inside Information,” Science 109 (Washington D.C.: American Associ- ation for the Advancement of Science, 1949), 9. 47 Chris Shilling, The Body and Social Theory (London: SAGE Publications, 2012), 5. 48 Lisa Cartwright, Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995). 49 Colomina, X-Ray Architecture, 97. 50 U.S. National Library of Medicine, "Visual Culture and Public Health Posters." cess to sunlight that characterized medical facilities were installed in homes, private spaces that, like the interior of the body, were subject to public scruti- ny.49 Space itself was seen as an antidote to sickness; non-ornamental cubic white forms were seen to counteract “modern nerves”—a diagnosis reminis- cent of James Beard’s neurasthenia. Modern archi- tecture and medical discourse reinforced the notions that the modern individual was one with a fit and healthy body and that the maintenance of this body should be an ongoing activity. The diagnostic capacities of the x-ray were conducive to the health culture that emerged in the United States in the years after WWI. In this culture, individuals who were well-off enough to pay for me- dical services interacted with a complex medical sys- tem, made up of sophisticated technology and skilled technicians, that would provide them information necessary for health maintenance. Sickness came to be seen as the norm, rather than an exception, such that individuals were mandated to continually fend off disease.This ongoing maintenance included regu- lar visits to medical professionals who could furnish them with diagnoses, increasing the amount of in- formation they had about their own well-being. Individual health-seekers were reconfigured as consumers in accordance with the increasingly bu- siness-like modern hospital. The first public health campaign, against tuberculosis, epitomized the trend toward healthcare as a consumer-oriented, prevention-based practice. A poster circulated by the Christmas Seal campaign, a fundraising ef- fort begun by the American Red Cross, features a healthy and fit man.50 The poster urged individuals to make the decision to be x-rayed even though they might not have any symptoms, reinforcing the idea that health maintenance involved a fundamen- tal information asymmetry: there was important diagnostic information that could only be discerned by the x-ray and its interpreter. 28 TECHNOLOGY AND PARADIGM
- 34. VER THE COURSEof approximately fifty years from its invention, the x-ray was progressively fashioned into a medi- cal technology that fit the particular aims of institutional biomedicine in the United States. The technology has continued to exist as an authoritative method of representing and knowing the body.In orga- nizing diagnoses around the structures discernable be- neath the surface of heterogeneous human experience, the x-ray helps to maintain boundaries between health and illness. But the x-ray was not adapted to fit cir- cumscribed notions of health and disease; it helped to produce a particular form of diagnosis at the same time that the epistemic landscape of American medicine was evolving. Debuting onto a field of divergent medi- cal sects and little to no professional organization, the x-ray in its early years was understood in the context of ambiguously efficacious experimental modalities. In this context, it was considered a potential therapy along the lines of other electrical devices that would soon go out of fashion. Its diagnostic capacity was selected as the space of American medicine was narrowing to sanction scientific medicine as the only allowable me- dical paradigm. The x-ray’s eventual institutionalized use privile- ged certain ways of knowing the body at the expense of others. It enabled genuinely new representations of the healthy body and of the pathologies that threate- ned it, allowing for new sites of intervention and cura- tive techniques. However, it simultaneously narrowed the field of interpretations of illness that could count as legitimate. The x-ray enforced a paradigm in which treatment and diagnosis were framed in relation to the disease, rather than to the patient. By the 1920s, cer- tain medical professionals had identified the tenden- cy for the specialist’s understanding of particularities to cut against medicine’s goal of promoting health for the whole person. Ernst Phillip Boas, a prominent phy- sician, medical director, and author, noted that young 51 Robert Charles Yamashita, "Intervention before disease: Asymptomatic biomedical screening," (PhD diss., Uni- versity of California, Berkeley, 1992), 66. 52 Yamashita, “Intervention before disease," 66. practitioners who were trained in particular disorders did not know how to assess subtle indications in a per- son’s constitution that were associated with systemic di- sease. He noted that “they could treat diseases but not the sick,” and that “the reality of medical practice [is] the opposite: ‘We treat the sick not diseases.’”51 The x-ray was implicit in circulating the notion of an individual’s health as the proper functioning of in- dividual parts.This notion enabled philosophies of care that prioritized technical intervention into particular body parts and systems. But adequate treatment often called not for “fixing that specific part,” but for “retur- ning the whole to a sense of normality.”52 Electrical the- rapies in the nineteenth century were justified by their ability to act on bodies that were understood to exist in the same ontological category; the same vital substance flowed through both the device and the body in which it produced effects. Homeopathic practices interpreted their cures along the same lines; substances in the world were liable to induce effects on the body due to their being of the same kind as the treated ailment.Although the x-ray eventually distanced itself from these theories that were deemed unscientific, it internalized many of the same assumptions about causation in the body.The x-ray, conceived as a machine with interrelated functio- nal parts that together produced energy in an efficient way, was understood to act on bodies that were consti- tuted in precisely the same manner. The x-ray’s effects often could not be explained on the terms that it helped to enforce as legitimate. Al- though the machine was taken to embody the success- ful integration of science and industry into American medicine, its authority was conceptualized in the very paradigms that it had rejected as characteristic of an esoteric or non-modern way of practicing medicine. In casting light on affinities between orthodox and unor- thodox medical paradigms, the x-ray shows how legiti- mation is negotiated through explanations and uses for particular technologies at particular times. If the x-ray is one thread in the passing over from heterodox thera- peutic practices to the institutionalization of scientific technologies of care, it reveals important contradictions within the ascension of biomedicine. CONCLUSION: INTERIORITY O VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 29
- 35. American X-Ray Journal1, no.1 (1899). The American X-Ray Journal 1, no. 2 (1899). D. J. Rivieré, “Annals of Physico-Therapy,” Physi- co-Therapeutic Institute of Paris, April 1903. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Pub- lic Health Service, National Institutes of Health, “200 Years of American Medicine (1776-1976)” an exhibit at the National Library of Medicine. Dr. E. J. Fraser, “Medical Electricity: a Treatise on the Nature of Vital Electricity in Health and Disease, With plain Instructions in the uses of Artificial Electricity as a curative agent,” Chicago, 1863. Electricity Consumption: The New Treatment Of Phthisis By The Use ... Contributed to The Times Los Angeles Times (1886-1922); Sep 5, 1897; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times, pg. 16 “Electro-Therapeutics,” Chicago Daily Tribune (1872- 1922); Jul 23, 1899; ProQuest Historical News- papers: Chicago Tribune pg. 30 Fly, J.J. “Is There a Relationship Existing Between The X-Ray and the Luminating Power that Obtains in Telepathic Vision?” American X-Ray Journal 1, no. 5 (1898): 268. Her Latest Photograph: It Is An Electrical Picture. New York Times (1857-1922); May 29, 1898; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times, pg. 14. Keating, Emmet. “Fee Tables and the Roentgenolo- gists.” Radiology 24, no. 3 (1935). doi: 10.1148/24.3.370 Kodak, “3 Ways Radiography Can Provide Inside Information,” Science 109 (1949): 9. Morton, William James. The X-Ray; Or, Photography of the Invisible and its Value in Surgery. New York: American Technical Book Company, 1896. National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division, National Institutes of Health, “Dream Anatomy” online gallery. U.S. National Library of Medicine, “Visual Culture and Public Health Posters.” Wonderful X Ray Tests: Blind Man Sees Through Top Of His Own Head. Chicago Daily Tribune 1872-1922); Jan 2, 1897; ProQuest His- torical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune, pg. 14. “The X-ray Problem and a Solution: A Discussion of the Proposed Separation of the X-ray Examination into Technical and Professional Portions,” Radiology 23, no.5 (1934), doi: 10.1148/23.5.635 Beccalossi, Chiara and Peter Cryle. “Recent Devel- opments in the Intellectual History of Medicine: A Special Issue of the Journal of the History of Medicine.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 67, no. 1 (2011): 1-6. Blavatsky,Helena Petrovna.TheTheosophical Glossary. London:The Theosophical Publishing Society,1892. BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Secondary Sources A poster circulated by the Christmas Seal campaign, a fundraising effort begun by the American Red Cross, featuring a healthy and fit man. [4] 30 TECHNOLOGY AND PARADIGM
- 36. Bronzino, Joseph D.,Vincent H. Smith, and Maurice L. Wade. Medical Technology and Society. Cam- bridge: MIT Press, 1990. Cartwright, Lisa. Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture. Minneapolis: University of Min- nesota Press, 1995. Colomina, Beatriz. X-Ray Architecture. Baden, Swit- zerland: Lars Müller Publishers, 2019. Daston, Lorraine and Peter Galison. “The Image of Objectivity.” Representations 40 (1992): 81-128. Eldridge, Richard. Images of History: Kant, Benjamin, Freedom, and the Human Subject. New York: Ox- ford University Press, 2016. Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic: an Archaeology of Medical Perception. London: Tavistock Publica- tions Ltd., 1973. Geroulanos, Stefanos and Todd Meyers. The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great War. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2018. Hessenbruch, Anne. “Calibration and Work in the X-Ray Economy.” Social Studies of Science 30, no. 3 (2000): 397-420. Howell, Joel D. Technology in the Hospital Transforming Patient Care in the Early Twentieth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. Jamieson, Annie. “More Than Meets the Eye: Reveal- ing the Therapeutic Potential of ‘Light’, 1896- 1910.” Social History of Medicine 26, no. 4 (2013): 715-737. Kaufman, Martin. Homeopathy in America: The Rise and Fall of a Medical Heresy. Baltimore: Johns Hop- kins Press, 1971. Khushf, George. “A Framework for Understanding Medical Epistemologies.” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 38 (2013), 461-486. Lavine, Matthew. “The Early Clinical X-Ray in the United States: Patient Experiences and Public Perceptions.” Journal of the History of Medi- cine and Allied Sciences 67, no. 4 (2011): 587-625. Mould, Richard F. A Century of X-Rays and Radioac- tivity in Medicine: with Emphasis on Photographic Records of the Early Years. London: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1993. Rosner, Lisa. “The Professional Context of Electro- therapeutics.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 43, no. 1 (1988): 64-82. Shilling, Chris. The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage Publications Ltd, 2012. Simon, Linda. Dark Light: Electricity and Anxiety from the Telegraph to the X-Ray. Orlando: Harcourt Books, 2004. Stahnisch, Frank W. and Marja Verhoef, “The Flexner Report of 1910 and its Impact on Complemen- tary and Alternative Medicine and Psychiatry in North America in the 20th Century,” Evidence Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine (2012), doi: 10.1155/2012/647896 Treitel, Corinna. “Medicine Unbound.” Review of The Corrigible and the Incorrigible: Science, Medicine, and the Convict in 20th Century Germany and The Human Body in the Age of Catastrophe: Brittleness, Integration, Science, and the Great War. Modern Intellectual History (2019): 1-10. Whorton, James C. Nature Cures: The History of Al- ternative Medicine in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Womack, Jeffrey. Radiation Evangelists: Technology, Therapy, and Uncertainty at the Turn of the Century. (unpublished manuscript). Young, Kenneth J., Barclay W. Bakkum, and Lawrence Siordia. “The Hangover: The Early and Lasting Effects of the Controversial Incorporation of X-Ray Technology into Chiropractic.” Journal of the Australian & New Zealand Society of the Histo- ry of Medicine 18, no. 1 (2016): 111-136. [1] Mould, Richard F. A Century of X-Rays and Radioactivity in Medicine: with Emphasis on Photographic Records of the Early Years. Lon- don: Institute of Physics Publishing, 1993. [2] American X-Ray Journal 1, no.1 (1899). [3] National Library of Medicine, History of Med- icine Division, National Institutes of Health, “Dream Anatomy” online gallery. [4] U.S. National Library of Medicine, “Visual Cul- ture and Public Health Posters.” Image Sources VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 31
- 37. SPRING 2021 HOW COMFORTWOMEN SPEAK The Politics and Social Norms in the Narrations of Comfort Women’s Experiences by Helen (Jiawen) Zhang, Columbia University '20 Written for an Honors Thesis Advised by Professor Jungwon Kim Edited by Jisoo Choi, Emma Sargent, and Lee Johns Comfort Women Memorial [1] 32 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 38. N 1924, KIMHak-Soon was born in Jilin, Manchuria.When she was three months old, her father died.Her mother brought her back to Korea and soon remarried.When Kim was fifteen, her mother sent her to another family as a foster child.When she was seventeen,her stepfather brought her with him on a business trip to China. During this trip, a group of Japanese soldiers kidnapped Kim and transported her to a comfort station to be a sex slave for the next five years.When she encountered a Korean man,she seized this opportunity and pled with him to assist her to escape. She ended up marrying him, and returned to Korea in 1945. After the war, Kim became a widow and soon remarried a man who insulted and beat her,and blamed her for having a “disgraceful past.”After her son passed away in an accident, she left her husband and bounced between different me- nial jobs,struggling to survive.Throughout her life,pain and shame caused her to conceal her traumatic past.1 Finally,on December 6,1991,Kim became the first comfort woman to step forward and file a lawsuit against the Japanese govern- ment, bringing to light the comfort women’s enslavement by the Japanese army during the war and their continued suffering after the war. In the 1930s, two philosophies guided Japan’s so- ciety:fascism and militarism.Spurred by its successes in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars,Japan founded the Manchukuo regime in China in March of 1932.Two de- cades earlier,in 1910,Japan had also officially incorporated Korea into its empire.Not satisfied with these new territo- 1 Angella Son, “Inadequate Innocence of Korean Comfort Girls-Women: Obliterated Dignity and Shamed Self,” Pastoral Psychology 67 (2018): 176–182. https://doi-org.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/10.1007/s11089-017-0779-8. 2 For more information on Japan’s expansionist ambitions, see Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 139–209. 3 For details on the origin of the comfort women system, see David A, Schmidt, Ianfu, the Comfort Women of the Japanese Imperial Army of the Pacific War: Broken Silence (Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), 109–113. 4 The exact number of comfort women is unknown to historians due to key official Japanese documents being missing, but several historians and scholars use an estimation of 200,000. For further information see Pyong Gap Min, “Korean ‘Comfort Women’ the intersection of colonial power, gender, and class,” Gender & Society 17, no. 6 (2003): 938–957. 5 The name “comfort woman” is often criticized for its connotations, especially for its implications of the women’s “consent” in their participation in the system. However, it is the term adopted by the United Nations and in academia to refer to the victims who were forced to participate in the comfort women system. Therefore, in this essay, I will use the term “comfort women” to refer to these women. For further information on the definition of comfort women see Dolgopol, Ustinia, and Snehal Paranjape. “Comfort women: An unfinished ordeal: Report of a mission.” Vol. 88. International Commission of Jurists, 1994. 6 For details of the comfort women system and comfort women experiences, see Sarah C. Soh, “Aspiring to ries,Japan aimed to continue its empire-building process as a means of establishing its authority on the world’s political stage.2 By 1935, Japan had begun its “holy war”with Chi- na, mobilizing its entire nation and significantly increasing its number of soldiers overseas. As a way to relieve these soldiers’tensions during war, the Imperial Army and Navy overseas demanded thatTokyo create a channel for them to quickly and easily access sex slaves.3 As a result, from 1932 to 1945, the Japanese Imperial Army drafted around two hundred thousand East Asian women into military sexual slavery,4 euphemistically referred to as “comfort women,”or in Japanese as ianfu.5 Because of the lack of documentation, we do not know the exact demographic makeup of comfort women. However, from the existing documentation and research conducted, Chinese and Korean comfort women seem to have made up the majority of the comfort women scholars and the majority of the comfort women population.Eighty percent of the victims consisted of Chinese and Korean ru- ral women from farms and villages across the two countries. Almost all of these women were between the ages of twelve and twenty-two when they were drafted—either tricked or forcibly abducted into the draft—and transported to a comfort women facility. Such facilities were spread around the Japanese empire, but most of them were established in China. With the help of local colonial governments and collaborators, the Japanese government founded hundreds of comfort stations in China to systematically manage these women,withthegoalofsatiatingtheirsoldiers’sexualneeds. The army maintained heavy surveillance of these women and only spared the bare minimum of rations to meet their needs.Inside comfort stations,women were berated,beaten, and sometimes killed.6 INTRODUCTION I VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 33
- 39. These nightmarish tormentsdid not end with the war and closure of the comfort women stations.The surviving comfort women endured shame and poverty within their own societies and were thus marginalized, unable to tell their stories after the war or have their suffering validated. It was only after Kim’s lawsuit that Japanese historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi conducted one of the first scholarly research projects on the subject of comfort women.7 Many other scholars followed in his footsteps; however, neither the trial nor the scho- larly research focused on the individual victims’ lives. They all concentrated on investigating whether comfort women were actually prostitutes instead of victims of trafficking, rather than understanding how the system at its base reflected the international power struggles among China, Korea, and Japan. Also, the scholars represented the comfort women experience as either an extreme example of patriarchal aggression against women or proof of Japan’s unacceptable imperialistic transgressions against China and Korea. Very little effort has been made to explore the social forces and norms that shaped individual comfort women’s expe- riences and post-war struggles in their own societies. Unlike previous scholarship, my research consi- ders the comfort women’s testimonies from both Korea and China, and what they can tell us about their individual experiences. Building upon existing research about both comfort women and East Asian relations, I look primarily at these women’s testimo- nies and consider how their stories can tell us about their individual experiences as rural women living in 20th century Korea and China. Craft Modern Gendered Selves: Comfort Women and Chongsindae in Late Colonial Korea,” Critical Asian Studies 36 no. 2 (2004): 175–198 7 I am hesitant to label Professor Yoshimi as the first scholarly researcher. Some feminist scholars in Korea did start investigation on comfort stations in Japan, other than Professor Yoshimi. However, Professor Yoshimi is the first person who retrieved official documents in Japan about comfort women and started to restructure the comfort women system. 8 Note also that the term “Third World” has different definitions in different scenarios and some scholars have criticized its negative connotations, especially its imperialistic history. In this essay, “Third World” is defined as post-colonized societies. 9 Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2003). 10 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, ix. 11 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 96–101. In my project,I apply two feminist theorists’argu- ments: Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Gayatri Chakra- vorty Spivak. In her groundbreaking book Feminism Wit- hout Borders: Decolonizing Theory (2003), Mohanty argues that Third World8 women have been treated as passive victims in Western scholarship. Western scholars tend to flatten these women into homogenous groups with uni- form experiences and desires. Such generalizations de- prive women in theThirdWorld of their individuality.Her book stresses that all women’s lives should be examined as a composite of entangled gender norms, class structures, and local political environments.9 To both encompass and distinguish the expe- riences of Korean and Chinese comfort women,I selected nineteen Korean comfort women’s testimonies conducted bytheWashingtonCoalitionforComfortWomen’sIssues, a Korean-American nonprofit organization, and twelve Chinesecomfortwomen’stestimoniesconductedbyVassar professor Qiu Peipei in collaboration with Shanghai Nor- mal University. In 1994, the Washington Coalition first translated the fourteen interviews videotaped in Korea by the Korean Council. They also separately conducted five additional interviews from 1992 to 1996: three in North Korea, one in New York, and one in Washington D.C.10 Two years after Korean testimonies were collected,Su and Chen began to conduct interviews for Chinese victims.In the next decade,Su and Chen conducted multiple sessions with each victim. If the victims were unable to elaborate on certain topics, Su and Chen, in an effort to protect the victim’s psychological state,would either skip certain ques- tions or allow the victim’s children to speak for them.11 I read these testimonies side by side with both Chinese and English media coverage of comfort women from 1990 to 1999. Because comfort women themselves narrated these testimonies with the help of different organizations, I was able to situate the victims’voices within the political Methodology 34 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 40. and social structuresthat shaped their experiences and memories. Most importantly, these sources allowed me to paint a picture of how each comfort woman represents her own distinct life and story, each worth hearing. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in her groundbrea- king 1985 article “Can the Subaltern Speak?”attempts to deconstruct the moral entitlement in human rights dis- course. She critically questions the possibility of a non- elite Third-World woman being allowed to self-repre- sent. She argues that when the oppressed voice cannot be heard,she needs a representative to speak for her,and, in return,the subaltern loses her agency.12 Building upon Mohanty and Spivak’s arguments,my thesis situates each comfort woman’s testimony within her socio-economic environment, thereby demonstrating the way each vic- tim’s voice was shaped by various political actors’ agen- das,her environment’s social norms,her personal trauma, and her sensibilities as a former slave. I divide this thesis into two sections. The first section examines the overlaps between the women’s testimonies and the particular vulnerabilities rural wo- men faced in their society. I examine how rural women’s inferior social standing, continual economic burdens, and their taught submission to patriarchal authority all strongly informed how these women narrated their expe- riences as comfort women.The second section highlights how their post-war experiences shaped their testimonies. On the first layer,I identify common trends and repeated language that may reveal how various governmental and nonprofit organizations helped shape these women’s sto- ries. I also explore how the propagandistic memoriali- zation and circulation intermixed with the women’s im- mediate experience in the creation of these testimonies. On the second layer, I locate testimonies’ moments of silences, absences, and slippages. In these textual mo- ments, the testimonies are in tandem with the politi- cal and institutional forces that, paradoxically, silenced comfort women while appropriating their testimonies in nationalist discourses. On the third layer, I examine how the omissions, gaps, repetitions, contradictions, and even emotions in their stories reflect the ways comfort wo- men continued to exercise their own agency.Rather than treating them just as “historical sources” in a conventio- nal sense, I read these testimonies as narratives. From a literary angle, I probe how these testimonies express the bodily pain and abuse of their speakers. 12 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?: Postkolonialität und Subalterne Artikulation,” Wien Verlag Turia, 2008. Comfort women’s testimonies illuminate the gendered conditions in Korean and Chinese society throughout the 20th century and until the present. My research shows how comfort women’s stories describe the ways in which entrenched male authority combined with pervasive poverty crippled their individual agency both during and long after the end of the war. Beyond the economic pressures, patriarchal controls, and so- cietal discrimination, their stories reflect each woman’s own pysche, the social alienation she faced, the self-de- precation she felt,and the ambivalent attitudes she held towards Japan and her own country. Unlike urban women, who had more employ- ment opportunities and thus probably more financial resources, most rural Korean and Chinese women faced the double burden of maintaining a household and contributing to the family income, while still being subordinated within a patriarchal hierarchy. I propose that this double burden made rural women ideal targets of the comfort women system imposed by the Japanese army during wartime and victims of public shame sur- rounding female sexuality long after the war. Korea and China made all women’s issues secondary to their nation-building, further foreclosing possible avenues for these women to share their stories. Only after Kim Hak-Soon’s 1991 trial against the Japanese government did comfort women begin to share their stories publicly. Still, due to poverty and illiteracy, comfort wo- men’s stories continued to be vulnerable to distortion by various political actors. This again robbed these wo- men of their individual agency and reduced their stories to tools for different agendas. Their testimonies were used as reminders of the colonial experience, as extre- me examples of the excesses of patriarchal systems, and as performances of nationalistic suffering and shame to galvanize feelings of national citizenship and reinforce the “otherness” of Japan. On the other hand, comfort women themselves had their own stories. Given the omissions and contradictions in the testimonies,I argue that comfort women’s stories combined their nations’ popular memories of the war and deeply ingrained so- cial values of chastity with the personal struggles and traumas these women faced within both the comfort Thesis Statement VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 35
- 41. women system andtheir social milieus. In the end, I propose that comfort women’s testimonies share the dua- lity of being both products of their particular historical moment and unique stories of rural women’s lives. URAL KOREAN AND Chinese women’s experiences in the twentieth century cannot be generalized as an offspring of Confucia- nism, nor as mere victimization by male do- mination and foreign invasion. Instead, their experiences should be framed with particularities: the time they lived in, the social status and economic background into which they were born or married, and, most importantly, their personal agency under a constantly changing but overall patriarchal hierarchy. From an ideological perspective, both countries’ rural women were somewhat influenced by the patrili- neal Confucian values that championed the confinement 13 The state sponsored the forefront of a series of dialectic work, with a focus on guiding women’s behaviors. In 1407, Zhuxi’s Elementary Learning became compulsory reading in schools. In 1432, the Illustrated Guide to the Three Bonds, a book written in the Korean vernacular, with pictures was composed. With King Sejong’s 1433 edict, the book became the basic text to educate all women. In 1475, Queen Sohye published Instructions for Women, which painstakingly depicted what the ideal woman’s behaviors should be throughout her lifetime. Later in the Choson, women were portrayed as prone to corruption and requiring special discipline. 14 Martina Deuchler, “Propagating Female Virtues in Choson Korea,” in Dorothy Ko eds., Women and Confucian Cultures, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003): 143. 15 Mark Peterson, “Women without Sons: A Measure of Social Change in Yi Dynasty Korea,” in Laurel Kendall and Mark Peterson, eds., Korean Women: View from the Inner Room (New Haven, CT: East Rock Press, 1983), 34. 16 For more information, see Haiwang Zhou, Cheng Shi Nu Xing Liu Dong Men Kou She Hui Rong Ru Wen Ti Yan Jiu (City Migrant Women Societal Questions Investigation), (Shanghai: Shanghai She Hui Ke Xue Yuan Publishing (2013)), 23–79. The rigid patriarchal values ruled the villages that considered daughters and wives outside the family, and therefore discarded their ownership of land. Considering the relative scarcity of Chinese land for its population, village committees would arbitrarily put a man’s name down on land contracts, without women’s knowledge. 17 Jungwon Kim. “You Must Avenge on my Behalf: Widow Chastity and Honour in Nineteenth-Century Korea,” Gender and History (2014): 129. 18 Kim, “You Must Avenge,” 123–132. of women within the domestic sphere and celebrated the supposed female “virtues” of being ignorant, meek, and chaste. Furthermore, through laws, edicts, and dialectic texts,13 Confucian values generated certain societal pres- sures that largely reduced women’s (both rural and urban) roles to those of bearing sons, serving husbands, and ma- naging domestic affairs. Confucianism emphasized male superiority, which resulted in the firm belief that a wife should serve her hus- band. Throughout the ideal Confucian woman’s life, she would always be submitting to a male figure, starting with her father and brother, then husband, and eventually, sons. A woman was further asked to prioritize her parents-in- law above her biological parents.14 Having a subordinated position in their families, daughters were excluded from the natal family line and unable to conduct ancestral ce- remonies.15 Without the right to worship her ancestors, a daughter became a burden to her natal family, unworthy and undeserving of any inheritance. Even today, most wo- men in rural China are prohibited from land ownership. Although exact statistics are unknown, multiple bodies of research show that around 80 percent of rural land is only registered under men’s names.16 In Korea,by the Mid-Cho- son period, Confucian values had deepened with the help of state-backed, female-targeted dialectic texts, legislative enforcements, and judiciary decisions. These all formed a rigid patrilineal succession,a separate female hierarchy,and obsessions with female chastity.17 These all crippled female agency by imprisoning women inside the domestic sphere. In addition,both Chinese and Korean society had a general obsession with female chastity. A woman’s chastity was an indication of her morality and sexual honesty.18 Di- HISTORICAL DYNAMIC OF GENDER AND ITS HISTORIOGRAPHY R Gender Relations in Korea and China 36 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 42. dactic texts onfeminine ideals that were widely circulated in these two countries concentrated on romanticizing chaste actions, especially suicide by widows, as being both courageous and beautiful acts guarding the most precious trait of women.Both countries’governments also comme- morated female suicides with memorial arches, plaques, and sometimes material rewards.This state-recognized act ofextraordinarychastity,inreturn,allowedthesewomento execute the ultimate form of Confucius-idealized female filial piety—bringing honor to her family and her com- munity.This patriarchal ideology thus the crux of women’s value to society was chastity, to the extent that it oversha- dowed any other social roles. More importantly, women often faced enormous personal and familial pressure to guard themselves and restrain their personal desires.19 Un- less deemed necessary, women were expected to revolve their lives around household chores and avoid interactions with men outside their homes. Chastity functioned as a prison and closely bound women physically and psycholo- gically within their houses.Men could therefore commer- cialize and control every woman’s body through chastity: the purer the body,the more it was valued in society. At the turn of the century, the long-standing Choson Dynasty in Korea and Qing Dynasty in China both fell. Korea was invaded and later annexed by Japan, whereas China entered a period of warlords, followed by the invasion of Japan. When political instability com- pounded the global economic depression in the 1930s, unprecedented numbers of rural men left home for other jobs in both Korea and China.20 Without men, rural wo- men were left to do agricultural work on the family farms or to work as wage laborers at factories or larger farms. During the war, rural women carried a double burden as managers of household chores and breadwinners for their families. Once annexed by Japan, Korea became Japan’s source of raw resources to support its expansionist goals. For instance, colonial projects like the Land Investigation Project (1918) or the Rice Crop Improvement Policy took away small farmlands and capped the profits for farmers (on rice),decimated Korea’s already impoverished agricul- tural economy and bankrupted many families.In response, 19 Kim, “You Must Avenge,” 132–136. 20 For more information on rural women in China, see Gail Hershatter, Women and China’s Revolution, (Lan- ham, Maryland : Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 132–176. On rural women in Korea, see Sook-Ran Yoo, “The Colonial Government’s Agricultural Policies and Women’s Lives in the Rural Areas of Korea in the 1930s,” Asian Women 17, 39–64. 21 Soh, Comfort Women, 107-143. 22 Yoo, “Colonial Government,” 39–42. 23 Hershatter, Women and China’s Revolution, 132–164. around 6 million Korean men left home to seek opportu- nities overseas.21 Simultaneously,poverty also forced many rural women to migrate elsewhere to survive and help finance their families.22 In the 1930s, when the comfort women system started,poverty for the rural Korean popu- lation had reached its zenith—making rural women the most vulnerable,overlooked group in society. In China, after the fall of the Qing Dynasty and theWarlordera,theNationalist Partyfinallygained power. Their reign was marked by different natural disasters, po- litical factionalism,and foreign invasions.The 1928 Shan- dong drought,the 1931 Yangtze River flood,and the 1935 Yellow River flood killed several millions of people and created millions of refugees.Records of child birth sex ra- tios suggest that female infanticides were widely practiced. Men would sell their wives or children (usually girls) in exchange for food.The 1935 Chinese journal Eastern Mis- cellany(东方杂志)even went as far as suggesting that 99% of men abandoned their families. On the one hand, rural women’s social value was reduced to “goods,”which could be converted into food or money to serve the men. On the other hand,when men left their households,rural wo- men became a crucial labor force,expected to maintain the house while putting food on the table. After the Japanese officially invaded China in 1937, the situation worsened. Rural men, without resources or money to evade military drafts like others,could be drafted or taken by force at any time.23 Rural women, then, had to live in constant fear of bearing the burden of raising the entire household. The comfort women system started at a moment when both Korean and Chinese rural women had endured decades of poverty, objectification, and marginalization, and were struggling to survive. As Japan continued to conquer and expand, the number of Japanese soldiers living in China increased significantly. Facing constant danger, these soldiers were mentally and physically exhausted and distressed. Further- The Pacific War and Comfort Women's Origins VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 37
- 43. more, the guerrillatactics in which some Chinese soldiers engaged blurred the lines between soldiers and civilian members of the Chinese population in the eyes of the Ja- panese.As a result,it became common for Japanese soldiers to go on killing sprees and rape local women after a battle as an emotional outlet.Their violent acts incited strong an- ti-Japanese sentiment and resistance that slowed the speed of Japanese expansion and demanded more resources from the army to control the situation.24 At the same time, Ja- panese soldiers visited brothels, increasing the possibility for intelligence infiltration and dramatically increasing the transmission of venereal diseases among their soldiers.25 All this resulted in insistent pleas from the Imperial Army for the draft of comfort women as a solution. Answering Imperial Navy Lieutenant Yasuji’s demand, the first comfort women station opened in Shanghai in 1932.The station aimed to provide imperial soldiers with a cheap and easily accessible way to fulfill their sexual demands, and it offered some psychologi- cal support when needed. After the notorious Nanking Massacre in 1937 (a seven-week killing spree which, according to historians, resulted in the murder of tens of thousands of civilians and the rape of girls and wo- men of all ages),the army’s sheer brutality triggered both international protests and the attention of the Japanese metropole. It forced the Japanese government to care for soldiers’ behavioral and mental health, so they used comfort stations to offer sexual relief to soldiers as a way to “improve”morale.26 Thus, the number of comfort wo- men and comfort stations mushroomed and became ever more systemized as a means to boost troop morale and avoid future international interference. Comfort women enabled Japan to maintain its presence of 600,000 sol- diers in China indefinitely, fighting continuously, even when a stalemate was reached in 1938.27 24 On Japan’s invasion of China, see Soh, Korean Comfort Women, 107–143. Also see Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937–1945, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013). 25 For more information, see Keith, True Stories, 22–25. Also note that visits to prostitutes and the rape of local women during the war is not unique to the Japanese army. Consequently, venereal disease rates often increased dramatically. Similar statistics have been found in different armies across the world in different times. For example, WWII resulted in five times as many cases of syphilis reported to the U.S. Health Department in 1940. For more information, see American Bar Association, Committee on Courts and Wartime Social Protection, Venereal Disease, Prostitution, and War, Washington D.C., 1943, 1. 26 Such beliefs about using women to improve soldiers’ morale might have long historical origins in Japan. Ac- cording to Historian Sarah Soh, In 1589, Toyotomi Hideyoshi championed the notion that women could maintain the welfare of imperial troops during wars. By 1898, the Meiji state passed rules restricting and reducing women’s roles to their devotion: their husbands and the emperor. For more information on Japanese prostitution history, see Soh, The Comfort Women, 29–79. 27 For more information, see Gordon, A Modern History of Japan, 139–209. Before we examine comfort women’s pre-war experiences, it is important to have an overview on the study of comfort women. Most scholarship on comfort women appeared after Kim’s 1991 lawsuit and focused largely on the political and social structures that underlay the comfort women system in Korea. This scholarship can be roughly divided into four distinct strands. First, scholars like George Hicks (1997), Japanese historian Yoshiaki Yoshimi (2000), and Japanese historian Yuki Tanaka (2003) provided substantial evidence for the Ja- panese government’s direct involvement in forming the comfort women system, and for the logistical reasons that motivated Japan’s decision to build the comfort sta- tions. Second, scholars such as Pyong Gap Min (2003) and Sarah Chunghee Soh (2008) in Korea, as well as Su Zhiliang (1999) and Qiu Peipei (2013) in China,contex- tualized the comfort women within their respective na- tions’ gender history.Third, a series of reactionary works by Japanese right-wing historians like Naoko Kumagai (2016) attempted to counter the concept of “victimiza- tion” of comfort women by stressing the contractual re- lationship between the women and the Japanese govern- ment.Fourth,scholars like Jungmin Seo (2008),Thomas J. Ward and William D. Lay (2016), and Edward Vic- kers (2019) focused on the complicated developments of the post-war Japan-Korea or Sino-Japan relationships through the lens of the comfort women.They noted how the comfort women had been politicized into a “tool” to suit each national government’s and nonprofit organiza- tion’s distinct agendas. The works of George Hicks, Yoshiaki Yoshimi, and Yuki Tanaka offer a useful foundation for explaining how contemporary gender norms are embedded within State of Field 38 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 44. the comfort women’ssystem. They describe that most comfort women were from rural areas and argue that their weak social agency made them the first targets of abuse. Hicks’ book, The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War (1997) is the first English-language systematic review concerning comfort women. Hicks analyzes comfort women’s expe- riences during and after WWII, focusing on the threats, poverty, and emotional trauma the victims suffered. He argues that the origin of the system was rooted in Japan’s military needs to stop venereal diseases and sustain sol- diers’ morale. Although he briefly addresses comfort wo- men as victims of patriarchal ideologies, Hicks does not treat the gender dynamics of the colonized in depth.28 In Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II (2000), Yoshimi unearths evidence of the Japanese government’s direct involvement in the comfort women system. In response to the 1995 “free history” movement, in which the Japanese govern- ment tried to deny the comfort women’s “victim” claims, Yoshimi compiled a comprehensive array of evidence demonstrating that not only were comfort women not prostitutes, they were often coerced or simply abducted into slavery.29 Yoshimi examines the women’s experiences through the lens of political history, focusing on logistics within the comfort stations.In 2003,Tanaka’s book Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the U.S. Occupation followed in Hick’s and Yoshimi’s footsteps.Building upon Yoshimi’s evidence of the Japanese government’s direct involvement, Tanaka argues that the use of prostitution by the military in coun- tries involved in World War II consisted of both consen- sual prostitution, as in the U.S. and Australia, as well as military sexual slavery,as in Imperial Japan.30 Works by Korean historian Pyong Gap Min, Korean anthropologist Sarah Chunghee Soh, and Ja- panese literary historian Qiu Peipei move beyond the po- litical and logistical structures of the comfort women sys- 28 George Hicks, The Comfort Women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1995). 29 Yoshimi, Comfort Women. 30 Yuki Tanaka, Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World war II and the U.S. Occu- pation, (Routledge, 2001). 31 [Pyong Gap] Min, “Korean Comfort Women: The Intersection of Colonial Power, Gender, and Class,” Gender & Society 17, no. 6 (2003): 938–957. 32 Sarah C. Soh, The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan, (University of Chicago Press, 2008). 33 Peipei Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves, (Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2013). tem to focus on how the women’s experience reflects the patriarchal controls that both local communities and co- lonial governments exerted upon them.In his 2003 article “Korean ‘Comfort Women’: The Intersection of Colonial Power,Gender,and Class,”Min brings the colonization of Korea by Japan and the role of the Korean gender hierar- chy into his analysis of the system.He argues that Confu- cian patriarchal values and Korean men’s anxiety were in- termingled in the wake of Japanese colonial aggressions, which then facilitated the spread of the comfort stations. His study left many questions unanswered, such as how comfort women may not be able to exercise their indi- vidual agency when grave poverty and patriarchal autho- rity hampered their ability to do so.31 Soh’s 2008 book The Comfort Women: Sexual Violence and Postcolonial Memory in Korea and Japan furthered Min’s effort toward linking the comfort women within the region’s broader historical gender context of Korea, and offers a comprehensive cha- racterization of the comfort stations,particularly the heavy surveillance imposed on women.Examining the post-war experience of surviving comfort women, Soh argues that the continued national silence and social marginalization they faced in the post-war era reflected Korea’s obsession with female chastity.32 Although most comfort stations were in China, current scholarship has yet to examine the commonalities that existed between Korean and Chinese women’s expe- riences, and how these commonalities might illuminate the discrimination, objectification, and post-war silence all caused by vulnerabilities particular to rural women fa- cing extreme poverty and patriarchal authority.33 In 2014, Qiu published the first set of English-language testimo- nies detailing 12 Chinese comfort women’s experiences in Chinese Comfort Women: Testimonies from Imperial Japan’s Sex Slaves. Using interviews from one hundred former comfort women across China,Qiu demonstrated how ac- tive collaboration between local villagers and the Japanese was used to trick or force Chinese rural women into the VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 39
- 45. system. Her bookargues that these victims’ stories were ignored because local villagers denounced them as “for- mer prostitutes.”Like Soh’s work, Qiu’s book explores the significance of patriarchal norms and how these women’s inferior social status hampered their stories from being heard during the post-war era. Since 1995, some Japanese historians have also tried to present a different narrative on the comfort women by publishing a set of reactionary literature. Naoko Kumagai’s 2016 book The Comfort Women: Historical, Political, Legal, and Moral Perspectives en- deavored to justify the system and undermine claims of the Japanese government’s involvement. She denies historical documents and testimonies, and questions the very definition of enslavement.Kumagai states that these women made a consensual choice to be comfort women and received payment; hence, there were no human rights violations. She claims that most of the victims were not coerced, and that the actual number of comfort women is unverified, implying its scale was small, insignificant. Without citing specific examples, Kumagai also tries to argue that some comfort women were paid monthly and given the freedom to leave.34 She further disputes the perspective of comfort wo- men as passive victims of East Asia’s entrenched pa- triarchy. Her work is the latest in the “free history” movement’s scholarship to define comfort women not as slaves, but as consensual prostitutes.35 In response, most government and non-profit organizations that hold exhibitions or build museums for comfort wo- men have emphasized comfort women’s purity and innocence as virgins: reasserting victims as abuducted sex slaves, not as consentual, contracual prostitutes.36 Witnessing the fervent debates surrounding the issue, scholars like Thomas J. Ward, William D. Lay, Jungmin Seo, and Edward Vickers have concentrated their studies specifically on how the study was politi- cized by various national governments, non-profit orga- nizations,and feminist groups to advance their particular ambitions.Seo,in her 2008 article“Politics of Memory in 34 Kumagai Naoko, The Comfort Women: Historical, Political, Legal, and Moral Perspectives, Translated by David Noble, (Tokyo: International House of Japan, 2016), 24-42. Note that Kumagai never provides any primary sources to back her claim up. She simply puts how “according to documentary evidence and testimony related to the comfort stant, the “comfort women” were paid.” 35 Kumagai, The Comfort Women. 36 For more information, see Edward Vicker, “Commemorating ‘Comfort Women’ Beyond Korea,” Remembering Asia’s World War Two, (London: Routledge, 2019). 37 Thomas J. Ward, “The Comfort Women Controversy: Not Over Yet,” East Asia (2016): 255–269. 38 Vickers, “Commemorating Comfort Women.” Korea and China: Remembering the Comfort Women and the Nanjing Massacre,” delineates how the comfort woman was used as a martyr to galvanize nationalism. The victims’ experiences were generalized into a reflec- tion of the suffering the Korean and Chinese endured during the 20th century.Thomas J.Ward and William D. Lay,in their 2016 article “The Comfort Women Contro- versy: Not Over Yet,” analyzed the continued politiciza- tion of the comfort women in the 21st century. For ins- tance, they note how the U.S. government has used their support of these women as a way to gain election votes in the Korean-American community.37 Lastly, Vickers, in his 2019 article “Commemorating ‘Comfort Wo- men’ Beyond Korea,” focuses his attention on Chinese comfort women and delineates how their government curtailed funding and suppressed education concerning comfort women. As a result, Chinese comfort women were virtually excluded from the discussion from 1991 to 2010. It was only after 2010 that the Chinese govern- ment began focusing more attention on popularizing the comfort women topic.38 These scholars provide a good foundation for me to distill the various political forces involved in propagating the comfort women. LTHOUGH COMFORT WOMEN were taken from all countries conquered by Japan, the majority were ethnically Korean and Chinese. The Japanese strategically tar- geted young, rural women who lacked the resources to resist the draft process. As a result, these women’s testi- A WAR EXPERIENCE ACCORDING TO COMFORT WOMEN TESTIMONIES 40 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 46. monies illuminate howthe culture of gender discrimina- tion and the extreme destitution of rural life combined to ingrain a deep sense of inferiority in their minds. Of the 19 testimonies collected by the Washington Coalition, 13 women came from rural areas and struggled withfinancesgrowingup.Giventhatnon-eliteruralwomen hadfeweconomicresources,theyoftenbecamedesperateto the point of accepting overseas jobs to help themselves and their families simply survive. These testimonies show that almost all the victims had been financially engaged before being drafted as comfort women.Hwang Keum-ju and Yi Yong-nyo worked as maids for wealthy families in the city. Jin Kyug-Paeng,Kim Bun-Sun,Moon Pil-Gi,Mook Ok- Ju,Kim Sang-Hi,and Kim Yoon-Shim all reported having helped their parents in the fields at the moment of their draft/abduction.39 Recruiters,targeting these desperate wo- men, often offered the false promise of legitimate employ- ment.Yi Young Son Pan-Im,Kim Soon-Due,Pak Du-Ri, and Pak Hyung-Soon were told the same lie by their re- cruiters—that they would be working in a military facto- ry in Japan. Pak Ok-Nyon and Yi Yong-Nyo were tricked by the recruiters by being told they would become military nurses.40 These women often agreed to join without any he- sitation,hoping to alleviate their families’economic distress. These women, furthermore, were not just enticed by possible job positions.Living under a patriarchal system, they were often taught to trust and obey men at all times. Survivors admitted that the mere fact that the recruiters were male made it hard for them to refuse the demand. When the recruiters came, they would often be accompa- nied by official figures dressed in uniforms to persuade these potential victims. If met with any resistance, the recruiters would even bring local leaders with them to repeatedly ha- 39 Sangmie Choi Schellstede, eds., Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Military (New York: Holmes & Meier, 2000), 3–105. 40 Schellstede, “Comfort Women Speak,” 81–85; 95–97. 41 For more information, see Keith Howard, True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women: Testimonies, (London; New York: Cassell, 1995), 11–32. Also see, Sincheol Lee, and Hye-In Han, “Comfort Women: A Focus on Recent Fin- dings from Korea and China.” Asian Journal of Women's Studies 21, no. 1 (2015): 31–50. 42 For more information, see Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 108. 43 Note that other scholars have also reported that when their translation on victims whose background is closely linked to translators’ own community history, the personal tends to bleed into the profession. Nathalie Huyn Chan Nguyen, “The Past in the Present: Life Narratives and Trauma in the Vietnamese Diaspora,” Susannah Radstone, Rita Wilson, Translating Worlds: Migration, Memory, and Culture (Routledge, 2020). https://doi-org. ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/10.4324/9780429024955. rass these young women, depriving them of the courage to oppose or question the process.41 In these testimonies, the victims spent only one or two sentences describing their lives before being drafted as comfort women, and very few descriptions have been in- cluded in these testimonies. Since I was unable to locate the original transcripts of these interviews, this absence of description of pre-comfort woman lives may be an editor’s decision or the victim’s own choice to omit the data.Never- theless,it can be concluded that the testimonies’tendency to overlook the pre-draft experience served as strong evidence exposing the cruelty of the Japanese army. Moreover, these testimonies were collected,translated,and published by the Washington Coalition into a book named Comfort Women Speak:Testimony by the Slaves of the Japanese Military. In the book’s appendix, the editors chose to include the United Nations report that explicitly defines the comfort women system as a form of sexual slavery. The editors had a clear agenda of making this book yet another resource to illus- trate Japan’s war crimes.42 Therefore, it is probable that the interviewers eliminated certain details like local collabora- tors’participation or natal families’poverty in these women’s testimonies to produce a more focused storyline.Given that the editors had to translate comfort women’s words first from Korean to English, it is also possible that some im- plied meaning that would have constituted their pre-draft experience became lost in translation. Also, the translators, Koreans themselves,may be biased by their own memories of the Japanese invasion. Perhaps, when reconstructing a comfort woman’s life,these translators intermixed their own personal emotions with their professional work.43 On the other hand, it is also possible that the vic- tims themselves chose to limit their narration. For reasons that I will expand upon later,these women experienced de- cades of discrimination and shame after the war as former comfort women. It is possible that they wanted to protect their families by not revealing too many details about their Pre-draft Experience— Korean Experiences VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 41
- 47. former lives. Thesewomen’s reservations about revealing private matters are exemplified in Ms.K’s choice to remain anonymous, even as an interviewer, so deep is the cultural shame.44 Finally,it should be taken into account that almost half a century had passed by the time these women were asked to recount their life stories.This omission,then,could be viewed as an example of the possible memory loss, tre- mendous emotional stress, and interlocking histories that existed in their retelling of their stories. Unlike the Korean testimonies, the Chinese tes- timonies had elaborate details about these women’s lives before becoming comfort women. Like an autobiography, their stories often began with descriptions of their child- hoods, their families, and sometimes even their marriage situations. While the Korean testimonies were conducted undertheKoreanCongress,theChineseinterviewerswere university researchers who approached these women with an academic interest, wanting to tie China’s 20th century gender dynamics with the comfort women’s experiences. At least one third of the questions on the interviewers’ questionnaires were directed toward their pre-draft lives. Therefore,thanks to these questions,we can derive a more comprehensive picture of these victims’ histories from their testimonies. Like the Korean victims, the twelve Chinese comfort women all came from humble rural backgrounds. Their families’ destitute financial situations often became worse after Japan’s invasion. This extreme poverty forced many parents to sell their daughters to neighbors’ sons or even human traffickers as “child brides (tongyangxi).”45 Due to the uncertainty of the period,these women would sometimes be resold multiple times to different families. Victim Zhou Fengying commented on how “girls were unwanted and were called ‘money-losing goods’ since they would serve another family when they were married, and their parents had to spend a fortune to pay for the dowry.”46 By a very young age, these women had already 44 Schellstede, “Comfort Women Speak,” 102. 45 For more information, see Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 33. 46 Qiu, “Chinese Comfort Women,” 110. 47 Qiu, “Chinese Comfort Women,” 111. 48 Gail Hershatter, The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past, (Berkley: University of California Press, 2011), 22–25. 49 Her testimonies revealed how women were being viewed as “inferior goods” by others. Selling daughters was a prevalent and acceptable practice in 20th century China. See Hershatter, Women and China’s Revolution, 176. been reduced into mere “monetary goods”by their society, were deprived of a peaceful childhood, and most impor- tantly,had lost basic control over their own lives. Surprisingly, most of these victims expressed litt- le resentment toward their parents. For example, Zhou Fenying described how her parents struggled with sur- vival as landless farmers and how they would “hold her tightly…[and would] cry their hearts out”47 after they first tried to abandon her on the side of the road. In Zhou’s narration,this touching and tragic scene immediately pre- ceded her sale to a nearby village as a child-bride at the age of five.” Her rhetorical choice complicates this tes- timony, making it not merely a historical account but a narrative text.In particular,we should attribute the artifice of Zhou’s testimony to her memory of her pre-comfort woman experience. Memory, as French historian Jacques Le Goff claims, involves both a loss and a creation.48 The seventy-year gap between the event and Zhou’s inter- view detached her from her direct sensory responses to it. Zhou’s past traumas, feelings, and her present state were mixed into the process of her recollection, creating the memory. Her memory allowed her to create an unexpec- ted link between her parent’s love and her abandonment. In the end, her memory transformed her subject from a faceless victim to a woman with a unique,complicated life: a life intermingled with love, loss, and pain, well beyond just being a comfort woman. For example, Zhou seemed to justify her parents’ behaviors by foregrounding their love and attachments to her. She conveyed her sale to be a relatively “justifiable” choice considering the extreme destitution her family was in, which demonstrated her empathy for her parents’diffi- cult decisions.Female infanticide and human trafficking of women increased in China during the 1930s,49 which made women like Zhou even more at risk. Her turbulent child- hood brought her unimaginable pain. Zhou had to face a world in which rural women like her had very little social agency. In her recollection, this information demonstrates that her powerlessness as a rural woman started way before she became a comfort woman.As a child,she had to accept women’s relative inferiority to men and even “embrace”her Pre-draft Experience— Chinese Experiences 42 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 48. ultimate fate ofbecoming a filial bride and mother within hernewfamily,herliferevolvingaroundthestove.Although they never used emotional words, she and others made the choice to incorporate the details about their parents’ deci- sions and the abuses they had faced since childhood,which had already become their renunciation of social biases. After becoming “child brides,” these women cared for their parents-in-law and worked in the fields. Given that these women had no economic resources and became completely dependent upon their in-laws, they were treated as servants who had to obey all demands from their in-laws and husbands. Victim Lei Guiying described in detail the constant beatings she received from her first mother-in-law.50 Unable to bear these abuses, Lei escaped the household and became a beg- gar on the streets. Yuan Zhulin had similar experiences where her mother-in-law “treated her like an outcast… [and] an extra burden on the family.”51 However, unlike the Korean victims, whose testimonies often described local collaborators provi- ding false promises about jobs overseas as a pretense for the draft, most of the Chinese victims were simply abducted by soldiers on site. Whenever Japanese sol- diers came across a village or a town, they would select the local “good-looking” girls and transport them to comfort stations.52 Zhou Fengying noted that “because my cousin and I were known for our good looks,we had been targeted.”53 In their narrations, these victims were conscious of how their femininity, their light skin, their height, or even their young age, resulted in their ensla- vement.Besides blaming the Japanese troops,these wo- men also seemed to believe that their innate feminine qualities were responsible for the crimes, implicitly tur- ning themselves into fellow culprits.Their narration re- vealed the complex psychology of rural victims in 1930s China and Korea. In the end, these rural women’s infe- rior social standing, economic burdens, and their sub- mission to patriarchal authority made them particularly vulnerable to social injustices, which actually prompted 50 Hershatter, Women and China’s Revolution, 104. 51 Hershatter, Women and China’s Revolution, 113. 52 Hershatter, Women and China’s Revolution, 43. 53 Hershatter, Women and China’s Revolution, 112. 54 See Soh, The Comfort Women, 27–141. 55 For more information on Japan and Korea’s colonial relation, see Dai Sil Kim-Gibson, Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women, (Parkersburg, Iowa: Mid-Prairie Books, 1999), 109–113. 56 Yoshimi, Comfort Women, 107–120. 57 Soh, Comfort Women, 29–78. 58 Soh, Comfort Women, 14. these victims to develop self-deprecating views about their pasts within their narrations, even when discus- sing the sexual crimes they endured. Japan created and later destructively executed the comfort women system with a clear exploitative, imperia- list mindset. Under the pretext of citizen mobilizations, they kidnapped these girls,transported them like livestock alongside other military provisions, and forcibly turned them into sex slaves.54 This process involved sheer vio- lence. Testimonies from both countries show that when false promises and coercion did not work,the women were simply abducted.”55 When comfort women were transported to their stations,their personhood was taken from them,and they were treated like tools with one function: to sleep with Japanese soldiers whenever needed in whatever way was desired by the soldiers. When the women arrived, the comfort station managers, usually local collaborators, would give them either an identification number or a Ja- panese name and refer to them by that new name from that time onward.56 Possibly as an aim to obliterate their past and quell potential resistance, the station often orde- red the victims to wear Japanese clothing and mimic the behaviors of Japanese women.57 Because Japan colonized Korea,Korean testimonies demonstrated a higher demand for their explicit expressions of allegiance to Japan. They were required to openly recite their love for the Japanese emperor and be thankful for the precious opportunity of “serving”his soldiers.They needed to pray for Japan’s victo- ry and express their gratitude to the soldiers who selflessly sacrificed their lives for the empire.58 These assimilation policies repeatedly forced these victims to submit both physically and psychologically to these soldiers. Both Korean and Chinese comfort women re- ported the extremely harsh living conditions and perpetual fear they endured. They were caged in small cubicles that Life as a Comfort Woman VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 43
- 49. could fit onlyone bed.They were often kept near the front- lines,moving with the army.Their testimonies recorded that their everyday“job”included serving an average of twenty to fifty men,59 from seven in the morning to late at night,and emphasized how little food they were provided.The words “hunger,”“pain,”and “hurt”repeatedly appeared in testimo- nies from both countries.60 Given that most of the victims were used to extreme destitution, their complaints concer- ning the comfort stations’ inhumane treatments reveal the unbearable levels of suffering the women there endured. Apart from living in a vile environment, comfort women were also subject to verbal abuse and physical tor- ments. All the victims in the thirty-one testimonies I read uniformly recounted beatings, curses, and sometimes even stabbing. For example, Li Lianchun showed the inter- viewers the very long and wide scar on her left shoulder from a soldier biting her. She had such a difficult time dis- cussingthedetailsoftheattackthattheinterviewersneeded to redirect the conversation.61 Constant ethnic slurs were frequently mixed with the soldiers’violence.Kim Dae-Il reported how a Japanese officer thrust a lit cigarette into a victim’s vagina and said, “Hey, this dirty Korean is dying.”62 Many women were required to inject #60663 or take medicine to treat vene- real disease and, most importantly, induce abortions and prevent fertilization. According to testimonies, pregnan- cy or menstruation were not excuses for rest: a comfort woman needed to sleep with men, even while her uterus was bleeding. If a comfort woman became pregnant, she and her baby would be executed.64 One Korean survivor recounted how a Japanese officer killed a comfort woman who spoke Korean while offering solace to a new arrival. Infuriated by her perceived defiance against the Japanese, he tortured her to death in front of the other women in the station as a threat.65 Many women, in their testimo- nies, lamented about how their pasts as comfort women 59 Soh, Comfort Women, 25–27, 49–51, 63–67. 60 For more information, see Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 1–108; also see Qiu, Chinese Comfort Wo- men, 96–169. 61 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 164. 62 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 27. 63 #606 injects was an Arsphenamine/Salvarsan compund that both treated venereal disease and, most im- portantly, induced abortion and eventually caused sterilization. Hwang Sel (2009), “Korean Female Child Soliders, Sexual Violence, and No. 606 Injections During the Pacific War of the World War II” in Substance Use and Misuse 44 (12), 1786-1802. 64 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 79–120. 65 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 26. 66 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 23. 67 Yoshimi, Comfort Women, 130–151. 68 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 46. made them barren and unable to fulfill their most impor- tant duty as a woman. Ironically,these actions exemplify the system’s worst injustices: being young and heirless were the same patriar- chal expectations that rendered these victims vulnerable to exploitation by their communities and the comfort wo- men system in the first place. Kim Bun-Sun, for instance, concluded her testimony saying:“I have no one,no children. I am in poor health.I live alone,and I will die alone.”66 Born into a poor rural family,Kim had little social power to resist the soldiers who abducted her. Knowing they lived under patriarchal households,the Japanese army devised a system that targeted these marginalized women.In both Korea and China, a woman’s value was determined by her ability to reproduce.The comfort woman system took away the one pathway to worthiness that Korean/Chinese patriarchal norms bestowed on rural women. The experiences robbed these victims of their basic social value, ingraining a life- long shame for their past. Given Japan’s education and propaganda in cham- pioning their ethnicity’s superiority and destined lea- dership role in Asia, it is possible that these soldiers may have viewed these “foreign” comfort women as inferior, or as “sub-human.”When facing stress,frustrations,and disil- lusion from countless battles, it is possible that the soldiers projected these negative emotions onto these innocent vic- tims through verbal insults and physical abuses.The women had little power to resist these actions.In fact,historical re- cords show that the comfort stations had a list of demands for these women to meet, one of which was the complete submission to abusive acts by any soldiers.67 The testimonies recorded how sick comfort women would be abandoned like trash,“wrapped in the sheets and carried away.”68 To further illustrate a comprehensive picture of the comfort woman’s life, I close with Jin Kyung-Paeng’s tes- timony on her comfort woman experience. She opens her 44 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 50. testimony with ashort introduction to her current living situation,then immediately moves us to the moment of her abduction. She was a rural woman who lived in a remote village called Hapchon. One day, two Japanese soldiers ab- ducted Jin while she was picking cotton with her mother. She was only fourteen at the time. Jin never mentions the presence of her father before or after the war, so it is pro- bable that he was absent. As mentioned in Section II, this absence of a male figure in the household was common du- ring the 1930s due to war mobilization and a general finan- cial depression. She concludes this initial “encounter” with one sentence,“I was crying.”She does not report any details of fighting against the two soldiers,but only recalls this mo- ment of emotional frustration.Here,Jin explicitly describes a moment of vulnerability, maybe as a way to reflect her sense of powerlessness as a comfort woman.69 The army transported Jin to Kinariyama, Taiwan, where she spent five years as a comfort woman.In her testi- mony,Jindisclosesafewdetailsofthesefiveyears.Shemen- tions the number of men she served every night (twenty), and that the army injected her with #606 after she contrac- ted venereal diseases. She mentions that she also worked as a military nurse during the day and a comfort woman at night,“with no time to rest [...] [nor] time for a meal.”70 Many other descriptions in her testimony are related to the general conditions for other comfort women. For example, Jin describes how “most girls were sixteen to nineteen years old… they were all abducted and brought to the camp like me.”71 All of these rather frigid linguistic choices may reflect the depth of Jin’s trauma and shame,making it hard for her to recollect her experiences in detail. Moreover, the rest of Jin’s details demonstrate that her body and other comfort women’s bodies were treated as simply a tool for these sol- diers’needs. Her testimony describes how comfort women were hunted like animals, shipped like military provisions, and treated like public toilets. Before becoming comfort women, these women already had very little control of their own lives and desires. Then, the unimaginable level of abuse and agony that they endured further reproduced and reinforced the same social concept of women’s inferiority to these men—a continua- 69 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 11–15. 70 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 13. 71 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 13. 72 Ding Ning, “My Life in Village Xia,” in the Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature, Joseph S.M. Lau and Howard Goldblatt eds., (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 132–147. 73 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 121. tionoftheirturbulentchildhoods.Thesetestimoniesserveas these victims’lamentations over their horrendous suffering as comfort women,and demonstrate their consciousness of objectification by the Japanese army—instilling a shame that they continued to feel during the post-war decades. URING THE WAR, these rural women lacked effective social agency and, unsur- prisingly, there was little local opposition against the recruitment of comfort women or the establishment of comfort stations. The same vulne- rabilities continued to shape those women’s experiences after the war. For nearly five decades, all Korean and Chinese comfort women remained in silence. Korean and Chinese records that explicitly mentioned military comfort women recruits, with pictures clearly demons- trating comfort women being drafted, were ignored. Hundreds of comfort stations and their records were left unchecked. Although some social writers, like Ding Ling,did note these women’s persecution and suffering at the hands of their communities,72 no academic research or official investigations were conducted on comfort wo- men before the 1990s. Before it became an international topic, most comfort women survivors were targets of public shaming and were forced to hide their pasts. If their pasts became known, their local communities, or sometimes even their families,would often identify them not as victims of sexual crimes but as traitors who “slept with Japanese soldiers.”73 Many Chinese survivors were publicly persecuted, impri- soned, and tortured during the Cultural Revolution for “counter-revolutionary” sentiments. Historians note that many comfort women committed suicide during these de- BREAKING THE POST-WAR SILENCE D A Forced Choice: Post-war Silence VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 45
- 51. cades of silence.74 Moreover,as explored previously in Sec- tion II,patriarchal ideals of chastity permeated Korean and Chinese societies,where a woman’s sexual integrity defined her living essence.Comfort women,therefore,were seen as the antithesis of the feminine ideal,having failed to protect their virginity or chastity when they were violated by men, marking them as cowards.Also,in the minds of many,these women intimately “comfort” Japanese soldiers and impli- citly “helped”these foreign aggressors to conquer China or Korea. All of this made comfort women a politically and socially fraught topic.Bearing their own shame,the public’s prejudice,and social marginalization,comfort women lived in constant fear and remained in silence.Given their nearly half a century of silence,one question arises: What promp- ted women to overcome the possible public discrimination and shame to suddenly reveal their stories? In South Korea’s case,the silence ended when Kim Hak-Soon filed her lawsuit on December 6, 1991, finally bringing both national and international attention to the enslavement of comfort women by the Japanese army du- ring the war. Her life story naturally became the first of- ficially recorded and widely disseminated comfort women testimony, initiating the redress movement.75 Behind her seemingly sudden decision is the fact that Kim was only given the opportunity to tell her story after the Korean political environment underwent dramatic transformation in the 1980s.76 By 1987, Chun Doo-Hwan had peaceful- ly transferred his power to Rho Tae-Woo, who passed the June 29 Declaration that granted more political freedoms to its citizens.More importantly,this political liberation al- lowed feminist activists and NGO leaders to bring forward human rights issues,one of which was comfort women.77 74 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 76–80. 75 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 181–185. 76 The era of political repression under Park Chung-Hee during the 1970s and the Gwangju Uprising in 1980 already marked the beginning of the Korean people’s struggle towards democracy. In the 1980s, universities around the country continued to have protests and movements regarding political reform. See Byung-Kook Kim and Ezra F. Vogel, The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011). 77 Gi-Wook Shin and Daniel C. Sneider, “Japanese Colonial Rule, Forced Labor, and Comfort Women,” in Diver- gent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War, (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2016), 195–214. 78 Rumiko, Nishino, Kim Puia, and Onozawa Akane, Denying the Comfort Women: The Japanese State’s Assault on Historical Truth, (New York City: Routledge, 2018), 70–87. 79 See Sarah Soh, “The Korean ‘Comfort Women’: Movement for Redress,” Asian Survey 36, no. 12 (1996): 1226–1240. 80 Soh, “Korean Comfort Women,” 1226-1230. In 1989,78 basing their claims on English Profes- sor Yun Chung-Ok’s research on comfort stations, the Korean Federation of Women’s Organization demanded that Japan issue an official apology in regard to its war- time use of comfort women.Later that year,thirty-seven Korean feminist women’s groups sent an open letter that repeated their grievances and demanded Japan’s apology. These early protests eventually encouraged leading fe- minists and human rights activists Yun Chung-ok and Lee Hyo-Chae to create a separate platform to deal with the comfort women. By 1990, contemporary Korean fe- minist groups had united, and the Korean Council for Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan (or the Korean Council) was established.79 On August 14, 1991, Kim, with the help of the Korean Council, held a press conference releasing her testimony. Unsurpri- singly, the Korean Council later became the main agen- cy that interviewed, transcribed, and disseminated these women’s testimonies within Korea, including the nine- teen testimonies used in this thesis. During the 1990s, Korean Council activists accompanied these victims in almost all hearings, protests, and conventions.When the United Nations first picked up the comfort women to- pic in 1992, the only two delegates participating in that Geneva Meeting were a former comfort woman and a member of the Korean Council.80 However, it is worth noting both the feminist and nationalist focus of the Korean Council. One of its leaders, Yun Chung-ok, came from a family of Korean independence fighters and reported a strong “anger over Japanese colonization of Korea.”A forced laborer herself, Yun felt the need to record the stories of comfort women. The other leader, Lee Hyo-Chae, was actively involved in the 1970s democracy movement. In her petition to the UN Human Rights Commission,Lee noted that the Korean Council saw the comfort women as a represen- Kim Hak-Soon—The Origin of the Redress Movement 46 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 52. tation of bothpatriarchal oppression and a Japanese war crime against Korean women. Using the women’s tes- timonies, she claimed that Japan violated the 1932 in- ternational agreement on the prohibition of prostitution, which was signed by Japan.81 In doing so, the Korean Council redirected and elevated the comfort women tes- timonies beyond these victims’individual suffering to an issue of national pride. By 1994,the left-wing international human rights organization, the Japanese Democratic Lawyer’s Associa- tion, was invited to China. They dedicated themselves to supportinglawsuitsforChinesecomfortwomenandother victims of war crimes. From 1994 to 2005, without any support from the Chinese government or the public,these Japanese attorneys and local Japanese grassroots organi- zations, such as the Association to Support the Lawsuits of Chinese Comfort Women and Association to Support the Claims of Chinese Law Victims, paid for all research, investigations, and legal costs.82 It is worth nothing that these Japanese activists’ great contributions paralleled the groundbreaking academic work that Japanese scholar Yo- shiaki Yoshimi did.Professor Su Zhiliang and Chen Lifei (his wife) at Shanghai Normal University, with funding from these transnational organizations, began their own research on comfort women within China.The twelve tes- timonies included here also were gathered with assistance from and collaboration with local researchers.83 Unlike the Korean testimonies,the Chinese victims were interviewed by historians, who were relatively free from strong politi- cal or feminist inclinations.Furthermore,since Su studied in Japan, he had a close relationship with non-Chinese scholars, which made him aware of the importance of analyzing the comfort women from a somewhat transna- tional perspective. 81 Soh, “Korean Comfort Women,” 1232. 82 On the Japanese civic organization’s role in funding the redress movement for the Chinese comfort women, see Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 190–194. 83 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 97. 84 In the beginning, some of the panels and museums that adopted the comfort women theme were tempo- rary. In 2006, when the known right-wing politician Abe Shinzo became the leader of Japan, his revisionist stance prompted the establishment of the “Comfort Women” exhibit in the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, the archive at Shanghai Normal University in Shanghai, and a symposium in Shanxi University, and the Museum of the Eighth Route Army in Shanxi’s Wuxiang County. See Vickers, “Commemorating Comfort Women,” 184. 85 Su Zhiliang, The Research on Japanese Military Comfort Women, Tuanjie Publishing: 2015, 1. Here the re- corded language is my translation, and the original Chinese text reads: 作为一个史学工作者，有责任将日军之暴行予以 彻底的揭露。 86 Hyunah Yang, “Re-membering the Korean Military Comfort Women: Nationalism, Sexuality, and Silencing,” in Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism, (New York: Routledge, 1998), 125. 87 For instance, by 1995, four years after Kim’s trial, seven comfort women had to live in one common room. Soh, “Korean Comfort Women,” 1231. However, given that their work had been accepted by the CCP and even adopted by national museums such as the Nanjing Massacre Memorial and Museum of the Eighth Route Army,84 all bases for patriotic education,it is noteworthy that some extent of nationalistic and anti-co- lonial tone is still present in these Chinese scholars’ work. As Su said in his own book’s foreword, his research is to delineate “this monster’s [Japan] evil deeds”and completely expose “the brutality of Japanese militarism” for the honor of the countless Chinese comfort women whose lives were ruined.85 Lastly,it should be noted that Su’s book’s publisher was founded by the State Council of the People’s Republic of China,which has a direct connection to the Party. Both the Korean and Chinese governments’ initial response to these grassroots organizations was to suppress and avoid them. When a Korean news- paper publicized local records of comfort women in 1992, the Ministry of Education in South Korea forbade any further disclosure of these records.86 The government provided neither funds nor support for the Korean Council or other organizations that ad- vocated for these women. Relying on small private donations, these organizations could not financially aid these victims.87 The situation was worse in China, where no official research was conducted or grassroots organizations formed until 2000. Even in the 2000s, the Chinese government denied comfort woman Li Lianchun access to travel documents when she was invited to speak in the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal in Japan, claiming that her deci- Government's Role in the Redress Movement VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 47
- 53. sion to disclose“a shameful past” abroad would harm China’s international image.88 Throughout the redress movement, both countries’ governments consciously filtered and refined details of the comfort women and controlled the information’s dissemination. In South Korea, the comfort women became useful leverage when asking Japan to aid in Korea’s economic development. Korea signed a treaty with Ja- pan (the Japan-Korea Basic Treaty) in 1965 that sett- led all colonial period issues “completely and finally” in exchange for Japan’s economic aid. The then South Korean president Park Chung Hee prioritized money over these victims’ rights for redress. Thereafter, the Korean government made very little effort to protect these women’s rights, often leaving them in extreme poverty.89 After Kim’s trial in 1991 and growing inter- national protests, Japan offered another 1 billion yen to the South Korean government in 2015, in exchange for resolving the issue “finally and irreversibly.” Yet, as in 1965, the comfort women in 2015 still played no role in crafting or signing the agreement.90 The Chinese government, however, did not par- ticipate in the redress movements in the 1990s, nor did they fund scholars who worked on the comfort women. Before 2000, there was little media coverage. Since the comfort women have received international attention, feminist groups and NGOs have played an instrumen- tal role in helping these women.However,this intimacy between grassroots organizations and comfort women may have concerned the Communist Party (CCP) for its potential to destabilize their power and societal control, especially after the Tiananmen Square Inci- dent. Consequently, when the UN-sponsored World Conference on Women was held in Beijing in 1995,the CCP forbade all comfort women victims and comfort women scholars from attending. In 2000, the CCP again blocked Chinese participants from attending the 88 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 176. 89 The power struggle went beyond Korea and Japan. The U.S. helped Japan after WWII and pressured Korea to ask little reparations for war. The U.S. chose not to prosecute Japanese leaders involved in the comfort woman sys- tem. From Korea’s perspective, President Park Chung Hee legalized prostitution in Korea as a way to situate Wianbu as a euphemism used for Korean women, essentially also sexual slaves, who “served” in similar rape centers (camp towns) for American military near American military camps in the 1970s. 90 On Korea’s continued tension on the comfort women, see Thomas J. Ward, “The Comfort Women Contro- versy: Not Over Yet,” East Asia (2016): 255-269. On December 27th 2017, President Moon Jae-in called the 2015 “Comfort Women Agreement” flawed, but again, no changes were made. 91 On the Chinese governmental role in the redress movement for the comfort women before 2010, see Vic- kers, “Commemorating Comfort Women,” 174–180. 92 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 181–190. Women’s War Crimes Tribunals in Tokyo. Essential- ly, before 2000, the government suppressed any serious discourse concerning comfort women.91 To the CCP, the comfort women and their his- tories challenged their established WWII history. First, the comfort women involved not just China, but wo- men across Eurasia. Second, multiple players, particularly Chinese local collaborators, were heavily involved in ab- ducting, transporting, and managing these victims. Both elements, if widely propagandized, would generate unne- cessary questions for the government to answer.To com- plicate the issue further,the delicate post-Cold War politi- cal environment included Japan,a Western/American ally, and China, a communist country, in opposing camps. So, unlike with the South Korean government, Japan made no effort to communicate with either the Chinese or Nor- th Korean governments regarding the comfort women, and excluded China from the Asian Women’s Fund, an organization designed to offer compensation and an offi- cial apology letter to survivors in the 1990s.Only in 2000, when Su Zhiliang received Japan’s interest as the director of the Research Center for Chinese Comfort Women un- der Shanghai Normal School,was some kind of compen- sation process with these women initiated. After discus- sing this with the known survivors,Su declined their offer for possible monetary compensation. He claimed that all survivors consented to this decision.92 Today,comfort women in China and Korea have yet to obtain control in the redress movement. The go- vernments, the public, and even international academia have long shifted the focus away from the individual vic- tims’ lives, redirecting it toward the international power struggles between Japan, Korea, and China. Ironically, testimonies from the comfort women were important sources of evidence upon which scholars in Korea and China built their war-crime arguments and constructed their particular nationalistic public memories. 48 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 54. NE QUESTION THATwe cannot ignore is whether these comfort women really presented their experiences, pain, and lives through these testimonies. Feminist theorist Spivak argues that “if, in the context of colonial production, the subal- tern has no history and cannot speak, the subaltern as fe- male is even more deeply in shadow.”93 Since these victims were marginalized and illiterate postcolonial subjects who survived sexual slavery, their stories would naturally be in- fluenced and altered by these intermediary players, who were not subject to these women’s traumas. More impor- tantly, these intermediary forces conditioned the contex- tualization, selection, and circulation of the victims’ stories. Within the fraught post-war relations between Japan and other East Asian states, women’s voices were deployed as tools of nationalist agitation and leverage for compensation. Withthosehighlypersonal,intimateexperiencesintandem with an awareness of political and institutional forces,these testimonies became overdetermined: as texts and as sites of interlocking histories,consisting of both the personal histo- ry of sexual violation and the symbolic discourse of comfort women in the post-war era. By the time comfort women began to tell their sto- ries, their voices were conditioned by decades-long private trauma, personal shame, and widespread social discrimi- nation rooted in their past enslavement. Naturally, when these victims were finally offered an opportunity to speak, nonprofit organizations,government agencies,and feminist 93 Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” 94 Jeremy A. Yellen, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019). 95 Note that China was never exactly colonized by Japan. However, I define the “colonial” past here as a way to describe the invasive nature of Japan in Korea and China. 96 For a similar discussion on the “self-other” dichotomy, see Vickers, “Commemorating Comfort Women,” 174– 180. Also see Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. He discusses how the “other” became the strange…and his nature is existentially something different and alien because the propagan- da and other forms of everyday idioms reproduced the distinction of the context of a concrete antagonism. Behind the distinction of the friend-enemy dialectic is the “real possibility of physical killing.” When the conflict became so grave, and the distance to peaceful resolution became so stark, the war became seemingly the only option that was “common, normal, ideal, or desirable.” groups held the power to conduct, edit, and later dissemi- nate these testimonies to suit their agencies’ distinct agen- das. Hence, these testimonies have dual uses as politicized propaganda used to incite antagonism and as personal his- tories of the distinct tragedies,dilemmas,and vulnerabilities rural women faced.This leaves the question of the comfort women’s self-agency. As heard through representatives, did their oppressed voices get heard? Did they regain some of their agency? Comfort stations and the comfort women system were part of Japan’s colonial project,serving as a tool to ex- pedite its ultimate goal of creating the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”94 These victims and their memories suffered a burden of their colonized past,95 with Japan assu- ming the role of the imperial master.The comfort women system, with the exploitation of human bodies at the cen- ter of the violence, represented Japan’s absolute violation of the two countries during the war.It strengthened historical dichotomies between good and evil,or victim and perpetra- tor, when people associated Japan, Korea, and China.96 For the Chinese and Korean governments, these unimaginable stories could serve as the perfect ammunition to generate strong anti-colonial,anti-Japanese sentiments. Interestingly, these women’s testimonies demons- trate similar rhetoric. During their narrations, Japan was often painted as the superior “other” who defeated their country, instilling fear and suffering in the colonized.The Japanese were the cause for their unfortunate fate and miserable lives. Through a close reading of Korean wo- man Kim Sang-Hi’s and Chinese woman Lu Xiuzhen’s testimonies, I argue that these victims’ stories intermixed LEGACIES: HOW COMFORT WOMEN (COULD) PRESENT THEIR STORIES O Politicization of Comfort Women Testimonies—An Anti-Colonial, Anti-Japanese Discourse? VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 49
- 55. individual resentments andlack of agency with their res- pective nations’ common, collective hatred toward Japan. Sometimes, they chose to abstract their individual desires and move their experience beyond personal suffering to Japan’s overall transgressions against their homeland and fellow countrymen.Thus,they linked Japan’s war crimes to the present day. Kim Sang-Hi began her story with a short intro- duction of her family make-up and quickly moved to the moment of her draft. She used the Japanese calendar, sta- ting that she was abducted by two men on the “12th year of Showa (1937)”97 while she was having a portrait done with her girlfriend.She recounted: A man dressed in olive-drab clothing and wearing a cap started to curse at us in Japanese. I couldn’t tell if that s.o.b., pardon my language, was a Japanese or a Korean, because at that time of the Japanese occupation, we Koreans all had to speak Japanese.98 Here, Kim described how the man cursed in Ja- panese. Yet, she could not tell if the men were Japanese or Korean, because Koreans all spoke Japanese after Ja- pan’s invasion.99 Kim deliberately labeled Koreans the “we” or self, instantly excluding Japan as the “other.” Re- vealing how the “self” had to unconditionally submit to the “other,” Kim, even at the beginning of her story, had already described the historical power hierarchy: Japanese on the top and Koreans at the bottom.Also,her emphasis here situates her audience to a specific time period in co- lonial Korea, a time when Japan initiated a series of harsh assimilation policies to instill nationalism in the colonized, transforming them into Japanese imperial subjects. Poli- cies were aimed at taming Korea to help Japan better mo- bilize its people during the war. Her testimony, therefore, was unequivocally founded upon Korea’s colonial past. The first piece of information Kim included in her testimony after her arrivalatthecomfortstationinSuzhou was when soldiers changed her Korean name “Kim Sang- 97 Showa refers to the reign of the Japanese emperor Hirohito. It describes the time period between 1926 to 1989. 98 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 30. 99 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 30. 100 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 31. 101 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 25–27. Pak Du-Ri made a similar choice to make “name-change” the first information on comfort women’s experience. For more information, see Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 69–71. 102 Kim-Gibson, Silence Broken, 36. 103 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 37. 104 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 47. Hi”to “Takeda Sanai.”Again, Kim labeled this change as “a change of her own”to something “Japanese,”and spoke of her rage and desperation when it happened.100 Kim’s choice to differentiate her “self” and the “other” by inclu- ding the colonial-era power hierarchy was not distinct. In her testimony, Kim Dae-Il also chose “name change” as the first event in her comfort woman life. She even in- cluded a quote from a soldier,saying,“This is Japan.From now on, you must not speak Korean. Your new and only name is Shizue.”101 Japan actually required all Koreans to change their name to Japanese with Ordinance No. 20 in 1939.102 Yet, these women’s choice to highlight this event as the moment that transformed them into a comfort wo- man sheds light on their cognitive dissonance toward co- lonization and “Japanization.”Perhaps in their minds, the “name-change” both denied their Korean pasts and also forcibly imposed their new colonized identities. Toward the end of her testimony, Kim Sang-Hi lamented about her inability to reconcile herself with her past. However, the final sentence of her narration directs thespotlightawayfromherpersonallife.Instead,shechose to address the abstract concept of “Japan,”saying: “When I wake up every morning, my head subconsciously turns east toward Japan,and I curse her.I cannot help it.”103 Her personal anger and frustration are also mixed with an abs- tract anti-Japanese, anti-colonial sentiment. Furthermore, by linking her war experiences and Japan’s crimes to her present state, Kim paints it as an unsolved, ongoing issue. Kim Sang-Hi was not alone; one-third of the examined testimonies, both Korean and Chinese, end with similar expressions of an “abstractified” hatred. Many like Kim Yoon-Shim verbally attacked the Japanese, saying they “appear to be kind on the surface, but I don’t trust them. They all have a dual personality.”104 While it is completely understandable that these women,as sexual violence survivors,chose to express their frustrations toward their perpetuators,I believe we should also take into account the contemporary political environ- ment’s anti-colonial, anti-Japanese inclinations. In 1995, 50 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 56. then Japanese PrimeMinister Tomiichi Murayama pu- blicly announced that Japan’s annexation of Korea “was legally and historically valid and effective,” and that the colonization “did good things for Korea.” Japan further angered the Korean public and government by claiming that the contested area “Dokdo” belonged to Japan, di- rectly challenging Korea’s territorial sovereignty. Korea responded by tearing down the Japanese Colonial Head- quarters and building the National Museum for Inde- pendence on the site in 1997. With Korea’s victim image amplified, the Korean government aimed to show how outrageously incorrect Japan’s revisionist views were, and how they affected the present.Thus,as intermediary agen- cies conducted and disseminated these testimonies during the 1990s, the Japan-Korean relationship greatly deterio- rated.105 The Korean government actively revisited and in- vited the public to revisit Korea’s colonial past with a focus on the Japanese brutality toward the Korean people. Ali- gning with this political inclination, the testimonies also dwelled upon the suffering that the Japanese army caused. The intermediate organization itself, the Korean Council,clearly had strong anti-colonial inclinations.Yun Chung-Ok, its leader at the time, came from a family of independence fighters. She recalled how her father’s strict and patriotic education influenced her greatly as a person.106 Moreover, even when the comfort women be- came a transnational phenomenon, the Korean Coun- cil and other Korean nonprofit organizations primarily concentrated on Korean women’s experiences.107 Using the testimonies, their initial arguments and petitions to the Japanese government and the United Nations usually focused on the aspect that Japan, as the colonizer, used its war mobilization as a cover for the enslavement of Korean comfort women, their colonized.108 As a result, these vic- tims and their testimonies intermingled post-war Korea’s own reconstruction and reorientation with their collective memory of their colonized past. Similar to Kim Sang-Hi’s testimony, Lu Xiuzhen began her testimony with a short introduction to her life 105 Cheol Hee Park, “Cooperation Coupled with Conflicts: Korea-Japan Relations in the Post-Cold War Era,” in Asia-Pacific Review, 2008, 13–35. 106 See Soh, “Korean Comfort Women,” 1225. 107 See Vickers, “Commemorating Comfort Women,” 176. 108 Rumiko, Nishino eds. Denying the Comfort Women: The Japanese Assault on Historical Truth, (New York, NY: Routledge, 2018), 219. 109 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 118–120. 110 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 118–120. 111 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 106. 112 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 124. before becoming a comfort woman. Then, she described the destruction of China by the Japanese troops,claiming: I heard that the Japanese troops had vacations.Their officers had a week-long vacation,while the soldiers had three days. On their vacation days, the military men would come to the village from where they stationed.They looted chickens, grains,oranythingtheycouldfindandshotoxenandpigsto eat. Worse even than that, the Japanese soldiers kidnapped the girls and women they could find [...] Chinese people suf- feredhellishlywhentheJapanesearmyinvadedourcountry. Japanese soldiers could kill us at will with their guns, so my mother had no way to save me.Those Japanese troops were not humans; they were no different from beasts.109 Note in this part, Lu first enumerated the various crimes the army committed. Only after this laundry list, Lu started to describe her own experience of being for- cibly captured by soldiers. Furthermore, her account of this initial “encounter” ended with a general denuncia- tion of Japan, and a lamentation, not of her suffering, but of the entire Chinese population.”110 By including her experience with other Japanese war crimes, Lu seems to abstract the personal human rights violation against her own body into yet another example of Japanese war crimes against the Chinese people. Moreover, Lu, like Kim Sang-Hi, consciously established a dichotomy between the Chinese as the “self” and the Japanese as the vicious “other.” They crafted Japan’s image as so strange and evil, practically alien. This “inhuman” depiction of the Japanese and their soldiers was common in these women’s testimonies. For instance, Wan Aihua, throughout her testimony, refers to the soldiers as the “devils.”111 Yuan Zhulin describes how the Japanese soldiers were “devilish-looking.”112 To these women, these men committed unimaginable violence and abuse against their bodies, so their descriptions became justifiable and understandable. But in addition to seeing these descriptions as natural emotional responses to their VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 51
- 57. past suffering,we shouldalso be cognizant that researchers conducted their interviews four decades later and that the CCP hoped to exacerbate a particular anti-colonial, an- ti-Japanese sentiment among its citizens. Starting in the 1980s, to erase any potential challenges to the party during the Post-Cultural Revo- lution era, the Deng Xiaoping administration decided to initiate a series of patriotic campaigns revolving around an anti-colonial,anti-Japanese discourse,reminding its ci- tizens of the unmeasurable atrocities and pain that the Ja- panese inflicted upon the Chinese people.War memories, then, were turned into nationalistic educational tools to reinforce the image of the“other”—Japan.Simultaneously, by hating a common enemy, the CCP kept their citizens looking at the past to appreciate the sacrifices and achie- vements of the Party through the war that had liberated them from the evils of the Japanese. Rita Mitter, for exa- mple, noted how both the CCP and Nationalist Party (KMT) in Taiwan integrated their WWII memory into part of their national identities in the 1980s and 1990s through televisions, museums, and films. In particular, the CCP wished to be perceived “as a virtuous actor,not just a powerful one.”113 To that end, the Party built commemo- ration sites like the Unit 731 War Museum to reinforce the memory of Japan’s sins.114 It is also during this time that the CCP began to educate its people on the details of the Nanjing Massacre and the comfort women. Such propaganda efforts continued into the 1990s, when the CCP initiated propaganda that focused on delineating Ja- pan’s war crimes to deepen the “self-other” dichotomy in Chinese people’s minds.115 During this time of intensified “war crime” education, Su began to conduct interviews with the comfort women, producing the testimonies that we read here. Su himself, as mentioned above, dedicated his research in part to uncovering the brutality and crimes that the Japanese committed against China. Therefore, these victims were both immersed within and directly in- teracted with interviewers with heightened anti-colonial, anti-Japanese sentiments at the time of their interviews. As victims of sexual crimes, they justifiably held strong resentment and frustrations toward their perpetra- tors,and their emotions should not be denied.Yet,we also 113 Rana Mitter, China’s Good War: How World War II is Shaping a New Nationalism, (Cambridge: Harvard Univer- sity Press, 2020), 236. 114 Mark R. Frost, Daneil Schumacher and Edward Vickers eds., Remembering Asia's World War Two, (Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2019), 27-35. 115 Lijun Yang, “A Clash of Nationalisms: Sino–Japanese Relations in the Twenty-First Century,” in China -Japan Relations in the 21st Century, (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2017), 83–127. need to situate their testimonies within their respective po- litical periods. Both the Korean and Chinese governments had launched projects to reconstruct a collective war me- mory that would link their colonial past and Japan’s crimes to the present day. Like the government, the intermediary personnelthathandledtheseinterviewsheldasimilaragen- da, wanting to position the comfort women with Japan’s crimes. Probably influenced by this rhetoric, these victims also intermixed their personal emotions within an overall anti-colonial, anti-Japanese discourse. In these testimonies, Japanese soldiers’human rights violations against bodies be- came evidence of Japan’s transgression against their home- lands,making Japan embody the “vicious”other. Once the governments securely set up the “self- other” dichotomy, they succeeded in uniting all citizens against the “other,” producing nationalist feelings. Likewise, along with these women’s anti-colonial, an- ti-Japanese sentiments were their expressions of natio- nalism toward their homelands. However, being margi- nalized and discriminated against throughout their lives, their narration of nationalism was frequently interlaced with an implicit cynic grievance against the Korean or Chinese government’s inactive bystander stance toward their suffering. Through a close reading of Kim Dae-Il and Jin Kyung-Paeng’s testimonies, I found that these women primarily emphasized comfort women’s experiences as non-transnational experiences, saying all comfort women came from the same country. The uniformity in content may speak to the crucial role that the intermediary agen- cies played in conducting and editing these victims’stories. Also,while being a salient feature throughout the testimo- nies, the comfort women’s nationalism coexists with their subtle frustrations and resentments toward their govern- ments and their environments.Hence,I further argue that this additional layer of nuance contradicts and destabilizes Politicization of Comfort Women Testimonies—A Nationalistic Undertone? 52 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 58. these victims’ earlierconfessions of nationalism, revealing how these testimonies could have been altered and later misrepresented by different agenda-driven forces. Kim Dae-Il begins her testimony by directly di- ving into her comfort women experiences when she was drafted and transported from Korea to Manchuria. It fo- cuses on describing the terrible treatment and verbal in- sults that Korean comfort women suffered.She laments: So we were made sex slaves and were forced to service [for- thy] to [fifty] soldiers each day. One time, a soldier sat on top of the stomach of a pregnant “comfort woman” who was almost full term. Apparently, this act induced labor. As a baby started to appear, he stabbed both the infant and the mother and exclaimed, “Hey, these senjing (dirty Koreans) are dead. Come and see.”116 In this testimony,Kim details how one Japanese soldier pushed a baby out of the body of a comfort wo- man, stabbed both victims, while yelling “dirty Choson” (an ethnic slang for Korean people). Her whole testi- mony focused on how the Japanese soldiers intersec- ted their power with grave ethnic discrimination while committing their atrocities. Many other victims also noted how pervasive ethnic discrimination was in their comfort women experiences.117 By involving the concept of “ethnic otherness,” their descriptions reflected both their anti-colonial, an- ti-Japanese sentiments and their personal nationalism. The “otherness,” as previously mentioned, established a “self-other” dichotomy. However, the attribution of “otherness” came also from the Japanese, not only from the victims themselves.When the Japanese soldiers mixed physical abuse with ethnic slurs,they justified their crimes by branding these women as the “inferior” other, unwor- thy of any rights. The abuses, therefore, cannot be purely defined as sexual violence, but also as a unique, targeted attack against the comfort women’s ethnic identities. Si- multaneously, Kim’s and others’ choices to include these details suggest how essential their national identities are in their memories. In their stories, the Japanese soldiers’ crimes went beyond being mere attacks upon their phy- 116 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 26. 117 Other women like Kim Yoon-Shim, Son Pan-Im, and Lu Xuanzhen also talked about ethnic discrimination. For more information, see Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 25–27. 118 On the local collaborations with the Japanese Army and its importance in the comfort women, see Kim-Gib- son, Silence Broken, 32–54; Maki, Unfolding the ‘Comfort Women’ Debates, 1–26. 119 For more information, see Soh, The Comfort Women, 107–142. sical bodies, but were elevated to an overall abuse against their countries—revealing the nationalism of their views. Despite noting how the comfort women system was founded upon and carried out with Japan’s ethnically discriminative ideology,these women often noted the par- ticipation of local collaborators acting as drafters,interpre- ters for soldiers,or even managers of comfort stations.Al- though these local collaborators were not the focal point of their testimonies, historical records reveal the signifi- cant role that Korean and Chinese collaborators played in the system’s success.A wide array of authoritarian Korean personnel were involved, including village elites, commu- nity leaders,police officers,and even administrative clerks. These collaborators accompanied private brokers and sometimes acted as recruiters themselves. Local officials were given lists of qualified girls in their communities and were expected to fulfill a quota within a given time.Using their positions as village leaders, these collaborators often came to victims repeatedly, making long speeches about filial piety and encouraging their participation. Besides wanting to ensure their privileges,the colonial policies im- posed upon the elites also compelled them to participate in the recruitment process.118 Sometimes, if a recruiter executed their quota, their entire community would be rewarded and ho- nored. Moreover, these elites feared losing authority or their own daughters to the system, and therefore zealously assisted with drafting and running comfort stations. Some collaborators were businessmen who saw the comfort women system simply as a lucrative business. Since the Japanese government supported such businesses, the collaborators could proceed wi- thout fear of government curtailment. For example, one Korean collaborator was able to open five comfort stations in Shanghai and received a 20,000 yen annual profit.The comfort women could not be separated from the general, historical pattern of widespread criminal sex trafficking of women in both Korea and China. Yet, both governments and various intermediary agen- cies overlooked this complexity regarding the comfort women.119 They treated it as simply a unique Japanese crime against their homeland, rather than fitting it into VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 53
- 59. the long-standing andwidely accepted practice of kid- napping and trafficking women across East Asia.120 However, neither the Korean nor Chinese govern- ments, nor even the nonprofit organizations researching comfort women emphasized this aspect.In fact,these agen- cies intentionally downplayed collaborators’ roles, aiming to simplify the dichotomy to a simple “self-other”between countries.We could even explain this kind of simplification as a continued method of silencing.The result of testimony became a filtered product that eliminated “uncomfortable” historical elements, like local collaborators or interpreters’ involvements, that might destabilize people’s nationalism. Also, given that these women had little chance to speak about their stories, their interviewers and the intermediary agencies became a crucial element in finalizing their testi- monies.We can even push the argument further by sugges- ting that the omission of the roles of interviewers in their testimonies in themselves may suggest polished products. BothKoreanandChinesecomfortwomenseemto be nationally conscious when they describe other comfort women’s ethnic makeup. Most of their accounts included information primarily on women coming from the same country as themselves. Jin Kyung-Paeng’s testimony per- fectly demonstrates this emphasis on people’s nationali- ties. Her story opens by describing her present-day living arrangements: “living in a small apartment in Bundang, made available by the Korean government.” After setting her nationality, Jin begins to summarize a comfort wo- man’s life. She describes how two Japanese Kempei (mili- tary police) abducted her and moved her,with thirty other Korean girls,to Taiwan.She then says: The Japanese guards divided the Korean women from the ship into three groups of ten and took us to different loca- tions. We were the first Korean women in the area. There were also [twenty] Japanese women who had been there for a year. But the [fifty] of us were not enough to meet the soldiers’ demands.121 120 For more information, see Vickers, “Commemorating Comfort Women,” 176. 121 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 12. 122 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 11–15. 123 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 106. 124 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 101–105. 125 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, A Resolution Expressing that the Government of Japan should formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Impe- rial Armed Forces' coercion of young women into sexual slavery, known to the world as "comfort women", during its colonial and wartime occupation of Asia and the Pacific Islands from the 1930s through the duration of World War II, July 30 (2007), 110th Cong. Here, Jin reminds her readers twice more about the comfort women’s nationality. The first time, Jin reveals that her “group” was the first Korean group transported to “serve” this army unit. The second time is when she tells us that the thirty Korean girls living in her comfort station could not fulfill the needs of their assigned soldiers.122 Similarly, Chinese victim Li Guiying’s testimony also highlights nationality. She says: “All were Chinese, but wore Japanese robes.”123 It should be noted that, although rare, some women’s testimonies included information regarding the trans- national features of comfort women. For instance, Ms. K (a Korean victim) mentioned that some girls “of Chinese origin” lived in a comfort station in Man- churia.124 At least to a certain extent, comfort women from many national origins coexisted within the same station. Maybe, then, we should look at how these wo- men’s emphasis overlapped with the nationalistic wri- ting styles of their interviewers. In the Korean case, as mentioned above, the agency that gave voice to the Korean comfort women hadaverynationallyfocusedagenda.Theirfoundinglea- ders were highly nationalistic, and their early petitions (during the period when testimonies were recorded) were also focused on Korean nationalism. Moreover, the book that collected Korean comfort women’s tes- timonies also had a rather Korea-oriented perspective. First, the Washington Coalition for Comfort Women was founded by Korean Americans—a diaspora com- munity. In fact, the comfort women redress movement received more support and attention in the U.S. than in Korea and China in the 1990s. Through grassroots ef- forts, many Korean American communities persuaded U.S. politicians to take action to pressure the Japanese government in the compensation process. On July 30, 2007, the U.S. government issued a House Resolution calling Japan to “formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibilities.”125 This could be connected to Jewish efforts to rally 54 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 60. for international,and specificallyGerman,recognition of the Holocaust. The Jewish American community esta- blished a similar movement that ensured the Holocaust would be included in the public school education cur- riculums. Jewish organizations such as the Anti-De- famation League (ADL) of B’nai B’rith promoted the “universalization” of the Holocaust.126 As the title suggests, the Chinese American journalist Iris Chang’s famous yet controversial book The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II tried to tie the massacre to the Holocaust. Despite its mixed reception, her book instrumentally contributed to adding China and the Nanjing Massacre as part of the World War II narrative and a known topic among Chinese Ameri- can diaspora communities.127 Filipino Americans and Tibetan diaspora communities128 around the world all participated in similar kinds of transnational activism. Anthropologists have argued that these foreign resi- dents’ participation in events regarding their own com- munities could help them to forge a “national” identity and connect them back to that “distant”yet “affirmative” homeland.Perhaps for the Washington Coalition,figh- ting justice for the Korean people through champio- ning the comfort women was more of a priority than highlighting comfort women’s self-agency. Second, the leaders, editors, and interviewers are all ethnic Koreans.Although the organization titled the book Testimony by Sex Slaves of the Japanese Mili- tary, only the testimonies from Korean people were in- cluded. Since this book was published in 2000, comfort women survivors all across Asia have come forward and offered similar testimonies.129 For example, 28 survi- vors from China have filed a lawsuit against Japan.The United Nations Report, which they included as appen- dices, also delineates that comfort women were drafted from all across Asia.130 It is possible that the Korean or- 126 Thomas D. Fallace (Thomas Daniel), “The Origins of Holocaust Education in American Public Schools.” Holo- caust and Genocide Studies 20, no. 1 (2006): 80–102. muse.jhu.edu/article/196303. 127 Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: the Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, (New York: Basic Books, 1997). 128 On Filipino Americans activism and how such social work can help them to form a self-identity that linked themselves back to their previously mystic, distant homeland, see Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, eds, “Conclusion,” In Filipino American Transnational Activism, (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2019) https://doi.org.ezproxy.cul.columbia. edu/10.1163/9789004414556_011. On Tibetan diaspora communities and their effort to channel and preserve their Tibetan identity through political activism, see Shelly Bhoil and Enrique Galvan-Alvarez. Tibetan Subjectivities on the Global Stage: Negotiating Dispossession. Studies in Modern Tibetan Culture. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2018. 129 Bhoil and Galvan-Alvarez, Tibetan Subjectivities, iix. 130 Nishino Rumiko, “Forcible Mobilization: What Survivor Testimonies Tell Us,” in Denying the Comfort Women, 50. 131 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 24. 132 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 15. ganization did not have the means to collect or include all of these testimonies; however, given this discrepancy between their title and their content, it is feasible that the editor made a deliberate choice to paint a rather narrow or even biased picture of the comfort women, one without the crucial transnational aspect. The author of the book that included the Chinese comfort women’s testimonies, Qui Peipei, noted in her introduction the lack of Chinese women’s voices within the international discourse. She wanted to include their voices in academia, allowing others to obtain a “full understanding of this complicated is- sue.”131 In the interview, Su and Chen also held similar goals. As Su disclosed in his own book, his work is to pursue justice for the death and suffering that hundreds of thousands of Chinese comfort women endured. To these scholars, these testimonies bear the burden of constructing and representing the extent of this turpi- tude. Their work aims to fill the holes that academia, international commissions, and journalists all left: the voice of the Chinese. Such nationally oriented goals may have influenced these victims and the style of nar- ration. Curiously, Jin Kyung-Paeng ended her story by circling back to her government, claiming that: Not long ago, I was invited to visit Japan. I could not go because of my poor health and lack of funds. Today I have constant pain all over my body and frequent diz- ziness, but I cannot even afford over-the-counter drugs. My monthly income is 45,000 won, or about $55, from the Korean government. I have no possessions, relatives, or offspring. I am alone.132 In the beginning of her testimony, she informed her readers that her current “small home”was arranged by VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 55
- 61. the Korean government.By the end, she told us that her sole income (45,000 won/55 dollars) also came from the Korean government.133 In these two pieces of data, Jin highlights the critical role that the government played in helping her survive during the post-war era. As evident in her testimony, the national government, in contrast to their publicly apathetic stance, actually helped some victims. Governmental help is a common theme in both Korean and Chinese comfort women’s testimonies.Yuan Zhulin, for instance, also ended her testimony by men- tioning that the Chinese government offered her 120 yuan (twelve dollars) as a monthly stipend.134 These sta- tements could be a way for these women to address their current living conditions.However,given that their testi- monies held a strong nationalistic undertone overall,this flagging of their national government’s help is very likely to have been a deliberate choice to amplify their show of allegiance toward their country. As these women delineated the help their go- vernments offered, they also seemed to express deep frustration or bitterness toward their lives, especial- ly regarding how little help their society had offered. In Jin Kyung-Paeng’s narration, she stresses that her government-subsidized apartment is “small,” and ends her testimony by lamenting, “I am alone.”135 Her blunt statement reveals her frustration about how both her government and the nonprofit organizations failed to truly tend to her needs. Although implicit, Jin asserts to readers that her dreadful life shows no signs of im- provement. Kim Soon-Duk even directly criticizes the inaction of her government in pursuing the interests of the comfort women themselves.136 Chinese comfort women posed similar criti- cisms toward their government. Chen Yabian, for exa- mple, welcomed anyone to interview her, while she spoke of her desire to have a “peaceful and good life in my late years.”137 Her contradictory wishes may reflect her subtle reluctance to fight or pursue certain goals or agendas that differ from those of her government and other intermediary agencies. 133 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 14-15. 134 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 128. 135 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 13. 136 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 41. 137 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 114. 138 Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak,” in Rosalind C. Morris, Can the Subaltern Speak?: Reflections on the History of an Idea, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 21–81. Most comfort women were illiterate,rural women who possessed little social power. With no alternatives, they were forced to remain silent in the post-war era. As opportunities arose,when intermediary agencies came and recorded their stories, these women finally produced their testimonies.Nevertheless,as Spivak pointed out,interme- diary agents came with distinct agendas and perspectives concerning a specific issue.138 As the privileged other,they imposed their views upon these marginalized, illiterate, postcolonial women. In the comfort women’s testimonies, we have already seen the common emphasis on their anti-colonial, anti-Japanese sentiments and their national allegiances. Besides this political subtext, these testimonies were also concentrated on building a relatively feminist argument.A close reading of Hwang Keum-Ju’s and Huang Youliang’s testimonies demonstrate how the victims’ innocence (as virgins and as unpaid slaves) and the male transgressions over both their female bodies and dignities became the de facto focal point of these stories. Furthermore, in their ending paragraphs, most testimonies shifted the tensions of their stories from recounting crimes to making specific demands against the Japanese government—which hap- pened to align with messages that the intermediary agen- cies desired. In the end, the testimonies seemed to func- tion primarily to satisfy the ambitions of these agencies, not the women themselves. Hwang Keum-Ju begins her testimony with a little background on her life before becoming a comfort woman. Due to her family’s dire financial situation, her parents sent Hwang to a foster home. When she was eighteen,a Japanese order came to draft girls for work,and Hwang decided to leave to spare her foster sisters from the same fate. Hwang describes her trip to her first comfort station in Manchuria and her anticipation of working at a regular factory.On her second day in Manchuria,a soldier Politicization of Comfort Women Testimonies—A Mission-Directed Statement? 56 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 62. took Hwang toa room and raped her. Before describing the moment of violence, Hwang mentions how her hair “was still braided,” a traditional indication of innocence. Kim described her psyche at the moment of the violence. I still had absolutely no idea what he was about to do. I just told him that I hoped one of the orders was for me to work at a factory.He told me that I was not going to any factory.So I asked him what his orders were. He told me to follow his instructions. Then he told me to take off my clothes. It was like a bolt from the sky. My braided hair clearly showed I was a virgin. How was it possible that I could take off my clothes in front of a man?139 Hwang was not the only victim who described her innocence and ignorance of soldiers’ violence. Kang Duk- Kyung described how she had no knowledge on sex, not even “the word menstruation” before becoming a comfort woman.140 Pak Kyung-Soon lamented her innocence as she followed the orders of the Japanese soldiers.“I was so naive,” Pak said.141 Words like “innocent,”“naive,” and “follow or- ders/directions”appeared in many testimonies,especially in those of Korean victims.The motivations for underscoring such information may be overdetermined. First,the ideal of chastity,as we discussed,might be a deeply ingrained concept in these women’s minds.When representing their lives, these women may want to under- score their formerly chaste status. Second, the right-wing revisionistargumentthatJapanesescholarsandofficialsheld was that these comfort women were contractual prostitutes, who voluntarily signed up to serve the military.142 These tes- timonies,especially the Korean cases,were initially conduc- ted for the purpose of supplementing evidence on ongoing international trials and investigations. Therefore, comfort women’s narratives were turned into weapons to attack op- posing revisionist challenges.Third,their stress on sexual in- nocence fits the“perfect victim paradigm,”traits that people often expect sexual violence victims to demonstrate. The perfect rape victim was powerless and conservative in her personal dress and behaviors, showing injuries to attest to 139 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 6. 140 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 13-19. 141 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 75. 142 Onozawa Akane, “Comfort Women and State Prostitution,” in Denying the Comfort Women: The Japanese State’s Assault on Historical Truth, 70–87. 143 Jan Jordan, “Perfect Victims, Perfect Policing? Improving Rape Complainants’ Experiences of Police Investi- gations.” 144 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 147. 145 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women,148. her reluctance.143 During the redress movement, different intermediary agencies intentionally tried to fit comfort wo- men into this “perfect victimhood”paradigm. For example, instead of depicting mature women,many comfort women statues erected in Korea and China are either youthful tee- nage girls with slim bodies and solemn facial expressions (see Fig.1,2) or old,distressed elders (see Fig.3).All of this suggests the hidden yet intense pressure upon these women and their interviewers to emphasize purity. Besides innocence, these women seem to also highlight their powerlessness to expose male transgressions. Huang Youliang, for example, started her testimony with Japan’s invasion of her village.They caught her and shouted at her so loudly that she felt as “if [her] head were swelling.” A soldier then followed her home, “carried [her] into the bedroom,and ripped off [her] shirt and skirt.”144 Although her description is short, Huang describes a moment of ab- solute vulnerability.Readers could no longer read about her presence, but only focus on what the soldiers’ actions were doing to her body. A while after that initial violence, the Japanese army transported her to a comfort station, where the girls were guarded by soldiers. Besides the physical torment, Huang describes how the soldiers “never gave [them] anything or any mo- ney.They didn’t even give [them] enough to eat,never mind pay [them].”145 This detail is also the last bit of information that she shares about her life as a comfort woman, before moving on to her later journey and liberation. Both the colonial records and similar stories told by other women have substantiated her claims.Not to challenge Huang’s or others’ statements, I wish to dwell on Huang’s decision to include the powerless moments,the comfort station’s heavy surveillance,and the“non-contractual”relationship between her and the army.All of this could support the intermedia- ry agencies’definition of comfort women as military sexual slaves,which,like the emphasis upon innocence,might have served to counter the rising revisionist arguments denying the truth. Since the mid-1990s, a “free history” movement began and was adopted by many Japanese right-wing his- VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 57
- 63. torians like FujiokaNobukatsu. They argued that since no convincing evidence was ever presented to prove the Japanese government’s direct involvement in the comfort women draft and comfort station management, these wo- men were lying. Even if such brutal incidents did happen, they were the crimes of civilian middlemen, for all these middlemen drafted only consensual prostitutes. Claiming they were never enslaved and that these women got paid and had the freedom to leave,Kamisaka Fuyuko even went as far as arguing that the whole comfort women “issue” was fabricated by anti-Japanese activists to demean Japan’s image.146 The brute force used by these soldiers juxtaposed by the women’s vulnerability was the first challenge against 146 Yoshimi Yoshiaki, Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II , Trans. Su- zanne O’Brien (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 1–4. 147 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 154. 148 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women,161. the revisionists’argument concerning “willingness.”The de- tails about food shortages and heavy comfort station sur- veillance countered the revisionists’ denial of the Japanese government involvement. Finally, the testimonies’ empha- sis on “no payment”made these women “sexual slaves,”not “prostitutes.” Huang ends her testimony with a demand:an apo- logy from the Japanese government. Her ending encapsu- lates the feelings held in nearly all the Korean and Chinese comfort women’s testimonies. Chen Yabian demanded “an apology and compensation from the Japanese,”147 Lin Yajin demanded “the Japanese government [...] admit the atroci- tiesitcommittedandcompensatemebeforeIdie,”148 Hwang Peace Monument [2] 58 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 64. Keum-Ju demanded “Japanshow true repentance and act accordingly,”149 and Moon Pil-Gi demanded “clear apolo- gies and compensation from the Japanese government.”150 The Korean testimonies were recorded twenty years before those of the Chinese victims. Yet, these women of- fered the same two demands: proper, sincere apology and compensation. These explicit demands also turned these testimonies from an autobiographical account of victims’ lives into argumentative essays or petitions addressed to the Japanese government. On the one hand, such confor- mity may reveal a consensus that was reached among these victims to prompt Japan to redress their demands. On the other hand,it may suggest the intermediary agencies also 149 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 10. 150 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 67. 151 Like the Korean Council interviewers, Washington Coalition for Comfort women interviewers, or the Shan- ghai Normal University’s interviewers (Su and Chen), all directly handled comfort women’s grievances to Japan. had a similar objective for the comfort women’s stories.151 Such demands made the comfort women a continuing, unsolved debate, a problem that these intermediary agen- cies had to continue to protest and fight against. Ironically, although these comfort women demanded compensation, many still “chose”to reject compensation when offered. In May 2020, a survivor named Lee Yong-Soo came forward as a whistleblower to expose the Korean Council,whocoercedthemnottotakecompensationfrom Japan. The agency forced her to travel around the world making speeches, retelling her testimony, even when Lee felt uncomfortable doing so.An official investigation later found that the leader of the Korean Council,Yoon Mee- Nanum Jip/House of Sharing [3] VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 59
- 65. Hyang,had embezzled publicfunds and private donations for personal use.152 In China’s case, as mentioned, Su also rejected Japan’s wish to pay these women, upon the wo- men’s requests. Even though they suffered with chronic pain and depression, and lived on minimal support from their governments, and even when these women explicit- ly announced their desire to receive compensation, they, through the mouths of their representatives, suddenly declined and seemed even to “denounce” these payments. According to Su, these victims considered such payments to be a half-hearted,insincere apology. In this section, I illustrated how comfort women’s testimonies had anti-colonial,anti-Japanese sentiments,na- tionalistic subtexts,and mission-directed inclinations.These commonalities aligned with Korean and Chinese political environmentsandtheireffortstolinktheircolonialpastand Japan’s war crimes to Japan’s present actions. It also aligned with the nationalistic inclinations of the intermediary agen- cies who conducted these interviews.Though not to negate or question the validity of their claims, these testimonies still reveal that comfort women’s stories could have been trimmed.Rural women’s lack of social agency continued to shape their experience after the war and after the comfort women system ended. Even when the opportunity arose for these women to narrate their individual experiences, the political environment, nonprofit organizations, and the directed “self-other”dichotomy and curated war memories influenced and perhaps even directed their voices toward their distinctive agendas. Hence, these women’s agency be- came compromised and their stories altered to suit political, mission-directed purposes. Although influenced by political, feminist, and nonprofit institutions and their agendas,I believe these wo- men,by personally telling their stories,did express their dis- tinct feelings and reveal their unique experiences. Beyond the political and feminist subtexts, these women demons- trated their own agencies through exposing the victimiza- tion, discrimination, and objectification they experienced during the war and throughout the post-war era. In their 152 Hyonhee Shin, Josh Smith, “South Korea charges former 'comfort women' activist with fraud, embezzle- ment,” Reuters, September 14, 2020. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-comfortwomen/south-korea- charges-former-comfort-women-activist-with-fraud-embezzlement-idUSKBN2651GB. 153 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 148. 154 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women,147–151. stories, they controlled their narration, created their de- sired representations, and, most importantly, became active players in forming personal histories for comfort women. After the war ended,the comfort women’s identity was a severe public stigma. Huang Youliang’s and Moon Ok-Ju’s testimonies on their post-war lives reveal that these women challenged the conventional narrow study on the comfort women by stressing the unique horror of their wartime suffering. Additionally, these testimonies illustrate how their communities,and sometimes even their families, were prejudiced against them for being victimized.Job dis- crimination, verbal and physical abuse, and social isolation filled their post-war lives with unwavering misery. After describing her comfort woman experience, Huang Youliang described her post-war experiences in three short paragraphs. Her father and a neighbor held a fake funeral to save her from her enslavement.To elude the soldiers’ probable searches, Huang and her father left their village and became beggars. When they eventual- ly returned to their village, Huang’s past became widely known.She said: Since everyone in the village knew that I had been ravaged by the Japanese troops, no man in good health or of good family wanted to marry me. I had no choice but to marry a man who had leprosy. My husband knew about my past and used it as an excuse to beat and curse me for no reason other than that he was unhappy.153 Here, Huang tells us that her past as a comfort woman made her unmarriable material, because her body had been violated by the enemy. She had to marry a sick, abusive man whom she clearly had little love for. During the Cultural Revolution, her friends and neighbors targe- ted her as a traitor who supposedly “served” the Japanese soldiers. The village children also cursed her due to her awful past. The government denied both her husband’s and children’s applications for the Party or local leadership roles.Even today,50 years after her abuse,Huang revealed that even her own children would “sometimes swear at [her]”because of her past.154 In these few sentences, Huang reveals the sheer amount of objectification and discrimination she endured Comfort Women's Personal Voices— Grievances on Public Shaming 60 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 66. during the post-warera. First, her suffering did not end with the war;she was shunned by her village,who repeate- dly reminded her that her dignity was irrevocably ruined. Huang was still denied control over her own body and life during her post-comfort woman life:she reported that she “had to marry” her husband. More importantly, although we cannot be certain if Huang’s past as a comfort woman was the sole cause of her post-war suffering, Huang her- self seemed to have already linked her past to her present struggles. She seemed to accept the public’s opinion that her past was shameful and that her body was too da- maged to qualify her for a “good”marriage. Like in Zhou Fengying’s testimony, this intersection between the past comfort women experience and the present marginaliza- tion in Huang’s recount was a somewhat“newly produced” memory.Particularly,the grave emotional and psychologi- cal toll in Huang’s words spoke both to her miserable en- slavement and her family and community’s decades-long antagonism towards her. Second, the public reduced her identity to one generic label—comfort woman. Huang’s personal strug- gle, poverty, and suffering did not temper their prejudice. The mere fact that Huang slept with many Japanese men seems to have stigmatized her with an inexcusable sin. In the end, Huang’s story did not surface until the 2000s, primarily because the public refused to listen to her sto- ry with compassion for half a century. Third, because of her “sin,” Huang, in the public’s mind, deserved all the ill treatment she received. Whether it was her government, family, or a random stranger in her village, anyone could abuse and insult her with impunity. The public actually punished Huang for her enslavement and shamed her to stay silently in the shadow of her past. Moon Ok-Ju, like Huang, devoted a small por- tion of her testimony to delineating her post-war struggles. Moon told us that she was de facto liberated in 1945 after Japan’s surrender and the arrival of Allied troops.She,along with other Korean comfort women,was sent back to Korea. Moon did not mention her family or anyone per se in des- cribing her post-war life. I stayed home for a while and thought about my future. I had no formal education, no experience in anything, and also I was beyond a marriageable age. I had to find so- mething to support myself. Those days, women working in bars were looked down upon as low-class and dancers 155 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 59. 156 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 53–61. were considered high-class prostitutes. So I became a “ki- saeng,” similar to a geisha, who, in general, was treated better. I earned a living by entertaining customers in bet- ter restaurants or in private houses.155 Shedideverythingonherown.Afterstayinghome for a while after the war, Moon had to “become a kisaeng (a courtesan providing entertainment to upper class men, often a euphemism for prostitution)”because her comfort women past left her with no alternative.Living in extreme destitution,Moon complained that she had “pains all over [her] limbs…making even simple walking a difficult task.” She ends her testimony claiming she has foreseen her fate, a fate in which “[I] am all alone.” Moon died two years after her interview.156 Although never explicitly discussing her ill treat- ment, Moon still managed to reveal her struggles and agony with her words. First, Moon had a home to which she returned after the war,but she did not stay there long, possibly due to discrimination. Even without a skill or prospect for employment, Moon still had to leave her family home and find a means to support herself. Even though it was her choice to become a kisaeng, she had little choice but to accept the offer, because “she had to find something to support [herself].”Like Huang,the life choices that Moon made during the post-war era were fundamentally out of her control. Not only did she lack social power, comfort women like Moon were ultimately denied control over their own lives. Consequently, Moon lived in an apartment subsidized by the government. Her destitution is a common phenomenon among comfort women survivors from all countries. Most of them have no income source and have to depend on their families or government support,remaining mired in poverty. In her post-war job as a kisaeng, her primary role was to serve a male client’s pleasure.Her job still made her dependent on the “desires”of men. In a way, after her en- slavement, Moon was forced to take on a lifestyle similar to those of her comfort woman days. This continuation not only demonstrates comfort women’s post-war strug- gle, but also complicates the clear “self-other” dichotomy — with the Korean identity being the only credentialed “self.”Also, decolonization did not happen overnight.The residues of colonial effects continued after the war ended. Moon and other comfort women’s post-war continued poverty could be interpreted as Japan’s colonial remnants VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 61
- 67. in these postcolonialsocieties. As early as the 1950s, the Korean government worked with the U.S. military sta- tioned in South Korea to form the sex industry around the military bases, establishing camptown prostitution. Pre- sident Park Chung Hee legalized prostitution in Korea as a way to justify camptown prostitution.Wianbu, like ian- fu (comfort woman in Japanese), was a euphemism used for Korean women serving in such towns. By the 1970s, industries often used prostitution to please foreign inves- tors,especially businessmen from Japan.Caroline Norma’s study even suggested direct collaborations between the governments of Japan and Korea in facilitating prostitu- tion,and Japan supported the development of prostitution facilities on Cheju,a South Korean island.157 Moon lived in complete social isolation during the post-war era. Throughout her testimony focused on her comfort woman life, Moon consistently used “we” when describing the situations she had experienced.For instance, in her narration, she says that comfort woman life was dif- ficult because “we were not fed well there, and so we were always hungry.”By using “we,”she makes her comfort wo- manlifeasharedexperiencethatothervictimsalsoendured. However, her language completely changes when she re- counts her current life.She uses “I,”with no mention of ac- companiment by relatives,friends,or even neighbors.Moon indicates that she was not surprised by her current isolation because she had long fearfully anticipated this fate. As in Huang’s experience, the public shaming had made Moon believe she had committed an inexcusable sin that would always keep her from attaining normality. Huang’s and Moon’s descriptions of their post-war struggles and destitution are not unique: the other comfort women also reported living in poverty,enduring abuse,and being ostracized by their communities.158 Countering the conventional comfort woman image, these testimonies proved that the public deliberately marginalized these wo- 157 Caroline Norma, “Demand from Abroad: Japanese Involvement in the 1970s' Development of South Korea's Sex Industry,” in The Journal of Korean Studies (1979) 19, no. 2 (2014): 399–428. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/43923277. 158 Kim Haksun’s husband abused her because of her comfort woman identity. Other women hid their comfort women identities as a secret because of the destructive potential. For more information, see Angella Son, “Inade- quate Innocence of Korean Comfort Girls-Women: Obliterated Dignity and Shamed Self,” Springer Since, New York, 2017. 159 Another important element in the study of comfort women is that nonprofit organizations outside of Korea usually worked with a specific agenda too. For example, most explicit support from American senators were efforts to win votes from their Korean American communities. Feminist organizations, like those in Japan, used Korean comfort women testimonies to prove a lineage of patriarchal aggression existed, while avoiding the voices of comfort women. For nonprofit organizations like the United Nations, comfort women testimonies were debased into proving the subject matter as a violation of human rights. Again, victims’ individualism, their consciousness, and their experiences were never the center of the discussion. men.In the eyes of the public,they were emblems of shame and an inferior past that China and Korea wanted to for- get. A comfort woman’s unchaste, violated body made her the antithesis of the transitional feminine ideal,159 making them also the victims of their societies’shame surrounding female sexuality.This shame was constantly reinforced and repeated via the widespread social discrimination victims experienced after the war. After they were liberated from stations, many comfort women faced decades of public shaming, social exclusion, and even physical abuse. These women’s deci- sions to detail their struggles in their narrations reflect how they linked their post-war pain to their identity as comfort women. The public shaming repeatedly ne- gated these women’s victimization, turning the comfort women themselves into culprits for their suffering. Un- surprisingly, past traumas combined with present public castigations resulted in the prevalence of a self-depre- cating attitude in many of the testimonies. Yin Yulin’s testimony, for example, shows that victims developed a strong sense of shame about their pasts and deemed their lives failures. By confessing their shame and pain, they challenged the assumed positive benefits of these inter- views, revealing the underlying brutality and senseless nature with the act of “revisiting”the crime. Yin Yulin begins her story by describing her pre- draft life. She tells us that she married a man when she was fifteen and he died from typhoid four years later.On the very day of her husband’s death, the soldiers invaded her village.They caught her when she was “in great grief for [her] husband [...] and too weak to resist them.”After Comfort Women's Personal Voices— Deeply Rooted Personal Shame 62 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 68. the invasion,the soldiersstationed on a nearby mountain frequently came down to “rape [her] at [her] home.”Yin records how her body “was always trembling with fear” because she had no place to hide. Although water was precious in her village as it needed to be carried from afar, Yin would still wash herself repeatedly after each rape because she felt her “body was very dirty.”160 After a while, the soldiers took Yin away from her home to a blockhouse on the mountain itself, where an officer and his soldiers gang raped Yin. He “rose from the bed and returned repeatedly, torturing [her] almost the entire night.” From that traumatic night, Yin “suf- fered from an incurable trembling.” She shakes uncon- trollably “every time [she] is nervous [...] and would feel tremendous pain in [her] heart” whenever she shares her trauma. The rapes continued for two years, and by then Yin had become so sick that she “suffered from constant dizziness and body aches as well as from a menstrual di- sorder.” Yin believed that her “comfort woman” status scared off every man in her village, so she chose to marry a man from afar. This distant marriage ended her ensla- vement. Her husband respected her and “took on several hard jobs simultaneously for many years to earn money,” to help improve Yin’s health. However, even after the war ended, Yin lamented the continuation of her misery. Her uterine damage left her with a “filthy reddish discharge,” which made her lower body “hurt constantly and [...] eve- ry movement difficult.” The physical pain was combined with “acute psychological problems” whenever she had her night terrors in which she recalled “these unspeakable things.”Yin ends her story by stating her commitment to revealing the Japanese army’s evilness and demanding an official apology from Japan.161 Yin’s testimony does not just re-narrate her past. More importantly, it unveils how her traumatic past has impacted her life, leaving permanent scars and mental imprints. First, Yin explicitly expresses her grave shame concerning her enslavement.In her mind,her sexual abuse corrupted her self-worth, making her dirty. Even fifty years later, Yin still reiterated that she compulsively wa- shed her body every time she was violated. Moreover, si- milar to Huang Youliang,Yin presumed that her comfort woman past made her an unwanted, unsuitable woman 160 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 135–140. 161 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 135–140. 162 Qiu, Chinese Comfort Women, 138. 163 A common adjective employed by comfort women to label their memory, for example Kim Yoon-Shim, Zhu Qiaomei. for any local man, forcing her to marry far from home. As discussed, both Korean and Chinese rural women had long been immersed in an “ideal of chastity”tradition that considered women’s sexual purity to be the universal femi- nine goal.Thus,comfort women failed to fulfill a woman’s designated duty by failing to protect their purity. There- fore, Yin’s shame probably arose from her sense of failure in protecting her sacred chastity. Even before the public began to shame her,Yin had already sentenced herself to a life as someone for whom it would be “impossible to find a man to marry.”162 Second, her shame existed alongside her physical and psychological pain. The torture she endured left Yin with uncontrollable trembling,chronic pain,and night ter- rors,all of which constantly pulled her back to her trauma- tic past,a past she labeled “unspeakable.”163 Her memories burdened and tortured her. Just as with her other tangible pains, memories served as a constant reminder that she had failed in her feminine duties and become damaged goods. Andby including her pain and her memories in her testimony, Yin challenged the conventional view: she bluntly told us that even the process of extracting comfort women’s stories was arguably brutal by nature. It forced Yin to recall moments when she lost her self-worth and dignity.It worsened her psychological state,triggering her intense fear and uncontrollable trembling. Consequently, the interview processes forced comfort women to relive the origins of their shame once again. The primary component of comfort women’s expe- rience is trauma. The imprisonments, physical abuses, and rapes all had profound impacts on these women’s physical and mental health. Building upon previous scholarship, I examined a previously unexplored topic: comfort women’s self-agency. The women’s testimonies, then, personalized these traumas, stressing each woman’s individuality. Kim Soon-Duk’s testimony attests that through the constant in- corporation of their emotional responses toward their trau- Comfort Women's Personal Voices— Private Trauma and Collective Agency VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 63
- 69. mas and bythe conscious omission of certain parts of their experiences, the comfort women’s testimonies allowed the victims to individualize their pain,revealing their distinctive struggles in dealing with their enslavement. These stories, I argue, created a platform for these women to take on the burden of representation for the other thousands of un- heard comfort women by situating themselves against the colonialpastasactiveplayerswhonavigatedandresistedthe political and social forces they faced. Kim Soon-Duk begins her story with an intro- duction.She was then seventy-three years old,living in the House of Sharing in Seoul.164 She was born and raised in Dai-in Myon, near Jinju city. When she was sixteen years old,local Japanese officials posted a notice of the mandato- ry draft of all Korean women who were fifteen and above to work overseas as nurses. Kim’s mother told Kim to hide from the draft at Kim’s sister’s house, but Kim believed her mother “was needed at home more than [she] was.” She decided to go. The army sent Kim and fifty other Korean girls to Nagasaki and housed them at an inn.Each night,a group of“virgin girls”would be forced to have sex with mili- tary officers.One night,Kim was also sent,and the Japanese officer persuaded her that “every young girl experiences sex in her lifetime,[and] that [she] might as well do it now”.165 Kim omitted the details of that night. The next morning, Kim confronted the manager about her and others’ expe- riences,but the manager told her that sex with local autho- rity was necessary for them to secure a job position.After a week, the army shipped the same 50 girls to Shanghai and checked them into a comfort station—“We were sex slaves in it,”Kim concludes.166 They were taken to a military hospital where Kim saw hundreds of Korean girls.Kim told us that she became ill soon after her enslavement,“bleed[ing] severely through [her] vagina.” Her manager gave her some black powder that reduced the bleeding.Because her comfort station was close to the battlefront, Kim saw so many corpses that she “even dream[s] of it to this day.”After talking about seeing death, Kim devotes an entire paragraph to her thoughts of suicide.“Somehow I could not do it.I had poor health.I was still bleeding [...] I still had nightmares.” Eventually, Kim “became acquainted with a middle-aged man”named Izu- 164 Founded by Korean Council, Buddhist organization, and other foundations. 165 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 38. 166 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 37–38. 167 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 38–40. 168 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 41. 169 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 38. mi who was kind to her and allowed her to stay in his room. KimevenhadtheleisuretostudyJapanese.Kimconfidedto Izumi about her suicidal thoughts,and he helped her obtain travel papers to return home. Their relationship continued after she was back in Korea, and they exchanged gifts and letters. Izumi’s letters stopped coming after the war. Kim says she owes Izumi a lot for his help.167 Kim then encapsulates her post-war life with three things: she lost all of her family, she had to work different jobs to support herself, and she developed a relationship with a man but remained unmarried, because she “knew” with her comfort woman background she could“never [get] legally married.”She still had nightmares and they became worse when “remembering the past at these interviews.” Kim ends her testimony by demanding that the Japanese government compensate all comfort women and also pu- blicize their crimes,and that the Korean government apply more effort toward advocating for them.168 On its surface,Kim Soon-Duk’s testimony delivers the same anti-colonial, anti-Japanese sentiments as other testimonies, emphasizing the same nationalistic inclina- tions, and ends with the same universal demands as the others. However, if we examine the specific plot and lan- guage choices within Kim’s testimony,we are able to extract the individual story of a rural woman.First,she counters the conventional powerless, passive image of comfort woman and makes herself an active player who strategically navi- gates the surrounding environment.In the beginning,Kim tells us that she made the choice to answer the draft and travel overseas (believing she would become a nurse). Kim defied her mother’s orders, knowing that her mother “was needed at home more than [she] was.”169 Beyond demonstrating the trickery of the Japanese government, Kim reveals that poor rural Koreans like her mother dared to resist Japanese orders,and that poor,mar- ginalized girls like Kim were courageous enough to migrate overseas. Also, Kim’s final decision speaks to three things: her ability to make an independent decision against her parents’will, her calculated intellect to minimize the draft’s damage to her family,and her selfless familial love that en- abled her to sacrifice herself for her family.Later,the second day after her initial rape, Kim tells us that she confronted 64 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 70. her manager onbehalf of herself and others about their draft’s deceptive description. This detail, again, illustrates that Kim did not passively tolerate her violation; instead, she directly challenged a male authority figure and voiced her grievances. Moreover, liberation from her enslavement was the result of her active expressions of grievances to officer Izumi. Her liberation ultimately depended upon Izumi, but it would not have been secured if she had not expressed her desires.Her actions reveal that comfort women should not be defined as passive victims who accepted their fates, but rather as active agents who fought for their freedom. Other comfort women also recorded their repeated at- tempts to escape from their enslavement, despite the risk of severe punishments. For Kim, in contrast to other testimonies, a Ja- panese soldier was the key person to release her from enslavement. Kim tells us twice that “Izumi is a kind person.”170 After meeting Izumi, Kim’s living conditions improved enough to enable her to even learn Japanese as a leisure activity. He was able to respond to her demands by liberating her from her life as a comfort woman.Their attachment was strong enough to withstand both dis- tance and time. Kim reports that they maintained com- munication throughout the war, and she even “sent him a number of gifts, including a Senninbari, a Japanese good luck belt.”171 Senninbari, or a thousand stitch belt, is usually made by the family of the soldier in hope of them avoiding all harms during combat. Kim explicit- ly claims that she “owe[d] him a lot.”172 Her decision to discuss their relationship suggests that she tried to indi- vidualize her testimony, to have it function as something beyond a simple victim’s tale. Her story countered or at least complicated the normative “self-other” dichotomy consistently presented when discussing comfort women. It shows that sometimes intimacy and even “kindness” were intermingled with the violence.Whether we should define their relationship as romantic is not the point. Rather, these “abnormal” subplots within Kim’s story reflect her agency: she was no longer a faceless, generic victim. Kim’s narration made her a three-dimensional person with ambitions and dreams. Despite the potential of external influences tain- ting their testimonies, Kim, like other comfort women 170 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 40-41. 171 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 40. 172 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 40. 173 Schellstede, Comfort Women Speak, 39. survivors, was put in charge of constructing a story that revolved solely around her own life. She picked particu- lar stories and information to be included in her testimo- ny while omitting others. These choices reflect how her unique traumas affected her psyche. For instance, Kim omitted details of the initial rape and disclosed few perso- nal details of her comfort women’s experiences.Obviously, such omissions might be the result of memory loss, given that her testimony was based upon recollections of events from a half a century ago. Her omissions may also sug- gest her reluctance to retell the details of these traumatic experiences. Just as Yin Yulin expressed, it could be tre- mendously painful for these victims to even think about the past,the violations,and the moments of their absolute vulnerability. In a way, giving testimony forced them to relive their unimaginable sufferings again, and Kim may have simply refused to continue linking herself to these pains.The acts of selection and omission in these testimo- nies are a form of power, and by omitting, Kim avoided disclosing pieces of her privacy and dignity that were rob- bed from her decades ago.Through these unspoken words, Kim retained control of her self-representation. Instead of specific anecdotes, Kim spends a pa- ragraph describing her suicidal thoughts during her time as a comfort woman. Even without anecdotes, powerful phrases like “I frequently thought of killing myself” and “I thought of jumping from a high place”convey her des- pair and speak to the extent of the brutality,objectification, and suffering she endured during her enslavement.173 If we consider that a woman committing suicide to protect her chastity was regarded as a courageous response to poten- tial violation and virtue in the traditional feminine dialec- tic texts,it is quite possible that Kim included her suicidal thoughts as a way to align herself with this cultural stan- dard.As she mentioned,her past made her “unmarriable,” and her post-war struggles certainly illustrated her conti- nued marginalization by society.Therefore,if her “violated body” was her original sin in her society’s eyes, she may have included her suicidal thoughts to elevate herself: she, as any other chaste woman, thought about suicide when faced with violation. The fact that Kim thinks of suicide reflects her agency—her ability to control her life. Mo- reover, even though she lived in such a vulnerable socie- tal position, Kim persevered and survived. She was brave VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 65
- 71. enough to tellher story and even make demands of go- vernments. Her despair is juxtaposed with her assertive, present self, demonstrating her growing self-care in her life. Kim’s testimony does not embody mere victimhood; it records the struggle and transformation of a woman. Kim did not just record her life but tried to embo- dy a common social and cultural context,a shared struggle of hundreds of thousands of comfort women for justice and agency. Besides both her pre- and post-war struggles, her entire testimony alternated between “I”and “we”to re- present the subject in the testimony.For example,it is “we” who boarded a ship to Shanghai.It is“we”who became sex slaves in the comfort station. When Kim’s interview was conducted,less than two hundred comfort women around Asia had come forward. There were women who died at comfort stations,women who committed suicide after the war, and women who continued to hide in the shadows who did not or could not have the chance to share their story. By using “we” as a pronoun, Kim was consciously transforming her comfort woman experiences into the collective experience of comfort women. Together, they were transported by the army, placed in comfort stations, and raped and enslaved.They share this collective yet pri- vate traumatic memory.Although Kim could not genera- lize her experience completely,she still took on the burden of representation to elucidate to the public what it was like to be a comfort woman. OMFORT WOMEN TESTIMONIES provided an opportunity for people to hear the life-long struggles, marginalization, and pain that more than two-hundred-thou- sand East Asian women endured. Most were poor, illi- terate, rural women who had little social agency. Their poverty, fear of male authority, and low status in their familial hierarchies made them vulnerable to exploita- tion by the Japanese army. All of these vulnerabilities were compounded by the weak local opposition against recruitment of comfort women and the establishment of the stations. The same vulnerabilities continued to shape these rural women’s experiences long after the war was over and the comfort women system ended. Their local communities, their families, and even their governments discriminated against these women, considering them the mere residue of their country’s humiliating colonial past. Suffering from both public shame and their own personal traumas, the surviving comfort women endured shame and poverty and were marginalized, unable to freely tell their stories. When Korea underwent a period of democra- tization in 1987, civic activists and nonprofit organi- zations finally began to talk about comfort women. With the help of the Korean Council, the former Korean comfort woman Kim Hak-Soon filed a lawsuit against the Japanese government in 1991 after nearly five decades of silence.The trial, however, immediately ignited a debate about whether comfort women were prostitutes or sex slaves, which shifted both public and scholarly focus away from the individual victims’ lives and toward the international power struggles among China, Korea, and Japan. During this contested de- bate, nineteen Korean women and twelve Chinese women narrated their stories. Their stories contained the duality of being both politicized propaganda used to galvanize nationalism and incite antagonism, and the personal histories of these comfort women and their distinct struggles. With regard to politicalized propaganda, most testimonies possessed a strong sense of anti-colonial,an- ti-Japanese sentiment. Their contents stressed the clear “self-other”dichotomy between their home country and Japan. During this political period, both the Korean and Chinese governments launched historical projects to reinforce certain depictions of their national colonial past and Japan’s war crimes. It is probable that these wo- men mixed their personal frustrations with the popular national discourse. Their testimonies became evidence that Japan, the vicious other, invaded and ravaged their homeland. Such anti-colonial, anti-Japanese sentiment went hand in hand with a common nationalistic sub- text.These women often stressed the nationality of other comfort women and almost exclusively spoke of women who came from their own country. Given the nationa- listic inclinations of their interviewers, it is possible that they edited the victims’ stories. However, while these women professed their nationalism, they also expressed their bitterness toward their governments and their so- cieties’inaction toward the comfort women. Beyond political inclinations,these comfort wo- men’s testimonies also possessed a feminist subtext.They often emphasized their innocence and powerlessness when facing soldiers. In a way, this information allowed CONCLUSION C 66 HOW COMFORT WOMEN SPEAK
- 72. feminist organizations toexploit comfort women as evi- dence of East Asia’s historical patriarchal transgressions. Almost all testimonies used their ending paragraph to make two specific demands upon the Japanese govern- ment: a proper apology and monetary compensation. Given that these intermediary agencies used their testi- monies as evidence in trials and in international forums, these endings transformed these testimonies into mis- sion-directed petitions—depersonalizing the comfort women’s voices.Comfort women’s stories,therefore,were appropriated by political,feminist,and nonprofit institu- tions to support their own specific agendas. The fact that these comfort women themselves retold their stories demonstrates their agency, even if the stories were potentially compromised when such agency was interwoven within the political, economic, and cultu- ral environments of China and Korea.First,these women describe their post-war experiences of discrimination and objectification as comfort women.Through either implicit or explicit descriptions, they reveal to their audiences that their liberation did not come with the end of their ens- lavement. They continued to face discrimination, insults, and often physical abuse from their community and their families.They were forced to recognize that their specific victimhood also made them fellow culprits within their traumas. This revelation shatters the conventional view that comfort women were guilty of a unique crime, and instead shows it as linked to a general,historical pattern of gender inequality that existed in society. Due to decades of discrimination, these women also associated their past with both shame and humilia- tion. Their testimonies lamented their broken lives and damaged bodies, revealing how they evaluated their lives with self-deprecating views.Third, beyond their feelings of shame, the testimonies illuminated each comfort wo- man’s individual trauma.By incorporating what they saw and felt and by selecting the particular details that they wanted to include, these comfort women highlighted their active agency in navigating their difficult lives and noted their personal growth after their trauma. Power- fully shaped by both platforms, the testimonies record and disseminate victims’ stories, delineating the specific parameters for each woman’s experience of her traumas. The comfort women’s stories and their afterlives teach us that history cannot be overlooked. It inevitably bleeds into the present. They did act.They did speak. Now, it’s time for us to listen. Bhoil, Shelly, and Enrique Galvan-Alvarez. Tibet- an Subjectivities on the Global Stage : Negotiating Dispossession. Studies in Modern Tibetan Culture. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2018. Chang,Iris.The Rape of Nanking:The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.New York: Basic Books,1997. Deuchler, Martina. “Propagating Female Virtues in Choson Korea,” in Dorothy Ko eds., Women and Confucian Cultures. Berkeley; London: University of California Press, 2003. Ding Ning, “My Life in Village Xia,” in the Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Literature, Joseph S.M. Lau and Howard Goldblatt eds., (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 132-147. Fallace,Thomas D. (Thomas Daniel). "The Origins of Holocaust Education in American Public Schools." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 20, no. 1 (2006): 80-102. muse.jhu.edu/article/196303. Forest, R, Mark Daneil Schumacher and Edward Vick- ers eds., Remembering Asia's World War Two, Abing- don, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. Gordon, Andrew. A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. 3rd edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Hayashi, Hirofumi. “Disputes in Japan over the Japanese Military ‘Comfort Women’ System and Its Perception in History.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 6 17, no. 1 (May 2008): 123–32. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0002716208314191. Hershatter, Gail. The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past. Berkley: University of California Press, 2011. Hershatter, Gail. Women and China’s Revolution. Lan- ham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019. Hicks,George.The comfort women: Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War.New York : W.W.Norton & Co.,1995. Howard, Keith. True Stories of the Korean Comfort Wom- en:Testimonies. London; New York: Cassell, 1995. Hwahng, Sel J.“Vaccination, Quarantine, and Hygiene: Korean Sex Slaves and No. 606 Injections During the Pacific War of World War II.”Substance Use & Misuse 44, no. 12 (October 2009): 1768–1802. BIBLIOGRAPHY VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 67
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- 74. “Comfort Women”." InRethinking Japanese Fem- inisms, edited by Bullock Julia C., Kano Ayako, and Welker James, 230-50. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2018. Shin, Gi-Wook, and Daniel C. Sneider.“Japanese Colonial Rule, Forced Labor, and Comfort Wom- en,”in Divergent Memories: Opinion Leaders and the Asia-Pacific War. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2016. Shin, Hyonhee and Josh Smith,“South Korea charges former 'comfort women' activist with fraud, em- bezzlement,”Reuters, September 14, 2020. https:// www.reuters.com/article/us-southkorea-com fortwomen/south-korea-charges-former-com fort-women-activist-with-fraud-embezzle ment-idUSKBN2651GB. Soh, C. Hee.“Women’s Sexual Labor and State in Korean History.”Journal of Women's History 15, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 170-177. doi:10. 1353/ jowh.2004.0022 . Soh, C. Sarah. “Aspiring to craft modern gendered selves: “Comfort women’s and Chongsindae in late colonial Korea.” Critical Asian Studies 36.2 (2004): 175-198. Soh, Sarah Chunghee.“The Korean “comfort women” tragedy as structural violence”in Rethinking histor- ical injustice and reconciliation in Northeast Asia: the Korean experience, edited by Gi-Wook Shin, Soon- Won Park, and Daqing Yang, 55-74. New York, NY : Routledge, 2006. Soh, C. Sarah. The comfort women: Sexual violence and postcolonial memory in Korea and Japan. University of Chicago Press, 2008. Soh, C. Sarah,“The Korean" comfort women": Move- ment for redress,”Asian Survey 36, no. 12 (1996): 1226-1240. Son,Angella.“Inadequate Innocence of Korean Comfort Girls-Women:Obliterated Dignity and Shamed Self,” PastoralPsychology 67,175–194 (2018).doi:10.1007/ s11089-017-0779-8. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty.“Can the subaltern speak?: postkolonialität und subalterne artikulation.”Wien Verlag Turia, 2008. Su Zhiliang. The Research on Japanese Military Comfort Women. China: Tuanjie Publishing: 2015. Tanaka,Yuki. Japan’s Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World war II and the US Occu- pation. Routledge: 2001. Vickers, Edward.“Commemorating “Comfort Women” Beyond Korea,”Remembering Asia’s World War Two, London: Routledge, 2019. Ward,Thomas J.“The Comfort Women Controversy: Not Over Yet,”East Asia (2016): 255-269. Yamashita,Yeong-ae.“Revisiting the “Comfort Wom- en”: Moving Beyond Nationalism.”in Transform- ing Japan: how feminism and diversity are making a difference, edited by Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow 213-128. New York, NY: Feminist Press, 2011. Yang, Hyunah. “Re-membering the Korean Military Comfort Women: Nationalism, Sexuality, and Silencing.” in Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism, New York: Routledge, 1998, pp. 123-139. Yang, Lijun.“A Clash of Nationalisms: Sino–Japanese Relations in the Twenty-First Century,”in China -Japan Relations in the 21st Century, (Singapore: National University of Singapore, 2017), 83-127. Yoshiaki,Yoshimi. Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery in the Japanese Military During World War II. Translated by Suzanne O’Brien. New York: Columbia Univer- sity Press, 1995. Yoo, Sook-Ran.“The Colonial Government’s Agricul- tural Policies and Women’Lives in the Rural Areas of Korea in the 1930s.”Asian Women 17, 39-64. [1] Comfort Women Memorial, Liji Alley, Nanjing, China, bronze, 2015. [2] Peace Monument, Seoul, South Korea (faces the Japanese Embassy), bronze, 2011. [3] Nanum Jip/House of Sharing, Gwangju, South Korea, 1992. Image Sources VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 69
- 75. SPRING 2021 PUSHING THEENVELOPE How Personal Correspondence Can Shape Our Understanding by Liam Sheahan, Susquehanna University '21 Written for Senior Seminar Advised by Dr. Edward Slavishak Edited by Grace Blaxill and Gage Denmon ON THE NEXT PAGE A section of Winfield Reiss’ untitled 1933 mural. The mural was installed in Cincinnati’s main rail terminal and depicted the rebuilding of Cincinnati by middle-class laborers. [1] of National Events John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 August 1944, in possession of author. 70 PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
- 77. August 13, 1944 D DearMum and Dad ear Mum and Dad,, This will perhaps be my last note from Colorado so don't expect anything for a time although we will probably receive my new address during the week[…] This afternoon Jacowitz and myself went swimming at the Broadmoor and then a couple of “balls” at the bar after which we picked up another friend of ours and came back to the Antlers for a filet mignon complete with a champagne cocktail. I know it was extravagant, but we figured it will probably be our last fling[…] This week I also took out the additional government insurance, so I now have the full $10,000 protection for $6.60 per month. I also made out a volunta- ry allotment which begins when I hit foreign soil and will amount to $40 per month[…] Don't worry if you don’t hear from me for a while as I’ve never felt better in my life, and fully equipped and garbed for anything that's in store for me. I haven't heard from Joan yet since be- fore her birthday, so I won't for a while. Hope to see you soon. Your loving son, Your loving son, J John ohn1 1 1 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 16 August 1944, in possession of author. WAS A YEAR of goodbyes for most fami- lies in America. This was the case for John Moynagh as he wrote to his parents a few days before his deployment to France. The past three years had sent millions of men to foreign shores to fight and die for their country. The herculean under- taking of dragging American culture out of its Depres- sion-era mindset and into one suited for war had taken the Roosevelt administration years and required a vast network of propaganda to imbue every aspect of life with a war mentality. It required a total reconstruction of what it meant to be an American as well as the conventional values of American patriotism. Improvements in news- papers and radio as conveyors of mass media allowed for this new image of American culture to be spread rapidly throughout the nation. Yet in order to understand how this cultural shift took hold, we must look deeper than the masses of men and women seen on the newsreels putting all of their effort into the war and instead focus on the individual, a single cog in the massive machine of history. Through letters, photos, and postcards, the men and women involved in the Second World War infor- med their family and friends about the state of the na- tion’s efforts and were informed in turn of the efforts of their loved ones back home. These letters offered a moment of repose, a time to reflect on and record what they had witnessed. Yet not even the act of writing a let- ter home to mom and dad was completely free from the all-encompassing grasp of the war. Censorship of com- munications was paramount within military operations, and those overseas wrote everything with the eye of the censor in mind. However, there was a second, more sensitive type of censorship involved in the acts of let- ter-writing, one of a more social nature. Hopes, dreams, and—most importantly—fears had to abide strictly to the newly crafted wartime culture that the Roosevelt ad- ministration produced. New cultural norms of equating masculinity with a desire to serve the nation had been created within New Deal organizations and carried into the war. Adherence to this mindset dictated what could be shared and what must be kept confidential. Through this careful screening of text and emotion emerged the identity of the soldier-writer. Not a raw and unabridged identity, but an image carefully crafted for those at home within the lines of a few short pages. Though war is often depicted as a raging inferno of death and destruction, its 1944 72 PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
- 78. fire also offersthose involved a forge, within which they can create an identity of their own in the most stressful and chaotic time of their lives. What authors leave behind in their letters, and perhaps more importantly what they omit, offers the his- torian a chance to see what they reveal about themselves to others, intentionally or not, and how they choose to write their identity. This paper is a case study of a single soldier, using his personal correspondences to follow him through his life during the prewar years, his various training stages, his experiencing the horrors of war, and his role post-hos- tilities. Through the lens of evolving ideals of American masculinity, this paper will examine how letter-writing can reveal the pressures of macroscopic, national changes on the individual identity of an American man. HEPRIMARYSOURCESwithinthispa- per are a collection of letters written by John Moynagh, a 21-year-old Army enlistee in 1943. Moynagh wrote to his mother, father, and younger sister Joan for the duration of the war. The collection spans from January 1941 to December 1945, covering his entire active-duty career. Though telephones and telegraphs existed during this time and were widely available to everyone, the preferred method for long-dis- tance communication was letters. This medium offered a way for people separated by long distances to create a constant, interconnected correspondence that could last far longer than other communication forms of the time. Not only was the letter unrestrained from the word counts and time limits of telegraphs and telephones, it was also far more permanent. For military families like John’s, letters offered the ability to create a storyline of 2 Tracie Crow, On Point: A Guide to Writing the Military Story (Lincoln, Nebraska: Potomac Books, (2015), 10. 3 Crow, On Point, 13. 4 Crow, On Point, 10. experiences that could be built upon despite large gaps in time between installments. Upon receiving a letter, a family member could revisit old writings to help recall what was discussed previously, allowing for a continuous conversation to form through multiple letters spanning multiple weeks or months. For a soldier, the ability to fold a letter into his coat pocket to be re-read whenever and as frequently as he wanted allowed for letters to take on a sentimental, therapeutic value that connected de- ployed soldiers to their loved ones back home. In modern warfare, too, soldiers recount the va- lue of writing letters. Since the War on Terror began in 2003, there has been a large movement to bring veteran accounts into the hands of the public. Former Marine Tracie Crow describes how important writing has been in her life as a veteran and for those around her. She writes that when “[speaking] to soldiers like Brooke King[…] who is willing to share how writing helped her,” they of- ten explain that writing “‘helps to make sense of what is happening to [them].’”2 These modern experiences sug- gest that writing was perhaps even more important to the soldiers of WWII than they understood. Though no psychiatric methods of coping with the stresses of milita- ry life were formalized in the U.S. Army during the Se- cond World War, whenever a soldier picked up a pen to record his experiences, he often engaged, knowingly or unknowingly, in a therapeutic process. Crow continues by adding that though there is a “natural association to assume [that] a military story equals a story about war,” many soldiers’ stories often include “a rich amount of mundane and humorous material—the sort that can still provide readers with insight into who we were during those years.”3 It is here that Crow draws the real connec- tion between the therapeutic aspects of writing and a historian’s analysis of these letters. Letters written by soldiers are not always about war because they may not want, or may not be able, to write about their experiences. Instead, authors may fill their lines with other news that can be shared in an effort to quantify their activities for their loved ones. One letter filled with what Crow calls “mundane material”4 may only give a glimpse into the author’s life at the time of writing. But when read as one chapter in a book of many letters, isolated and mundane acts, even if they are shared as a way to self-censor and avoid discussing the war, form a more detailed picture of T THE IMPORTANCE OF LETTERS IN WARTIME AND HISTORICAL ANALYSIS VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 73
- 79. the writer’s identity.Finally, when these letters are com- bined with other sources like contemporary propaganda, historians can analyze whether this picture conforms to their understanding of the time or if the individual expe- rience conflicts with it. The letters of John Moynagh are no different; they are not meant simply as a scribbled check-in, but instead as an ongoing conversation with loved ones, an unintentio- nal biography that spans years. Within them is a massive quantity of the seemingly mundane. But as historian Mi- chel Foucault explains, from the perspective of the writer, anything contained within a letter is “never pointless, fu- tile, or petty, and never unworthy of being narrated.”5 Dia- na Gill builds on this theory, writing that “war forces letter writers and diarists, short on time, energy and paper, to focus on the truly relevant.”6 Gill’s theory on the act of let- ter-writing allows for those most mundane tasks that may originally be overlooked to suddenly burst with meaning. Within this theory the act of something as simple as going to the movies is a fact worth noting and dissecting, because to the author, that act meant enough to be shared. As Gill explains further, “socially, people convey themselves through the stories that tell others of their dis- tinctiveness.”7 Distinctiveness is determined by the stan- dards of the day—whether that be who is the smartest, strongest, most popular, or some other metric. In John’s writings, the standards reflected are the masculine ideals introduced during the Roosevelt administration’s recons- truction of the male identity during the New Deal, namely that one’s manhood is determined by strength and phy- sical prowess. These letters, though filled mainly with the “boring” parts of Army life, nevertheless come together to “serve as a way of exposing the writer’s identity. They are a narrative stage upon which 'one opens oneself to the gaze of others.'”8 They become the soldier’s biography and, in doing so, reflect his personal identity and the societal standards that influenced its creation. Though John’s identity evolved during warfare, it did not begin there. It began years earlier, before war in Europe was a thought, and Americans were dealing with far greater struggles at home. 5 Michael Foucault, “Society Must be Defended:” lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003), 67. 6 Diana C. Gill, How We Are Changed by War: A Study of Letters and Diaries from Colonial Conflicts to Operation Iraqi Freedom (New York: Routledge, 2010), 29. 7 Gill, How We Are Changed by War, 22. 8 Foucault, “Society Must be Defended,” 67. 9 Michael S. Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Free Press, 1997), 192. 10 Kimmel, Manhood in America, 199. 11 Christina A. Jarvis, The Male Body at War (DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), 20. N THE YEARS following the stock mar- ket collapse in October 1929, the wealth of the Roaring Twenties came crashing down and settled in the Hoovervilles that dotted the country as America’s unemployment rate rose to a peak of 25% in 1933. Sociologist Michael Kimmel states that “never before had American men experienced such a massive and system-wide shock to their ability to prove manhood by providing for their families,”9 and as a result the identity of the average man, which had been foun- ded on the idea of being the breadwinner of his family, collapsed. Men felt this emasculation not only in their minds but in their homes as well, as “unemployed men lost status with their wives and children and saw them- selves as impotent patriarchs.”10 As the Depression worsened into the 1930s, the newly elected Roosevelt administration began its attempts at rebuilding the American economy and so- ciety. To accomplish this task it looked to harness the “men-as-breadwinner” ideal as a way to push the hun- dreds of construction projects it wished to pursue into reality. Within its first hundred days, the Roosevelt administration created multiple organizations that at- tempted to get Americans back to work. Of these, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was the largest and most well-known. Created in 1933, “employment in the CCC[…]was specifically limited to young men between the ages of 17-25 […] and employed more than 2.9 million single, jobless, primarily working-class men during its nine years of existence.”11 As Christina Jarvis I THE NEW DEAL AND ITS INFLUENCE ON AMERICAN MASCULINITY 74 PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
- 80. observes, the CCCnot only subliminally propagated the “men-as-breadwinners” identity, but leaned into it fully and publicly by declaring that “the CCC was explicitly a 'man-building agency'” with the Corps director James McEntee going so far as to “title his 1940 book on the agency Now They Are Men.”12 McEntee and the CCC as a whole were focused on rebuilding American mas- culinity, because they believed it would accomplish the agency’s main goal, to support the families of the wor- kers within its program. Though only one man per family could participate in the program, the Corps was able to make each man’s contribution to his family stretch by including within their rules that each man was required to send a minimum of $22 of their $30 pay each month to their families.13 This reinforced the mindset that the men were not there for themselves, but to work for their family’s prosperity. Framing CCC participation in this way helped to restore the men’s status as breadwinners both physically and psychologically. The physical work performed by the CCC operated hand-in-hand with a newborn propagan- da network. McEntee’s marketing of the CCC only meant so much without proof, which came in the form of photographs distributed on the pamphlets and ad- vertisements put out by the CCC, showing “generally fit, lean men completing tasks requiring obvious phy- sical strength.”14 Statistics supplemented these pho- tographs, showing that enrollees gained “12 pounds and grew 1/2 inch in height during their stays.”15 All of this marketing was headed off by McEntee’s state- ment that the “ultimate goal of the CCC […] was to produce better husbands […], better workers, better neighbors, and better citizens.’”16 The goal of producing “better men,” as Jarvis notes, meant instilling “respec- table masculine values associated with the middle-class breadwinner ideal.”17 To support this, enrollees were often depicted within pamphlets reading in camp libra- ries, playing team sports, and regularly attending reli- gious services. These portrayals instilled the image that the CCC “sought to eradicate enrollees’ former rough 12 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 21. 13 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 21. 14 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 21. 15 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 22. 16 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 22. 17 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 22. 18 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 23. 19 Laura Hapke, Labor’s Canvas: American Working-Class History and the WPA Art of the 1930s (Newcastle: Cam- bridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 3. recreational activities such as drinking, gambling, and 'bumming around.'”18 Though high CCC enrollment showed the Roo- sevelt administration that its constructed American iden- tity was gaining popularity, it was not the only federal organization used in creating this reconstruction. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) hired artists of all styles and put them to work forwarding the middle-class, working-man ideals that the CCC was exemplifying. This project was known as the Federal Art Project (FAP) and as Laura Hapke explains, “in return for being supplied with materials and tools, artists were expected to reconcile themselves to what might be called factory time.”19 Artists created works for the FAP that could be used as marke- ting for the WPA and the New Deal’s progress as a whole. Hapke states that the FAP’s main goal “was an agenda to H.M. Talburt's depiction of Roosevelt as a burly lion tamer shows the Presidents connection with the working-class and America's unified effort to fight back against the depression. [2] VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 75
- 81. resurrect the flaggingspirits of a workforce construed as masculine[…the Depression] was a crisis of masculinity that visual artists needed to help resolve.”20 Hapke ob- serves that within their 340,000 portraits, landscapes, and still-lifes the FAP, “whether representing the […] farm or factory, city or countryside, frequently captured the heroism of everyday life […] through representations of Americans engaged in purposeful labor.”21 Many of these depictions were created on the locations of New Deal pro- jects and presented to the American people as visual proof of the progress that was being made to put people back to work and move the nation forward. Besides portraying progress, the FAP’s art also presented the new ideal body politic to fit the middle- class breadwinner image. The portrayals of workers in the FAP’s art were a stark contrast to the men seen on every street corner. Instead of the unhealthy, “weak” men who lined the streets in front of soup-kitchen doors, the FAP’s workers took on the proportions of the newly created su- perhero aesthetic born from the recent popularization of comic strips. Introduced in the mid-thirties, the superhe- ro aesthetic portrayed the subject with broad shoulders, massive chests, and bulging arms, all meant to convey inhuman power, while retaining a human likeness. The WPA embraced the style within their own works, using it to project a long-lost strength directly onto the middle- class workers within their paintings. Even President Roo- sevelt, wheelchair bound by childhood polio, was privy to the makeover of the new working-class image. In a 1930s political cartoon, the President was depicted in a plain shirt, his sleeves rolled up to reveal bulging forearms, and brandishing a whip against a lion labeled ‘Financial Cri- sis’.22 The workers in FAP art, too, were often depicted with massive tools in hand, such as jackhammers or other heavy machinery, promoting the image of America’s in- dustrial strength. This fusion of man and machine became increasingly important for the marketing of the American masculine ideal in the build-up to war. Despite America officially being neutral in wor- ld affairs, it was apparent by 1939 that the New Deal’s middle-class breadwinner identity would require a re-fit to prepare the United States for war. These changes began once again within the CCC, which slowly implemented 20 Hapke, Labor’s Canvas, 3-4. 21 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 25. 22 World Telegram, March 10, 1933, found in Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 33. 23 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 23. 24 U.S. Congress, United States Code: Selective Training and Service Act of , 50a U.S.C. §§ 302-315 Suppl. 1, 1940. more militaristic policies. These included the wearing of spruce-green uniforms and the use of over 225,000 World War One veterans to act as camp commanders.23 Paralle- ling the increased militarism of the CCC was the announ- cement in September 1940 that President Roosevelt had authorized the first peacetime draft for the United States Army, which called for the registration of all males from ages 21 to 35 in the Selective Service system.24 Though too young to be eligible for the first round of draft registration, John Moynagh still had plenty of ex- posure to the growing might of the armed forces. As the Army rebuilt its numbers, the Navy was simultaneously rebuilding some of its old infrastructure, calling on the Harold Layman's Driller exemplifies the portrayal of American bodies fused with massive industrial machines. This visual theme would transfer from machinery to weaponry as the country's wartime propaganda took over the role of the WPA. [3] 76 PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
- 82. help of civiliancontractors and organizations created by the New Deal to rebuild fuel-depots, bases, and fleet anchorages. In January of 1941, John, working with Platt Construction, travelled to one such fleet base in Melville, Rhode Island to install fire suppression sys- tems. He wrote a letter to his sister Joan about the new base and explained that “this week I have been working on new additions to the naval hospital.”25 He described the anchorage as “the real thing out there. Torpedo sto- rage houses, mines, submarine nets etc.” and asked her to “tell Dad those torpedoes look like a bar of 12 inch [steel] peened over on one end and a regular little en- gine on the other. Man! What a messenger of death.”26 Though this is the only mention of the construction on the hospital, the work must have been extensive; when John became eligible for the draft in February of 1942, his place of employment was still listed as Platt Construction: Melville, RI.27 The work on the Naval hospital was considered vital to national security, and as such, John was exempt from the next round of drafting. The open secret that the U.S. military was pre- paring for war and the large numbers of men enlisting led to a shift in the body politic of America even wit- hout the guiding hand of the Roosevelt administration. Born from the new Selective Service screening proce- dure came new terms to the American lexicon, draft classifications 1-A and 1V-F. As Jarvis explains, these classes were based on “the individual’s mental, mo- ral, and physical fitness, [and he was] either classified as 1-A, 1-B, or 1V-F (unacceptable for military ser- vice).”28 A classification of 1-A meant individuals were “free of disease[…]and [had] no disabling complica- tions,”29 1V-F meant that for any number of physical or neurological reasons a registrant had failed to qua- lify and was exempt from service. Icons of pop-culture picked up on these new standards as early as October 1941. In Helen Frost’s 1941 hit single titled “He’s 1-A in the Army, and He’s A-1 in My Heart,” her “man of 25 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 22 January 1941. 26 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 22 January 1941. 27 John Moynagh, Selective Service Registration Card. 28 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 59. 29 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 59. 30 Redd Evans, He’s 1-A in the Army and He’s A-1 in My Heart, Helen Frost, October 29, 1941. Vinyl Disc. 31 Jarvis, The Male Body at War, 60. 32 Gerald Shenk and Henry C. Dethloff, Citizen and Soldier: A Sourcebook on Military Service and National Defense from Colonial America to the Present (New York: Routledge, 2011), 111-112. 33 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 27 September 1941. 34 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 26 April 1943. mine, he ain't missin' nothin'” due to his classification of 1-A. She goes on to sing that “he's gone to help the country that helped him to get a start.”30 Frost’s lyrics and those of countless other performers showed mil- lions of Americans that being classified as 1-A proved not only that you were fit to serve your country, but also that you were a desirable man.. As Jarvis puts it, “although the 1-A classification was intended to denote physical and mental fitness for general military service, it took on an added meaning in popular discourse as it marked an idealized type of masculinity.”31 After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, the gradual societal and industrial buildup of militarization became a tidal wave. As historian Gerald Shenk explains, the wave of patriotic fervor that fol- lowed Pearl Harbor, combined with the “18,633 [men that] were inducted for a one-year service obligation, and another 800,000 reservists (many of them on CCC rosters), [that] were called to active duty”32 created a surplus of recruits at first. Yet the Army knew that this would not be enough to sustain their numbers for a prolonged fight and began a heavy recruitment process on the back of the patriotic wave. This campaign and the hundreds of others at the local level inspired mil- lions to join up to active duty throughout 1942. The Army Reserves offered a way for those like John who were working civilian jobs deemed vital to national de- fense to show they were still doing their part. Despite the massive influx of Army recruits, the civilian jobs necessary to national defense were not short of appli- cants, and John wrote frequently that “there have been quite a few layoffs[…]and they are cutting lose [sic] all the driftwood.”33 These pressures, combined with the ever-increasing pressure to join in the fight for the na- tion, eventually led John to leave his job and enlist with the U.S. Army. In his first letter home he described his feelings on his new role: “if this is army life let’s have it! – but I’m afraid it’s too good to last.”34 VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 77
- 83. OHN AND THEother recruits quickly learned that Army life would adhere strictly to the portrayals of masculinity that the New Deal campaigns created with only slight mo- difications. The 1940s Army program was designed to take a large group of men from all walks of life and turn them into a standardized military force within a few short weeks. The main problem for the Army to overcome was the incredible range of fitness levels that passed through the selection process. As a result, basic training in John’s words found the men “kept busy from five in the morning to five at night and I mean busy. We are out in the yard at seven ready for business, usually drilling and calisthenics until 11:30 am. The afternoon is the same except with a lecture or movie (of a military nature) thrown in.”35 Thesecalisthenicsinvolvedallmannerofstretches and aerobics as well as physical activities such as games of strength. Those who succeeded in these activities were often rewarded with unofficial titles or leave from extra duties, while those who failed were given more exercise and other assignments such as the dreaded Kitchen Po- lice (KP). As a result, fierce competition took root within these games and it became a source of pride when one was the winner. This is evident when John writes to his parents about his victory in not just one, but two of these games. He described the two games in great detail, the first of which was an exercise in which “49 [men] form a circle with arms locked and some poor goat is thrown in the center and has to try and get out. The other day no one would volunteer so I went in and broke out twice to be crowned Bull of the Ring.”36 The second game, more gladiatorial in nature than the first, was titled King in the Ring and involved “a circle about 25 feet in diameter 35 John Moynagh to Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 16 May 1943. 36 John Moynagh to Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 21 May 1943. 37 John Moynagh to Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 21 May 1943. 38 Foucault, “Society Must be Defended,” 67. 39 Jarvis, Male Body at War, 66. 40 Jarvis, Male Body at War, 66. […] installed on the ground into which the 50 men fight and throw each other out until one man remains[...] that was really my day for I am also the King of the Ring.”37 The use of these games in basic training was im- portant for three reasons. Not only were they a way for recruits to gain both muscular and cardiovascular stren- gth, but they also taught them basic lessons in teamwork necessary to complete an objective. Finally, these games were a morale booster to the victors, whether they es- caped the circle or prevented someone from escaping. This must have been an especially important point as noted by the space the description takes up in John’s let- ter home, covering over half of the total text. Foucault reminds us that when a writer mentions something in a letter, that it is “never pointless”38 and therefore these games must have a perceived importance to John greater than the simple description that was written. Though on the surface he described what could pass as a schoolyard game, to him it was a show of strength. At the time of writing, he had only been in the Army for a month, and yet he was already the strongest of fifty men, at least for a day. This was a great achievement for John and his ea- gerness to explain it to his parents shows the pride he took in his physical growth from civilian life. As Jarvis explains, the Army encouraged this assessment of per- sonal growth among their recruits through the use of “personal record books[…]in which men could record their measurements on five different dates to keep track of their height and weight as well as chest, bicep, waist, and calf sizes.”39 Similarly, the Navy published results of their pre-flight cadets after finding they had gained over 5 pounds and lost two inches around the waist, proving that “the Navy has “rebuilt” these men in both body and character, eliminating the softness of “easy going civilian life” while instilling military values and discipline.”40 The theme of gaining strength and, thus, masculi- nity, was another recurring theme of John’s early writings. His insistence that training was somehow too easy was a common occurrence and throughout basic training he continued to relay to his family that he was getting stron- ger and fitter, sometimes to the point of contradiction. Writing to Joan, he exclaimed that “last Friday was the THE INFLUENCE OF MASCULINE IDEALS ON NEW RECRUITS J 78 PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
- 84. worst day Iever put in – we drilled all day, and it must have been at least 110 out there in the broiling sun. There were five ambulances going all the time as about 60 or 70 men heeled over – however I felt fine and it seems to take off some lard.”41 Despite the shocking account of over sixty men collapsing from the heat, John found it essential not only to assure his sister that he was strong enough to feel fine after the ordeal, but also to casually mention that he found it helpful in trimming down his waistline. Similarly, when writing to his mother, he stated flatly that he was “getting too used to the workouts now – so I wish they would really give us the works as I know I’m far from top shape and would like to be physically perfect before 41 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 6 June 1943. 42 John Moynagh to Mrs. Irene, 13 June 1943. 43 McClelland Barclay, "Man the Guns, Join the Navy" (1942), found in Jarvis, Male Body at War, 13. 44 Colonel Tom Woodburn, "Defend Your Country, Enlist Now" (1940), found in Jarvis, Male Body at War, 41. going into a combat area.”42 Throughout these letters, John is attempting to toe the line between bragging and complaining about his experiences. The reality of the Ar- my’s training regimen was that it was a grueling and diffi- cult task that John felt the need to vocalize. But there was a pressure put on the recruits to live up to the propaganda produced by the army. To show that they were building themselves up to match the image of the ideal American soldier. Because of this, John’s writings reveal a conflict as he attempts to voice his displeasure at the training while simultaneously proving to his family that he is succeeding in becoming the ideal soldier. John’s insistence that his physical performance was rapidly increasing was not just an effort to impress his family. The stories told by enlisted men that military life rapidly scrubbed cadets clean of their civilian “sof- tness” were wildly popular, and the military had long taken over the reins from the FAP in producing pro- paganda to showcase this new belief. By 1942, artists had replaced images of barrel-chested workers holding jackhammers in their arms with portraits of similarly built sailors effortlessly slinging enormous shells into the breech of guns, underscored by commands to “Man the Guns – Join the Navy.”43 This new ideal for what the military man looked like likely encouraged John to prove to his family that he was on par with the men the propaganda depicted. Even Uncle Sam, much like Roosevelt, was given a face lift. Unlike the famous “I Want You” posters of the 1917 Army, Army propagan- dists rebranded Uncle Sam with his jacket shed, sleeves rolled, and fists bared, daring those who looked on to “Defend Your Country.”44 Even movie directors and Broadway playwrights bought into ensuring that the new image of masculinity in America was not complete without a uniform. One of the top grossing musicals of the forties, before being adapted for the screen, was titled This is the Army. Its opening number finds newly drafted cadets being dragged on stage in mismatched clothes and marching clumsily in line while singing about their first experience with their sergeant. By the end of the number, the men had not only transformed in their appearance, shedding their ragged and over- sized civilian clothes for crisp Army dress uniforms, but in their physique as well. They no longer slouched McClelland Barclay's 1942 Navy recruitment poster shows the use of the working man's physique to project the same masculine traits onto soldiers.working-class and America's unified effort to fight back against the depression. [4] VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 79
- 85. or stumbled butinstead marched in perfect unison to the music before exiting the stage in tight formation. The reaction of the on-screen audience to the men was staged: they laughed and jeered at the stumbling civi- lians in the beginning and gave a standing ovation to the soldiers at the end. The men watching the choreo- graphed reaction in the theater would have received the message as well. If a man was to become worthy of praise or applause within wartime America, he needed to be in uniform. By the time John joined the Army in 1943, it had become clear that though a uniform was a step- ping-stone on the way to societal acceptance, it was no longer enough to simply be in the service. As the nation embraced its war-efforts and millions of men had joined the various branches of service, the stan- dards of masculinity shifted. It became common to see American men in uniform and new hierarchies sepa- rating the ideal servicemen from the sub-par began to form. Though the old standards of I-A and IV-F re- mained, in a society where every man was dressed in standard-issue gear, the rank on the sleeve held more meaning than the uniform it was attached to. John’s 45 John Moynagh to Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 13 May 1943. 46 John Moynagh to Mr. John R Moynagh, 16 May 1943. first acknowledgement of this hierarchy came within a month of arriving at basic training. Writing to his mother about his week and his training progress, John concluded, “well this army life is swell as far as I am concerned, but I’ll like it a lot better when I learn of what my chances of advancement are.”45 John made it clear: the higher the rank he could achieve, the better. Between May and July, John sent eight letters home to his parents. Within every single letter he made some reference to his attempts at getting into a program for advancement. Some references were simple comments about his feelings of optimism towards promotion, but other references took up pages. In a four-page letter to his father, John spent over three-quarters of it descri- bing the interview process he underwent. He wrote in detail about the results of his officer aptitude test, in- cluding that his score of “127 [was] a very good mark” and that “I made out well in all my other tests here[…] it was written on my card that I was a candidate for the Army Specialized Training Program” (ASTP).46 This was the longest letter John sent throughout his four- year correspondence; the fact that it contains so much information on the prospects of his advancement indi- A newspaper clipping included in John's July 21, 1943 letter which describes the arrival of ASTP students to school at New York University. [5] 80 PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
- 86. cates how importantthe program was to John. But the ASTP was not the end goal, as he reminded his father: “the point to be remembered is that once I am enrolled in that school I can then apply for OCS [Officer Can- didate School] in any branch I desire which would be the engineers or infantry. Now I just wait for a while as another interview about the ASTP is coming soon.”47 The ASTP was not the usual path of advance- ment for enlisted men like John, but the incredible wave of manpower that flooded the Army in 1942 and 1943 had created a leadership crisis. As historian Louis Kee- fer describes, the ASTP was “conceived in mid-1942 to meet the Army's avowed need for university-trained officers”48 to supplement the millions of newly enlisted men. As a result, universities across America like New York University were commandeered by the U.S. mi- litary to train soldiers in technical fields. By 1943 the ASTP’s mission of turning enlisted men into candidates with potential for Officer Candidate School was well under-way. For men like John, who scored higher than a 115 on the officer aptitude test, the ASTP allowed them to forego the usual means of climbing the enlisted rank ladder by instead attending these schooling programs with the supposed promise of an OCS commission upon completion. As such, John faced a decision in June. In a letter to his mother, he explained that he “took over the Drill Master job and put the men through their paces – it certainly felt swell, I would apply for the job but I think I’ll just await the outcome of my interview which should come this week.”49 The assignment to the Drill Master position was a sign to John that he was a candidate for advancement to ranks like Private First Class, Corpo- ral and eventually even a Sergeant. It could be presumed that John included the assignment to show his parents that he had alternatives for advancement if the inter- views fell short. But it was clear from John’s hesitation to accept that he felt that the ASTP was a better option for a faster and more prestigious path to ranks like Lieute- nant or Captain; a far cry from a lowly Private First Class or Corporal rank. 47 John Moynagh to Mr. John R Moynagh, 16 May 1943. 48 Louis E. Keefer, "Birth and Death of the Army Specialized Training Program," in Army History, no. 33 (Washing- ton D.C.: United States Army Center of Military History, 1995), 1. 49 John Moynagh to Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 13 June 1943. 50 "500 Army Students to Study at The Heights Under New Specialized Training Program," unattributed newspa- per clipping, ca. July 1943, in possession of author. 51 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 21 July 1943. 52 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 21 July 1943. OHN'SLETTERTOhisparentsdatedJuly 21, 1943 shared the news of his acceptance into the ASTP and included a newspaper clipping hastily cut out and folded together with the class schedule for his first semester. The head- line read “500 Army Students to Study at The Heights Under New Specialized Training Program”50 and de- tailed the influx of new ASTP enrollees from around the country. John relayed to his parents that “everything is fine although we have a full schedule” stocked with the typical civilian college courses of chemistry, history, and calculus. Despite the workload, John was optimistic and seemed to enjoy the fact that though “most of us are kept pretty busy, it is pleasant to walk down to the corner at night and have a milkshake without having to get per- mission.” Despite the luxuries offered by permission-free milkshakes, John was sure to include reassurances to his parents that his goals had not changed. He described the orientation talk given by a Lieutenant Colonel and in- formed his parents that “we are definite potential officers if we make the grades as only a very small number [of officer candidates] will be taken from the field from now on.”51 Despite the seemingly civilian life, John wanted his parents to know that he was there to move forward with his army career. In fact, he had already begun to show his advancement up army ranks through his dress. He wrote that “because of our superior position [as stu- dents preparing for OCS] the finest department is ex- pected[…]we are dressed in Class A's [dress uniforms] all the time and have no details.”52 Class A’s were deco- rative, meant to be worn only for special events and other prestigious occasions. The fact that John now wore them MISLEADING PROPAGANDA AND ITS EFFECT ON ASTP ENROLLEES J VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 81
- 87. all the timeshowed the prestige of his program to his family. It also elevated John from his recent recruit status at basic training, where dress uniforms were unsuitable for the intense physical training recruits went through. The Class A’s signified a cleaner, more intelligent, and more prestigious side of the Army that John was now a member of, and he made an effort to show this off. Whether through misconstrued language of the Lieutenant Colonel or the over-eager assumptions of John and other ASTP candidates, the promises of OCS offered by the ASTP were less concrete than John des- cribed to his parents. Keefer notes that the statement by the War Department said that ASTP only made trainees 53 Keefer, "Birth and Death," 3 emphasis mine. 54 Keefer, "Birth and Death," 3. 55 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 August 1943. 56 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 20 August 1943. 57 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 20 August 1943. 58 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 20 August 1943, emphasis mine. “available to attend Officer Candidates School.”53 This was mistaken by most enlisted men as a formal commit- ment. Throughout the program’s run time “Secretary of War Stimson, took great pains directing that ASTP-ers not be called “cadets” and that they be considered sol- diers first, students second.”54 This meant that the threat of transfer was constant, and rigorous testing ensured that those who could not keep up were shipped off to fill manpower shortages. John’s concern for this possibility soon bled into his writing. In August 1943, he wrote to his parents that “we had a big chem test Saturday and a math test this morning[…]on the basis of these and past marks it will be determined who is to stay after next week and who is to depart so we shall see.”55 By looking at just one letter, this might be overlooked as concern for a specific test, but over the course of the next several months John’s cautionary rhetoric to his parents conti- nued. John’s assertion that he was constantly on thin ice may have been true but could also have been in response to Secretary Stimson’s warnings that John and the other ASTP enrollees were always under threat of being used as filler material. This thought would have likely scared John, who had turned down enlisted advancement for the ASTP and was now threatened with the program being taken away. His cautionary rhetoric could have been a way to let his parents, and himself, down easy if his path to OCS became suddenly blocked. By the end of August, just three months after he enrolled in ASTP, the tone of John’s letters had changed drastically. A series of delays and extensions to the course lengths prompted John to write to his parents that he was getting restless. He made sure to acknowledge that he “love[d] the military training in much of the course”56 but quickly followed these assurances up by reinforcing to his parents that his “ambition has not changed, that is to get to OCS and really go to war.”57 In some ways that am- bition had already begun to come true, as he had climbed the ranks to become “an acting Corporal now, armband and all, and of course addressed by the officers as such.”58 Just a week later in a follow-up letter, he informed them that he had been to the company Commander about get- ting to OCS and found out that “we all have to wait till Col. Tom Woodburn's 1947 Army recruiting poster depicts a younger, stronger , more aggressivelly postured Uncle Sam than his 1917 counterparts. [6] 82 PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
- 88. the three monthsare up and then are disposed of in any way the colonel sees fit.”59 This discovery prompted some of the strongest language found in these usually reserved letters, as John exclaimed that though he “would very much like to go to OCS at that time[…]I'll go back to the field and sign up for immediate overseas duty before I'll go another term of this. I positively hate mathemati- cal subjects!”60 Whether the frustration borne out in this letter was actually the result of calculus is up for debate; the true issue that prompted the outburst likely stemmed from John feeling stuck at home while every other man was abroad and engaged in combat. Compounding the frustration was the fact that as the war progressed, many films coming from Hollywood focused on the heroics and sacrifices of the U.S. military abroad. When John went to watch films such as Bataan, he would have seen the last stand of Sgt. Bill Dane, firing his machine gun from his own grave at waves of incoming Japanese in- fantry and being confronted with the ending card stating that “the final sacrifice of the defenders of Bataan helped slow the Japanese advance, making possible America's final victory in the Pacific War.”61 These images must have made John second-guess the importance of his time in the ASTP for many reasons. The heroes shown to the American people on screen were not dressed in Class-A uniforms like John or his peers, nor were they officers like the ASTP enrollees hoped to become. Instead they were gritty, Khaki-clad enlisted men on the screen, epi- tomes of bravery and self-sacrifice to Americans in the theaters. These new idols, as well as the failure of the ASTP to fulfill John’s expectations, likely led to the frus- tration this letter expresses. Though this anger within the August corres- pondence seems tame, John’s feelings were common at the time and shared by many others within the ASTP. Though the carrot of advancement within the Army was a tempting one, many felt that the ASTP was causing them to miss the war. Though the term “miss the war” was widely used colloquially by Army trainees the fear was very real and was amplified for ASTP students like John. As Keefer explains, most trainees were “well aware of the 59 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 20 August 1943. 60 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 26 August 1943. 61 Bataan, directed by Tay Garnett, aired June 3, 1943 (MGM; United States Office of War Information, 1943), film. 62 Keefer, "Birth and Death," 6. 63 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 21 September 1943. 64 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 21 September 1943. 65 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 15 February 1944. 66 Keefer, “Birth and Death,” 5. good situation they had been enjoying and felt slightly guilty, knowing that many of their high school classmates were already fighting (and dying) overseas.”62 These facts had to be faced in every aspect of the ASTP trainees’ life. By September of 1943, the war in the Pacific was in full swing, Italy had surrendered to the Allies, and the casualty lists reported in every major U.S. newspaper were growing daily. While these major actions were taking place, John sent word to his parents that there was “no chance of going to OCS after these first three months” and that after nine months he would only receive a specialist commission. The dream of Officer Candidate School had vanished, and he was still stuck within the program until he was transferred out or the war ended.63 Reading of the successes of the Army in the news- paper every day while entrenched in civilian classes wei- ghed heavily on John’s thoughts. John was still desperate to participate in the war effort, as seen when he wrote to his parents wondering why “you didn't mention in your last letter anything about me buying your next bond for you,” claiming that he “[had] to do something by the end of the month or [he’d] look sad.”64 Though war bonds were a common item within American homes during the time, for John and all the trainees stuck in ASTP their purchasing was an important salve for their sense of duty. It allowed them to feel like they were still participating in the war effort while they were in school and as such it often became a point of contention as to who could put the most into these bonds. His parents either learned their lesson about the involuntary nature of this participation or other means of persuasion were used to encourage it, as John only mentioned the bonds one other time in his wri- ting; briefly mentioning in February 1944 that the bond his parents ordered “will be on its way shortly.”65 The guilt John and the other thousands of ASTP candidates felt about missing the war would soon be abated as the manpower crisis of the war reached its peak. As Keefer notes, by the end of 1943 “riflemen were the Army’s greatest need, not men of ‘special abilities.’”66 Within the course of a few months, nearly half of ASTP candidates had exchanged their pencils for M-1 rifles. VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 83
- 89. However, for Johnand many others there was one more hurdle in the way of their ticket to combat: the Army physical and the determination of whether they were classified as I-A. For John, this hurdle was impassable, as he ended up being classified as I-B(L): Limited Duty due to his poor eyesight. Writing to his sister, John brushed off his failure with humor: “Well! They caught up with me Sunday at the physical so I'm limited service. However I still move out with the rest on Sunday.”67 Despite the fact that John brushed off the failure of his physical and moved on to describe his enjoyable last few days in New York, it is clear that this must have been a heavy blow for him. For years, the social standard for a fit man had been one in uniform, with a I-A classification, a rifle in hand, and a rank on his sleeve. The demotion to I-B(L), on top of having the aspirations of being an officer stripped away, must have made John’s transition more difficult; the train ride west was a long one. PON ARRIVING AT Camp Carson in Colorado, John elaborated further on the situation he found himself thrust into so ra- pidly. He again wrote to Joan that “due to my failing eyesight, I’m in the Medics at least for a four week training period.”68 To his parents, his language was more severe and he wrote, crammed on a postcard, that “they hastily classified us on the spot[…]I don’t know how many of us are due to be stretcher bearers – not for me!”69 The overall disappointment for John reached a cli- 67 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 22 March 1944. 68 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 3 April 1944. 69 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 31 March 1944. 70 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 5 May 1944. 71 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 5 May 1944. 72 Keefer, “Birth and Death,” 3. 73 Unknown Artist, That’s the New Man from ASTP, “Vanguard Section – Blood and Fire,” July 8, 1944, found in Keefer, “Birth and Death,” 4. 74 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 3 April 1944. max in a letter on May 5, 1944 in which he complained to his parents that “for the time being I have been as- signed to the litter-bearer platoon which is just about the bottom of the barrel so just inform anyone who asks that I’m in the medics and let it go at that.”70 At this point, it is clear that John was so embarrassed by his new position that he would rather his parents hide his role in the war effort, because to him the truth was too shameful. His frustration bled out further in the letter as he explained that “in all branches our men [ASTP men] are being thrown in as privates, [and] naturally the older men will feather their own nest first.”71 These feelings of betrayal are noted by Keefer in his study that “even fifty years la- ter, many former ASTP-ers harbor[ed] the feeling that the Army lied to them about their futures.”72 Besides feeling betrayed by their commanding officers and the War Department, ASTP candidates had to deal with the mocking that came with being replace- ments from a failed program. Enlisted soldiers who had marched all the way from boot camp felt that ASTP- ers had tried to take the easy way out, attempting to bypass the rank hierarchy through a loophole instead of toughing it out by climbing through the enlisted ranks, and thus sacrificing their masculinity in the eyes of their fellow soldiers. This disapproval from the enlisted men is best illustrated by a cartoon from the 63rd Infantry’s regi- mental newspaper in which the new ASTP replacement, notably wearing glasses, has massively overengineered a foxhole.73 The bewilderment on the face of the enlisted soldier facing the reader, and the shocked expression of the sergeant facing the foxhole, were meant to commu- nicate that the new man, a bespectacled and over-edu- cated “infantryman,” belonged in a laboratory instead of a battlefield. Beyond the enlisted men’s disdain of ASTP- ers, there were still plenty of other divides to create strife between the men. After arriving at Camp Carson, John wrote to Joan that he found the men to be “mostly a rugged, uneducated lot from the Southwest[…]all nice fellows unless one is unfortunate enough to become em- broiled – not me!”74 The perception by John and other CONFRONTING MASCULINE IDEALS AND ADAPTING TO LIMITED SERVICE U 84 PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
- 90. ASTP-ers that themen at Carson who weren’t from ASTP were somehow less educated created two compe- ting ideals of masculinity, yet John’s disappointment in his limited service status made it clear that the enlisted men’s ideal of combat-effectiveness was more impressive than the one of education. The remarks on being “rug- ged and uneducated” were disheartened jabs at those he found to be in some way superior to himself. Concluding the May 5th letter to his parents, he insisted that “I’m not despondent[…]for as long as we do our best[…]and maintain our sense of humor we can consider the sacri- fice of our dignity minute over the supreme one that over 30,000 of our comrades have already made.”75 John’s fee- lings of losing his dignity run parallel with his position in the masculine hierarchy of the Army. In the span of just a few weeks John had gone from the prestigious high of an ASTP enrollee bound for officer’s rank to the low of a I-B(L) classification and filler in a medical unit. Ins- tead of being clad in fine Class A’s he was now watching men deemed fitter than him drilling for combat while he 75 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 5 May 1944. 76 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 14 May 1944. 77 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 4 June 1944. 78 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 June 1944. 79 John Moynagh to Joan Moynagh, 10 April 1944. 80 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 25 May 1944. watched on the sidelines in a support unit. All of these emotions bled into his May correspondence and led to another revelation for John; that his family may not be as understanding of his position as he hoped they would be. John’s May 5th letter marks an anomaly in his writing as it breaks from the usually emotionally re- served and cautiously optimistic view of army life that John curated throughout his correspondence with his parents. The blatant voicing of frustrations and the se- vere complaints were enough to worry his parents, as well. Within his response to them on May 25th is an attempt to assuage their fears that he is falling into a depression. He writes that “whatever happens to me is really inconsequential until the war ends so don’t think I’m ever depressed, by the way I had KP [Kitchen Po- lice] last Sunday and we really had a fine time.”76 The May correspondences marked the end of John’s com- plaints to his parents about his army life. He instead shifted the focus of his writing back to the relative safety of descriptions of his physicality. His writing be- gan to draw parallels to his initial letters of optimism in basic training. He wrote of how he was the fastest man in the company with “300 yards in 39 seconds!”77 He gave them his opinions of the D-Day landings when news reached Camp Carson, giving a formal analysis where he assured them that “some violent counterat- tack will be forthcoming shortly” and that the capture of the “fine port of Cherbourg will enable us to trans- port some heavy artillery, men and supplies […] which will perhaps turn the tide.”78 Despite almost a letter a week to his parents, John mentions very little about the intricate details of army life he found so “swell” in 1943. He reserved all the details about his training, as well as the small gripes that came with it, for his sister Joan. It was while wri- ting to her that he recounts his stories of the infiltration course where “5 machine guns pour lead 30 inches off the ground so you have to crawl pretty low,”79 or how his medical company treated the wounded during simula- tions until two in the morning, when they “curled up in a blanket and tried to sleep, but froze instead.”80 Perhaps he hid these experiences out of an abundance of caution JA cartoon from the 63rd Infantry's regimental magazine shows the shock and bewilderment of enlisted soldiers as they watch an ASTP recruit overengineer a foxhole. This was meant to de note that ASTP-ers did not belong on the battlefield. [7] VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 85
- 91. for his parents’concern for his well-being, though it is more likely that his change of tone was due to the em- barrassment he felt at his position in the Medical corps and his parent’s swift reaction to his display of dissatis- faction. By writing to his sister, John was able to distance himself from the expectations he had set for himself and his parents about his officer training in ASTP and the subsequent dashing of those expectations with his as- signment to what he thought of as an inferior unit. As much is seen in his letter to them in August, where his voice shifted again to the optimism displayed when he began his transfer into the ASTP program. The return address on the letter reads “T/5 – John R. Moynagh” and the writing within described to his parents that “as you see by the envelope, I have started up my army career at last.” After explaining to them that he received his commission as a Medical Technician Fifth Grade and relaying that he “felt quite proud to be one of the first new men receiving Army recognition,” he concluded his remarks by claiming that “it’s not the position I cared about but now I’m immune from KP and other details unless I’m put in charge of one.”81 81 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 August 1944. 82 John Moynagh to Mrs. Catherine Fennelly, 4 December 1944. Despite the modesty of this conclusion, it is hard to believe his claim that he did not care about his promotion. From the beginning of his letters in the Army, John made it clear that his goal was to get to Officer Candidate School and then climb the officer ranks. His overwhelming dissatisfaction at the delays and cancellations of the ASTP and his palpable em- barrassment about his physical classification and sub- sequent delegation to the medical corps all point in this direction as well. Even the opening phrase of the letter in which he finally found it acceptable to relay personal feelings about his army experience reflected this. The fact that he felt that his career was just now beginning, nearly two years since his enlistment in the reserves, meant that the rank of Technician, despite being far lower than the Lieutenant’s bar promised to him by the ASTP, was immensely important to him. So important, in fact, that he included one of his rank patches within the letter, as physical proof for his parents—and himself—that he was now officially an Army man. OHNMAINTAINEDhisrankthroughout his campaigns in Europe. Over the course of 195 consecutive days of combat, John and his medical company were charged with the task of tending to all the horrors a battlefield could wreak as they slogged through France and on to the German town of Inden. There, John found the time to write a letter to his grandmother. Maybe the knowledge that his letter would pass under the rubber stamp of “Army Examiner 43268” restricted his thoughts, but despite 88 days of combat John’s letter was relaxed. He supposed that “if I was at home this time of year, it would be quite a job for me to get out of the house without doing some shoveling,” and noted that the weather had been kind to them so far.82 He then described to her the situation that A SHIFT IN IDEALS AND AN OVERSEAS PERSPECTIVE ON SERVICE J John's Medical Technician Grade 5 stripes denoting the equivalent rank of Corporal were included within a letter to his parents regarding his promotion. [8] 86 PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
- 92. German towns werein: “you would think these people would give up before we destroy all of Germany. Most of the people in the villages we capture are glad it’s over for them even though defeated.”83 He wrapped the let- ter hoping that Santa was good to her and included a Christmas present of a handkerchief with the flags of the allies surrounding a German shield with the words “Sou- venir De Belgique” painted above them, writing “since I was in Belgium.”84 The relaxed nature of John’s writing and the somewhat ironic phrase on the handkerchief painted his experience as one of relative ease. Though the December letter is the only written correspondence from John’s time in active combat, it provides a glimpse into the therapeutic effects that let- ter-writing can have for soldiers. The letter shows a shift away from the introspections seen in many of his letters from training. Instead, John focused on his surroundings and the mindset of the German civilians around him. The only mention of himself comes in the form of his opening remark about shoveling snow, which could be viewed simply as a way to find some common ground. One can infer that writing about his personal expe- riences was difficult for John, especially knowing that disclosing too much information in a letter could mean it was literally cut off the paper by a censor. But writing about the destruction around him was permissible, and the gratitude shown by the civilians must have proved to be a positive experience for him, as he felt it necessary to include it within his letter. The shift away from himself, and onto the experiences of others, is an important one for understanding how John has grown since his early days in the army. His deployment overseas allowed him to distance himself from the pressures of the homefront and Army training, and his engagement in combat shif- ted his focus onto more pressing and humanitarian mat- ters. This type of growth would continue in John’s cor- respondence overseas. A common line among Army strategists is that there is always a plan until the fighting starts. John’s plan of climbing the rank ladder was put on hold once he stepped off the ramp in France to begin his over- seas duty. Despite the relaxed nature of his letter to his 83 John Moynagh to Mrs. Catherine Fennelly, 4 December 1944. 84 John Moynagh to Mrs. Catherine Fennelly, 4 December 1944. 85 John Moynagh, Officer’s Commission, 1945. 86 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 December 1945. 87 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 December 1945. 88 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 December 1945. grandmother, by 1945 he had seen the worst that Eu- rope had to offer. From the Liberation of the Nether- lands to the Battle of the Bulge to the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp, the chaos of constant battle pro- vided no opportunity for John to advance up the ranks. Yet as the fighting wound down in Europe, a final op- portunity arose. Lessons learned from the ASTP led the Army to develop a method of officer training for enlisted men who had shown potential during their combat experience. The Officer Candidate Course (OCC) was established in April of 1945 at Napoleon’s summer residence of Fontainebleau. In May, John was accepted to join the program, graduating eight weeks later on July 7th with a commission as Second Lieute- nant, U.S. Army Infantry.85 Though no written corres- pondence survives from this moment, it can be readily assumed from John’s August 1944 letter that he would have told his parents the good news as soon as he could. As an officer, he could now accept a command post, and he would not have to wait long. On September 17, John was assigned as Executive Officer in Labor Ser- vice Company 1703, a camp for German POWs. By November 6, he was promoted to Commanding Offi- cer. In a letter to his parents dated December 9, 1945, John’s tone changed again from the letters written du- ring his time in training. He opened with a report of the cold weather they received in the past week and noted that “the Germans get an allowance of wood that is none too adequate, but we pick up fuel here and there.”86 He continued this thread by asking if his pa- rents would send him a pack of “15 or 20 of the small tins of tobacco – no, not [for] the black market, I use them as prizes for the best jobs done by my charges.”87 He also asked for a box of razor blades as well, as “they make quite a bonus.”88 He concluded the letter with Christmas wishes and a promise to try and call them on New Year’s. The difference between this letter and the usual tone of John’s letters from 1943 and 1944 is stark. Though John must have taken considerable pride in the fact that the return address on the air-mail envelope read “Lt. John Moynagh Jr.,” there was almost no discussion VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 87
- 93. of himself. Instead,the letter focuses on the German “charges” under John’s command.89 The responsibility that came with the rank seemed to have changed him. John’s attempts to gain rank, and the constant setbacks that prevented his achievement of that journey, all af- fected the meaning of the rank to John. As we have seen, John’s claim in August of 1944 that “it’s not the rank I cared about”90 was contradicted by the fact that he constantly shared with his parents the importance that an officer’s rank held to him. Though his wish had originally been to lead men in combat, his eyesight had squashed those dreams. By the standards of masculinity established across America by the Roosevelt adminis- tration, the Army, and the media, he fell short. But by the time he wrote his December 1945 letter, he had overcome those challenges. The meaning of the rank also seemed to be reflected in John’s demeanor as, after acquiring his Lieutenant’s rank and accepting his role as Commanding Officer, John stopped thinking, and writing, about himself. The newfound concern for the men in his charge is notable but should be analyzed as another layer of John’s personal reaction to social cues. Though John was an enlisted man for most of his active service, his ASTP courses, OCC course, and his time serving under officers all gave him valuable insight as to how officers were supposed to act. They were taught to be leaders, to think about those underneath them, and to ensure their care to the best of their ability. John, as a newly commissioned officer, would have wanted to prove that he was of acceptable stature for the officer role and as such made sure that any concerns he voiced were for his subordinates. His tone had to match his position, and his position meant that he no longer fol- lowed, he led. Over a year passes between John’s August 13, 1944 letter, in which he bid goodbye to his parents, and his December 9, 1945 letter. All that is recorded in this time is the letter to his grandmother in December 1944, for a grand total of two letters from his over- seas service. It can be said that there is not enough evi- dence to support the claim that John’s identity changed between that time. But an analysis of the tone, focus, and minutiae of earlier letters reveals what was impor- tant to John, and, crucially, what was no longer im- portant. John’s identity throughout his training hinged 89 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 December 1945. 90 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 9 August 1944. 91 Norman K. Denzin, Interpretive Interactionism, 2nd edition (Thousand Oaks, Illinois: SAGE Publications, 2001), 58. on his ability to climb the rank hierarchy. For two years, his tone and mood fluctuated depending on his circumstances relating to the outcome of promotion. News of these fluctuations, whether it was acceptance into the ASTP or exclusion from the infantry due to his eyesight, was always important enough to reach his parents. Yet John dropped any news of his rank du- ring his time abroad, especially during his December 1945 letter, signifying that John’s identity evolved. He was no longer concerned with the same issues that in- terested him a year before. Now, his focus was on those around him instead of himself. Whether from his su- perior position as a liberator in December 1944, or his superior position as an officer in December of 1945, the inclusion in his letters of disbelief towards the German civilians and the concern for his “charges” was of grea- ter importance than his pursuit of rank. OCIOLOGIST Norman Denzin wrote that there “is no separation between self and society,” and that personal identity is formed from an amalgamation of “ma- terial social conditions, discourse, and narrative prac- tices.”91 This theory rings especially true in the case of John’s correspondence. Throughout his letters is a constant connection to the societal norms that in- fluenced him on his journey. The constant push of military propaganda to influence the American idea of the optimal man can be seen in John’s recounting of his physical growth. His acceptance into ASTP and the delays to deploying overseas that wracked him with guilt reflects society’s total indoctrination into every aspect of the war effort. The embarrassment and despair that accompanied his I-B(L) physical classi- fication shows the influence that the military system had in shaping a man’s social image and self-esteem. The meanings behind each opportunity or setback influenced how John recounted it to loved ones. We have seen that John took demotions with good hu- mor because becoming too depressed about one’s role in the war was questioned immediately. Similarly, he CONCLUSION S 88 PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
- 94. maintained a focuson the positive aspects of physical growth and the visual status portrayed by dress and visual cues of prestige. All of these mundane com- ponents come together to create a detailed picture of John’s identity, which, when passed under an analyti- cal lens, show that his evolution is a result of society’s evolving standard for model manhood, and John’s po- sition within that standard. Gill explains that “all members of a society represent their society, each member contain[s] the essence of the group that has formed them.”92 When John says goodbye to his parents on August 13th, 1944 he tells them that “I’ve never felt better in my life, and fully equipped and garbed for anything that’s in store for me.”93 The statement is reflective not only of John’s emotions, but an affirmation of the messages coming from the Army that their soldiers are the fittest men in the country. Though it seems that John truly believed that the Army had trained him well, it is also obvious that John’s rhetoric follows the messages that every news outlet in the country had propagated for years. The scope of influence of these messages is only seen through the jigsaw puzzle-like biography that over four years of personal correspondence can create. To examine a play or newspaper from the war- time era shows us that there was a well-maintained culture that provided a pro-military ideal. But the minds of analysts seventy-five years in the future will never independently understand the influences of the subliminal messages these campaigns created. Biogra- phy through letter-writing provides us with the clarity to understand how the messages were interpreted by a single person. Letters allow for an opening into the mind of an individual but reflect the views of the so- ciety within their thoughts. The deep dive into one person’s experiences allows for a much more focused analysis of the experience of a nation. It seems naïve to think that a set of letters from one man can grant us some vast insight into the experience of an entire country; this is because histo- rians typically focus on the macroscopic. Tomes and volumes are written about the deeds of nations and, if we are lucky, a few men and women that historians deem “great.” But scholars often toss ordinary citizens together into an anonymous mass, whose views are analyzed as a collective. A set of letters, even from just 92 Gill, How We Are Changed by War, 46. 93 John Moynagh to Mr. John R. Moynagh and Mrs. Irene Moynagh, 16 August 1944. a short span of time, provides us valuable information about that anonymous mass at a personal level. Unlike newspapers or books, authors wrote letters as a private discourse. They were not intended for an audience wi- der than the recipients. They wrote a private discourse meant for a select few, and their letters offer a version of events from a more vulnerable viewpoint than his- torians regularly recognize. The massive mobilizations of manpower during WWII are common knowledge. The ways that this mobilization was achieved are les- ser known but still attainable. How these programs affected those involved, however, how they shaped the identities of millions one at a time is underappre- ciated. Personal correspondence provides documenta- tion that allows for the analysis and appreciation of the changes these events created. Buried under the minutiae of daily life is the reasoning for why those minutiae have become a part of a routine, and if one person is performing those actions, or thinking those thoughts, it is understandable that others may be as well. The change in direction of an entire nation does not happen with one voice, it is a collection of mil- lions of individual voices who decide to change in si- milar ways, and letters allow us to find out why. HIS PROJECT WAS born out of a de- sire to uncover the truth about my grand- father’s service in World War Two and to try to understand a man I have never met. Over the past four years I have pieced together over 100 letters, postcards and photos from John’s sis- ter Joan, my great aunt, and other family members to create his story. His writings influenced me to stu- dy abroad in Berlin and travel through Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium to see the places he saw and wrote about. When I returned home, I crafted this paper to present an example of how a historian can use the private writings of a person they’ve never met, to find out more about them and their lives than they could ever expect to know. AUTHOR'S NOTE T VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 89
- 95. Barclay,McClelland.Man the Guns,Jointhe Navy.1942. Bataan. Directed by Tay Garnett. Aired June 3, 1943. MGM; United States Office of War Information 1943. Film, 114 minutes. Lehman, Harold. The Driller, 1932, (Rikers Island, New York). Moynagh Jr., John R. Letters. In possession of author. 1941-1945. Reiss, Winold. Untitled, 1933, (Cincinnati Union Ter- minal: Cincinnati, Ohio). Talburt, H.M. March Lion. March 10, 1933. Unknown Artist. That’s the New Man from ASTP. July 8, 1944. U.S. Congress. United States Code: Selective Training and Service Act of , 50a U.S.C. §§ 302-315 Suppl. 1. 1940. Periodical. https://www.loc. gov/item/uscode1940-005050a003/. Woodburn, Colonel Tom. Defend Your Country, Enlist Now. 1940. Crow, Tracy. On Point A Guide to Writing the Military Story. Lincoln, Nebraska: Potomac Books, 2015. Denzin, Norman K. Interpretive Interactionism. 2nd edition.Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2001. Evans, Redd. He’s 1-A in the Army and He’s A-1 in My Heart. Helen Frost. October 29, 1941. Vinyl Disc. https://www.historyonthenet.com/authentichis tory/1939-1945/3-music/03-Defense/19411029_ Hes_A-1_In_The_Army-Harry_James.html Foucault, Michel. "Society must be defended:" lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76. Translated by David Macey. New York: Picador, 2003. Gill, Diana C. How We Are Changed by War: A Study of Letters and Diaries from Colonial Conflicts to Oper- ation Iraqi Freedom. New York: Routledge, 2010. Hapke, Laura. Labor’s Canvas: American Working-Class History and the WPA Art of the 1930s. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. Jarvis, Christina A. The Male Body at War. DeKalb, Illi- nois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004. Keefer, Louis E. "Birth and Death of the Army Spe- cialized Training Program." Army History, no. 33 (1995): 1-7. Kimmel, Michael S. Manhood in America: A Cultural History. New York: Free Press, 1997. Shenk, Gerald E., and Henry C. Dethloff. Citizen and Soldier: A Sourcebook on Military Service and Na- tional Defense from Colonial America to the Present. New York: Routledge. 2011. [1] Reiss, Winold. Untitled, 1933, (Cincinnati Union Terminal: Cincinnati, Ohio). [2] Talburt, H.M. March Lion. March 10, 1933. [3] Lehman, Harold.The Driller, 1932, (Rikers Island, New York). [4] Barclay, McClelland. Man the Guns, Join the Navy. 1942. [5] Woodburn, Colonel Tom. Defend Your Country, Enlist Now. 1940. [6] In possession of author? [7] Unknown Artist.That’s the New Man from ASTP. July 8, 1944. [8] In possession of author. BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Secondary Sources Image Sources 90 PUSHING THE ENVELOPE
- 96. SPRING 2021 ''TIOCFAIDH ÁRLÁ, OUR DAY WILL COME'' Tracing the Origins of Ireland’s Support for Palestine by Alyssa Durnil, St. Edward's University '20 Written for History Capstone: Writing British History Advised by Professor Lauren Banko Edited by Louie Lu, Daevan Mangalmurti, and Natalie Simpson Solidarity Mural featuring the flags of Ireland and Palestine. [2] ON THE NEXT PAGE A protest led by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC). [1] VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 91
- 98. HERE ARE TWOrichly painted walls on each side of the intersection of Beech- mount Avenue and Falls Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The smaller wall, visible on the right-hand side as one enters Beechmount Ave- nue, today commemorates the role of women in the first Irish parliament. But that mural is only the most recent in a line of at least twenty-three that have covered the wall and illustrated the concerns of residents of this heavily Catholic portion of Belfast over the years.1 During the Troubles, the period from the 1960s to the 1990s during which Irish republicans sought to unify the island of Ireland, Beechmount Avenue was better known as RPG Avenue, “after the rocket-pro- pelled grenade launcher often fired from there.”2 It was in 1982, during these years of violence, that the first mural in Northern Ireland with an international theme was painted on the Beechmount wall. Fittingly, it de- picted “two male insurgents, from the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] and IRA [Irish Republican Army], jointly holding aloft a Russian rocket-propelled grenade launcher, a weapon that both groups used. Un- derneath was the slogan ‘One struggle.’ ”3 Whether groups like the PLO and IRA were considered ter- rorists, guerrillas, or freedom fighters was a matter of perspective. Initially, the IRA sought to vindicate their own violent political opposition by aligning themselves with similar movements around the globe as a means of portraying Irish republicanism as part of an internatio- nal struggle against imperialism. The partition of Ireland in 1920 created a fissure between the North and the South, and two Irish identi- ties began to emerge as Irish collective memory was in- terpreted differently in accordance with current events. Elisabetta Viggiani asserts that “opposing public narra- tives of national identification […] victimhood, moral 1 "Beechmount/Falls Corner," Extramural Activity, https://extramuralactivity.com/ beechmountfalls-corner/. 2 Danny Devine, "Growing Up in Belfast: 'I Saw British Soldiers Holding Guns Every Day so I Must Have Copied Them,'" The Guardian, Dec. 1, 2017. 3 Bill Rolston, "'The Brothers on the Walls': International Solidarity and Irish Political Murals," in Journal of Black Studies 39, no. 3 (Thousand Oaks, Illinois: SAGE Publications, 2009), 461. 4 Elisabetta Viggiani, Talking Stones: The Politics of Memorialization in Post-Conflict Northern Ireland (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014), 7. 5 Erik David Nelson, "Memory, Narrative, and Identity Shifts in Modern Ireland," in Undergraduate Honors Theses (Williambsburg: William & Mary, 2016), 34. justification for the use of violence and stigmatization of the adversary are projected by means of careful use of imagery, symbols, language and a process of selective remembering and social amnesia.”4 In Northern Ireland, republicans sought to replicate the Irish independence movement of the early twentieth century in hopes of unifying the Emerald Isle. Taking notes from the Cel- tic Revival,which “provided the basis for the nationalists’ political movement” of the 1910s and 1920s, Irish re- publicans began adopting Gaelic phrases as a means of promoting cultural nationalism.5 In the mid to late twentieth century, Irish na- tionalist symbols, images, language, and flags began to be applied to or used in conjunction with left-wing na- tionalist movements across the world.The phrase “Tioc- faidh ár lá,” a Gaelic chant which translates to “Our day will come,” was popularized in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, the early years of the Troubles. This phrase has since been used in reference to similar revolutionary mo- vements such as the Palestinian nationalist movement. The phrase signifies both hope and retribution: a promise that these ethnic groups will one day be free from forei- gn occupation of their homelands.This sense of a shared history stemming from parallel experiences is what de- fines the Irish-Palestinian connection. Ireland's support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state was first championed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army, which worked in conjunction with the Palestine Liberation Organization in the early 1970s, and by Irish civilians who campaigned for the government of Ireland to support Palestinian self-determination over Israeli settler colonialism. Following the outbreak of the Le- banese Civil War in 1975, when Irish soldiers were de- ployed to South Lebanon as peacekeepers for the United Nations, accusations of excessive force by Israeli soldiers against members of the Irish battalion inflamed tensions between Ireland and Israel, inadvertently reinforcing pro-Palestinian sentiments in Irish society. In response to the Palestine Liberation Organization’s efforts to di- sassociate itself from terrorist networks and appeal to INTRODUCTION T VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 93
- 99. European countries throughdiplomatic channels, Ire- land called for a sovereign Palestinian state and led the European Economic Community to endorse Palestinian self-determination,thus enshrining in Irish foreign poli- cy a steadfast commitment to human rights, internatio- nal law, justice, and peace. CHOLARLY RESEARCH ON Ireland’s foreign relations with Palestine and Israel is rather limited. Ireland’s role as a neu- tral power in foreign conflicts through the twentieth century may explain why twentieth century Iri- sh historians generally focus on Ireland’s domestic affairs. The Irish War of Independence and the subsequent Irish Civil War,followed by theTroubles,present numerous cri- tical research opportunities. Research on Ireland’s foreign policy tends to focus on the country’s prominent role in the European Union and the United Nations “despite its small size and location on the margins of the European continent, its policy of military neutrality, and its com- plex and often contradictory relationship with the United Kingdom.”6 In Palestine, instability of the Middle East combined with the Palestinian refugee crisis has severely hindered academic research,as archival material may have been lost, destroyed, or difficult to preserve.The most ac- cessible resources concerning Palestinians typically cover political matters; therefore, this paper does not seek to compare Irish and Palestinian cultures as it would be diffi- cult to obtain a complete picture. The first comprehensive scholarly attempt to analyze Irish-Palestinian relations was undertaken by Rory Miller, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar who continues to be the leading scholar on this issue. Miller’s research analyzes Ireland’s relations with Israel and Palestine since 1948, when Ireland formally declared itself to be a republic and when the state of Is- rael was established. Miller argues the following: 6 Rory Miller, Ireland and the Palestine Question: 1948-2004, (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2005), 1. 7 Miller, Ireland and the Palestine Question, 1-2. 8 John Doyle, "Irish Nationalism and the Israel-Palestinian Conflict," in Ireland and the Middle East: Trade, Society and Peace, ed. Rory Miller (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007), 1. 9 Doyle, "Irish Nationalism," 4. 10 Doyle, "Irish Nationalism," 7. The nature of the Irish struggle for independence from Bri- tain […] created an innate Irish hostility towards partition as a solution to territorial conflict […] Combined with [the] belief that Ireland could claim a unique perspective on the Arab-JewishconflictwastheconvictionthatIrelandoccupied a unique, distinctly moral, place in the international system that gave it both a right and a duty to contribute to the search for peace and harmony in international affairs.7 Lacking in Miller’s research is a thorough exa- mination of the IRA’s role in shaping Irish-Palestinian relations. While Miller provides great insight into the history of Irish-Israeli diplomatic relations, much of his analysis of the Israel-Palestine conflict tends to favor the Israeli perspective, failing to fully account for Palestinian beliefs and motivations. John Doyle, director of the Institute for Interna- tional Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction at Dublin City University, wrote a chapter focusing on Ireland’s identification with Israel and Palestine titled “Irish Na- tionalism and the Israel-Palestinian Conflict”for Ireland and the Middle East: Trade, Society and Peace, edited by Rory Miller. Doyle approaches this from two angles: the Republic of Ireland’s foreign policy and radical Irish na- tionalists’ utilization of Palestine as a comparison in po- litical discourse.8 Doyle asserts that “Irish foreign policy on Palestine is also a reflection of and consistent with support for other strong themes within modern Irish fo- reign policy—a concern with conflict resolution, strong support for the United Nations,for international law and for human rights.”9 To Doyle, the Republic of Ireland’s support for Palestine is largely based on the principles of justice and morality, whereas the more radical Northern Irish party Sinn Féin,often linked to the IRA,has tended to justify the militant nature of the IRA and PLO as part of an international anti-imperial movement.10 In Civil Society, Post-Colonialism and Transnatio- nal Solidarity: The Irish and the Middle East Conflict, Ma- rie-Violaine Louvet examines Irish solidarity with the Palestinian cause through the lens of post-colonial theory. Louvet asserts that Ireland’s identification with colonia- lism lends itself to “a sense of a shared history, however HISTORIOGRAPHY S 94 TIOCFAIDH ÁR LÁ
- 100. constructed, between Irelandand Palestine.”11 According to this theory,Irish civil society’s commitment to transna- tional solidarity is conditional on individuals’ perceptions of their history and how it relates to ongoing conflict in the Middle East.12 Louvet observes that Irish and Palestinian similarities “are anchored in: resistance to a colonial force; the building of an identity in resistance against the pre- vailing system; the rejection of a territory’s partition; and the struggle against the inscription of discrimination in a legislative system based on the defence of human rights.”13 She also notes that the rise of Palestinian nationalism in the 1970s coincided with both the emergence of Ireland as an international player and the development of revisionist Irish histories.Louvet’s interpretation of Irish-Palestinian relations falls short, however, due to her disregard for the considerable impact the Lebanese Civil War had on Ire- land’s perception of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The purpose of this paper is to examine the evo- lution of Ireland’s relationship with Palestine from 1970 through the early 1980s in order to demonstrate how the relatively moderate government of the Republic of Ireland came to adopt a cause that was sponsored ini- 11 Marie-Violaine Louvet, Civil Society, Post-Colonialism and Transnational Solidarity: The Irish and the Middle East Conflict, (London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016), 5. 12 Louvet, Civil Society, 7-8. 13 Louvet, Civil Society, 9-10. tially by the radical factions of Irish society. While Mil- ler, Doyle, and Louvet present compelling arguments, each scholar uses a single framework to encapsulate the complex Irish-Palestinian relationship based on what each perceives to be ingrained Irish beliefs. Conversely, I aim to navigate the intricacies of this relationship by distinguishing between IRA and Irish civilians’ percep- tions,illustrating the evolution of the Palestinians’tactics to gain Irish support, and analyzing how factors such as Ireland’s role on the world stage, the 1967 Six Day War, the Troubles,the Lebanese Civil War,and Ireland’s colo- nial history each contributed to Ireland’s solidarity with Palestine. Furthermore, this paper illustrates diplomacy’s critical role, evidenced by the antagonism between Tel Aviv and Dublin and by the influence Ireland was able to have on European foreign policy. Several comparative studies between Ireland,Israel-Palestine,India,and Sou- th Africa have been undertaken by academics, but I do not seek to compare experiences of partition, apartheid, and oppression. Rather, these experiences are presented in order to emphasize the importance of Irish collective memory in shaping foreign policy. IRA-PLO Mural in Northern Ireland, date unknown. [3] VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 95
- 101. HE PROVISIONAL IRAarose as a reac- tionary movement in the early days of the Troubles, following the violent suppression of an Irish Catholic-led civil rights cam- paign by local Protestants and British troops. The civil rights movement of the 1960s brought about a renewed commitment among Northern Irish Catholics to gain independence from Britain, but this was derailed by the militarization of Irish nationalists.Left-wing republicans believed a sustained protest campaign would eventually lead to the creation of a democratic socialist republic that encompassed the entire island of Ireland.14 Initial pro- tests in the Northern Irish cities of Derry and Belfast were organized by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), which took cues from Mar- tin Luther King Jr.'s policy of civil disobedience in the United States. For some, however, the demonstrations were “a way for republicans to expose the true character of the Northern Irish state […] If the authorities res- ponded with hostility and repression, nationalists would then be open to more radical ideas, and the IRA might once again come to the fore, this time with the popular support that had been lacking.”15 The British attempt to violently suppress the civil rights movement enabled the rise of the Provisional IRA, which split from the Offi- cial IRA in 1969.Finn,in reference to Northern Ireland, states that “the Irish republican movement had two main components, an underground armed wing and a legal political party, formally separate although they were of- ten led by the same people.”16 The IRA training manual, commonly referred to as the "Green Book", proclaimed its violent tactics to be a morally justified crusade against 14 Daniel Finn, One Man’s Terrorist: A Political History of the IRA, (New York: Verso, 2019), 47. 15 Finn, One Man’s Terrorist, 44. The IRA had unsuccessful campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s. 16 Finn, One Man’s Terrorist, 3. 17 Irish Republican Army, The Handbook for Volunteers of the Irish Republican Army: Notes on Guerilla Warfare (Northern Ireland: 1977). 18 Finn, One Man’s Terrorist, 2. 19 Brian Hanley, "'But then they started all this killing': Attitudes to the I.R.A. in the Irish Republic since 1969," Irish Historical Studies 38, no. 151 (New York: Cambridge Univertsity Press, 2013), 441. 20 Finn, One Man’s Terrorist, 89-93; Andrew Hough, "Prisoners in Northern Ireland 'Subjected to Waterboarding by British Army Officers,'" The Telegraph, December 22, 2009. 21 Hanley, "Attitudes to the I.R.A.," 443, 456. foreign occupation. Gaining public support from a his- torically conservative Catholic community required the IRA to engage in a defensive propaganda campaign,fra- ming IRA members as vigilantes dedicated to liberating the Irish people.17 The legitimacy of the IRA’s violent tactics was contentious among Northern Irish and those living in the Republic. In Northern Ireland, the IRA’s political party Sinn Féin was supported by approximately a third Irish Catholic population in each election.18 Many Nor- thern Irish viewed the IRA’s armed struggle as a natural continuation of the Irish War of Independence,in which the Original IRA staged an insurrection to gain freedom from British rule.19 Moreover, in Northern Ireland, the Irish Catholic minority continued to experience discri- mination from the British Protestant majority and re- pression at the hands of the British military. Irish Ca- tholics suspected of supporting the IRA were subject to internment where prisoners were tortured through beatings, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding.20 The frequent arrest of innocent civilians, often students and civil rights activists, radicalized the Northern Irish com- munity, who felt obliged to protect their families and neighbors through any means necessary. This is not to say, however, that Irish citizens in the Republic were not sympathetic to the cause. Hanley argues that “support for the IRA was often more wides- pread than many were prepared to admit and there were periods when aspects of the armed struggle could be to- lerated […] In late 1971 Irish military intelligence esti- mated that there were‘20/40,000 active supporters’of the I.R.A. in the Republic.”21 In the Republic, Irish civilians’ toleration of insurgency violence oscillated based on the state of affairs in the North and whether the violence was preemptive or retributive.The early 1970s saw a rise in public sympathy as “incidents like Bloody Sunday and policies like internment without trial helped the PIRA win the popular support of the Catholic population in THE RISE OF THE PROVISIONAL IRA T 96 TIOCFAIDH ÁR LÁ
- 102. Northern Ireland, aswell as the passive and active sup- port of followers in the Republic of Ireland.”22 The Irish government in the Republic worked diligently to disas- sociate itself from the radical factions of Irish politics. Despite this, the success of the IRA relied on a certain degree of tacit consent from the civilian population, and these sympathizers frequently wrote letters to the Irish Times condemning imperialism, colonialism, Zionism, and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. N 1964, THE Palestine Liberation Or- ganization was established to promote the Palestinian nationalist movement and to serve as an umbrella for numerous or- ganizations and factions. Palestinian guerrillas, or fe- dayeen, are among those represented by the PLO. The fedayeen’s rise in popularity in the 1970s grew out of Arab resentment from the 1967 Six Day War and coin- cided with the rise of the Provisional IRA. Within a few years, Fatah, the largest fedayeen organization, ef- fectively controlled the PLO and therefore Palestinian politics. In a 1972 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report, American intelligence noted that “Fatah pre- sents itself as an organization of strugglers who batt- le in the front lines for their ‘occupied homeland’ […] [and] Fatah’s image as a moderate organization unen- cumbered by ideology was studiously promoted by its propaganda to permit Fatah to gain broad-based politi- cal acceptance.”23 Much like the IRA, Fatah, the PLO, 22 Christopher Paul et al., "Northern Ireland, 1969-1999," in Paths to Victory: Detailed Insurgency Case Studies (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2013), 327. 23 Central Intelligence Agency, "CA Propaganda Perspectives September 1972," September 1, 1972, CREST, Gener- al CIA Records, Released August 5, 1998, 5. 24 Claire Sterling, "Terrorism: Tracing the International Network," New York Times, March 1, 1981. 25 Sterling, "Terrorism." 26 CIA, "CA Propaganda Perspectives," 3. 27 Finn, One Man’s Terrorist, 5. and smaller fedayeen organizations worked to portray their actions as a necessary and righteous fight against their oppressors. Initial contact between the two organizations was made as part of the international arms trade in the 1960s. Terrorist organizations across the globe developed an in- formal underground network to facilitate the black market weapons trade and recruit would-be militants for terrorist training camps.The PLO formed training centers in Sy- ria, Lebanon, Jordan, South Yemen, Algeria, and Libya, and IRA members were noted to have first attended trai- ning camps in Jordan in 1969.24 In a report on internatio- nal terrorism,the New York Times reported: In May 1972, IRA leaders sat in at the first interna- tional terrorist summit, organized by George Habash in Baddawi, Lebanon. And two months later, in Paris, Habash’s Palestinian Front and the armed bands of 12 other nationalities signed a formal ‘Declaration of Sup- port’ for the Provisional IRA. Fifty Provos were selected for advanced guerilla training in Lebanon. Before long, there was a steady flow of IRA men to South Yemen for work with Wadi Haddad.25 The IRA-PLO relationship soon became mu- tually beneficial. The PLO was willing to smuggle im- ported Soviet weapons to the IRA, and in exchange, the IRA carried out terrorist operations in Europe as direc- ted.26 The bond between Irish republicans and Palesti- nian guerrillas was strengthened due to the pair’s com- mon enemies and methods of resistance. Both the PLO and the IRA were able to downplay some of the violence carried out by their or- ganizations by framing their actions in terms of a grea- ter, righteous fight for self determination, often invoking socialist and Marxist principles.27 To gain sympathy and avoid being branded as terrorists,the IRA sought to pro- mote its cause by portraying the Irish nationalist move- ment as part of a worldwide struggle against colonialism and imperialism. In the case of Fatah, the CIA argued that “the only philosophical basis required to establish I "ALLIANCE FOR VIOLENCE": THE NATURE OF THE IRA-PLO RELATIONSHIP VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 97
- 103. international connections isa common conviction in terrorism and violent revolution as the means to destroy the established order.”28 By positioning these nationalist movements as a unified front against co- lonialism, the IRA and PLO gained sympathy from populations that suffered under oppressive forei- gn rulers and drew attention from foreign leaders seeking to destabilize Europe and the Middle East. The New York Times reported that by the end of 1971, “the I.R.A. was getting to be a focus of worldwide revolutionary interest second only to the Palesti- nian resistance.”29 In efforts to undermine Western democracy, the Soviet Union and Libya bankrolled the IRA and PLO through direct funding and vast weapons shipments.30 The utilization of socialist doc- trine therefore granted the PLO and IRA legitimacy, created common enemies, and increased the scope of their future operations. The PLO and the IRA developed a symbio- tic relationship rooted in anti-imperialist ideology. Many Palestinians, having been driven out of their homeland following British occupation, perceived armed struggle to be the only viable option to re- claim their national identity and homeland.31 The British spearheaded the partitions of both Ireland and Palestine, and the IRA-PLO relationship found its footing on the legacy of separation. Britain’s fai- lure to establish an independent Palestinian state and refusal to grant Northern Ireland independence created the conditions necessary for the empower- ment of violent revolutionaries. Irish civilians, having experienced racial dis- crimination, religious intolerance, and oppression at the hands of the British, saw the Palestinian strug- 28 CIA, "CA Propaganda Perspectives," 2. 29 Sterling, “Terrorism.” 30 "Weapons and Technology," Inside the IRA, The IRA and Sinn Fein, Frontline; Sterling, “Terrorism.” 31 "The British Army in Palestine," National Army Museum. After World War I Britain was granted the Mandate of Palestine and maintained control of the region for 30 years. In 1917 Britain had promised that a Jewish homeland would be created in Palestine, and when the Ottoman Empire fell, the British gained control of Palestine and oversaw the immi- gration of 100,000 Jews there. After World War II, the UN drew up a partition plan for Palestine, and the British withdrew. Israel declared independence in 1947, but the promise of an independent Arab state fell short. 32 Aonghus MacDonnell, "War in the Air," Irish Times, Letters to the Editor, September 12, 1970. 33 Carole O'Reilly, "Review ofThe IrishTimes: 150Years of Influence," Reviews in History. 34 Kevin J. O'Reilly, "Fighting Their Corners," Irish Times, Letters to the Editor, July 6 1972. gle as analogous to their own. As Israel grew stron- ger after the Six Day War in 1967, sympathy for the Israelis, prevalent after the Holocaust, diminished among the Irish. Israel’s expansion led to a sharp influx of Palestinian refugees in neighboring coun- tries, leading Irish citizens to see the Zionists as another colonizing force. In defense of Palestinian guerrillas one Irishman wrote a letter to the editor of the Irish Times, proclaiming: What help was world sympathy and popular support in repatriating the Palestinian refugees since 1948? […] The artificially-created State of Zionist Israel was founded in essence on force, and it will not collapse under the weight of hostile inter- national opinion but with military defeat […] [The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] opted for a military solution in place of a futile attempt to win over ‘the hearts and minds’ of the enlighte- ned Zionists. 32 Irish newspapers reporting on unrest in the Middle East often wrote from a pro-Arab stance, which helped steer the public to sympathize with the Palestinian cause. Western criticism of Israel was fueled by Irish citizens who wrote letters to Ireland’s leading newspaper, the Irish Times. The Irish Times served as a barometer of Irish society and politics in the latter half of the twentieth century, occupying “a unique position of influence in Irish society.”33 In a letter to the editor published in 1972, the writer criticized the newspaper for “[trying] to justify Is- raeli aggression [...] in the face of an almost unani- mous condemnation by the [UN] Secrity Council.”34 As the 1970s progressed, Irish newspapers became increasingly and unapologetically critical of Israel, partially in response to complaints that the Western media was failing to report on atrocities committed Israel-Palestine Through the Irish Postcolonial Lens—1967-1974: 98 TIOCFAIDH ÁR LÁ
- 104. by Israelis dueto the perception of Israel as a Wes- tern foothold in the region. Through the mid to late 1970s, Irish citizens continued to voice their opposition towards the Israeli government and often characterized Israel as a neoco- lonial state. Left-leaning Irish civilians decried Zio- nism, or Jewish nationalism, as a form of racism.35 In an extensive opinion piece written in 1975, one Irish citizen wrote: If Zionism meant or implied the seizure of Palestine from its Arab inhabitants in order to establish there an exclusively or preponderantly Jewish State, then inesca- pably it stands convicted of racism […] If on the other hand, this is not what Zionism meant, then the Jewish seizure of Palestine is revealed as a naked act of colonia- list aggression.36 The term "Zionist" became highly poli- ticized, and Israelis were often referred to as im- migrant squatters.37 The increasing popularity of right-wing politics in Israeli politics after the Six Day War further amplified criticism from left-lea- ning Irish citizens. Israel’s aggressive expansionism and creation of settlements in occupied territories, in direct violation of international law, corroborated Irish citizens’ accusations that Zionism was merely a front for settler colonialism.38 In 1969, the Irish-Arab Society was for- med in Dublin to promote trade between Ireland and the Arab world. The Society utilized its plat- form to push a political agenda that included the 35 David J Smyth, "UN Voting," Irish Times , Letters to the Editor, July 9, 1979. 36 Atif Atouk, "Zionism Merely a Cover for Israeli Imperialism," Irish Times,Opinion, December 30, 1975. 37 John Tozer, "Arab Rights," Irish Times , Letters to the Editor, July 12, 1975. 38 "Israel Refuses to Halt Settlements in Occupied Areas," Irish Times,February 27, 1978. 39 Marie-Violaine Louvet, "Shedding Light on the Arab World: the Irish-Arab News,1975-85," Irish Studies in International Affairs23, no. 1 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2012), 191. 40 Louvet, "Irish Arab News," 200. 41 Louvet, "Irish Arab News," 201. 42 Louvet, "Irish Arab News," 197. creation of an independent Palestinian state.39 The Society’s founding members were postgraduate doctors, and they advocated for Palestinians from a more nuanced perspective than the IRA. There was some overlap, however, between the Irish-Arab Society and the IRA, as “the main force behind [the Irish-Arab Society’s] foundation was Sean Ryan, a Dublin businessman who had earlier been interned […] [under the] Special Powers Act during the IRA campaign in the 1950s.”40 Sean Ryan’s past as- sociations therefore undercut the Society’s success, due to suspicions that it was functioning as an in- termediary between the IRA, Libya, and terrorist organizations.41 The Irish-Arab Society did, however, play a role in shaping public debate on Palestine through published letters to the editor in the Irish Times. In the Society’s magazine, the Irish-Arab News, the founders argued that “‘Israeli propaganda presented a one-sided picture of the Arab-Israeli struggle that was uncritically accepted by the Irish people as a whole, and in the mass media remarkably little in- terest in, or sympathy with, the Arabs were shown’, and this had to be changed.”42 In reality, through the 1960s the Irish public was sympathetic to both the Israelis and the Arabs, and Irish newspapers at- tempted to balance the two perspectives. The ag- gression displayed by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Is- raeli War compelled the Irish to be concerned for the Palestinians, and this newfound sympathy was likely seen as an opportunity by the Irish-Arab So- ciety’s founders to foster relations between Ireland and the Arab world. The Society helped shift Irish public opinion to become more critical of Israel and ensure that the Palestinian issue remained at the forefront of Ireland’s foreign policy concerns. Zionism as Neo-Colonialism: Irish Civil Society's Criticism of Israel, 1975-1979 The Irish-Arab Society VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 99
- 105. S A COUNTRYthat experienced rather than imposed colonialism, in geopolitics Ireland was often trusted as a neutral force to help stabilize and restore sove- reignty to war-torn regions. After gaining indepen- dence from Britain in the early twentieth century, Ireland maintained a policy of neutrality in forei- gn affairs through the 1950s. In 1955, Ireland was granted admission to the UN and began defining its political role on the international stage through “participation in peacekeeping missions and service on the [UN] Security Council at times of great in- ternational tension.”43 In the period of decoloniza- tion after World War II, European countries wit- hdrew from the Middle East, but the outbreak of the Arab-Israeli conflict destabilized the region. Many European countries were hesitant to inter- vene, but the UN began a series of peacekeeping missions. In 1958, Ireland contributed fifty soldiers to the United Nations Observer Group in Leba- non, initiating a nontraditional approach to inter- ventionism based on humanitarianism.44 This poli- cy of “Active Neutrality [envisioned] a non-aligned Ireland acting as a bridge between the developed and developing world.”45 Ireland further distingui- 43 "One Hundred Years of Irish Foreign Policy," Royal Irish Academy, last modified October 15, 2019. 44 Óglaigh na hÉireann, Irish Defense Forces, "Middle East Past Missions," Overseas Deployments. 45 "Ireland - Foreign Relations," Global Security. Ireland's "triple lock" policy requires UN authorization and approval from the Irish government and parliament before Irish soldiers can be deployed overseas. 46 Noel Dorr, "Ireland at the United Nations: 40 Years On," Irish Studies in International Affairs7, no. 1 (Dublin: Royal Irish Acedemy, 1996), 46. 47 Dorr, "Ireland at the United Nations," 41. 48 Jeremy Bowen, “1967 War: Six Days that Changed the Middle East,” BBC, June 4, 2017. 49 Berry and Greg Philo, Israel and Palestine: Competing Histories,(London: Pluto Press, 2006), 48-49. 50 Berry and Philo, Israel and Palestine, 49. 51 The 1973 Arab-Israeli War is commonly referred to as the Yom Kippur War, the Ramadan War, and the October War, as the war began on Jewish holiday Yom Kippur in October 1973. Ramadan, Islam’s holy month of fasting and prayer, also occurred in October of 1973. The war will be referred to as the 1973 Arab-Israeli War in order to avoid sug- gesting a pro-Israeli/pro-Arab stance and to mitigate any confusion. shed itself from other Western UN member states in 1960 through strong support for the Declara- tion on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.46 Ireland’s national identity was significantly influenced and shaped by the Iri- sh people’s experiences under British rule; thus the country sought to defend the right of self-determi- nation for weaker states. 47 Hostility between Israel and the Arab world escalated following the 1967 Six Day War between Israel and allied Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. The ag- gression that Israel displayed tarnished the country’s image. Israel’s unexpected victory led to the occu- pation of the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem and displaced nearly 400,000 Palestinians.48 Euro- pean sympathy for the Palestinians arose out of this refugee crisis, as many Palestinians “had sought re- fuge in the West Bank and Gaza after having to abandon their homes in 1948-49.”49 The Israeli Defense Forces’ (IDF) treatment of Palestinians sparked outrage, and between 1967 and 1971, the UN estimated that the Israelis had destroyed over 16,000 Palestinian Arab homes in the territories seized during the Six Day War in addition to “35 villages in the occupied Golan Heights that were razed to the ground.”50 International perception of Israel shifted drastically during this time, as the seemingly vulnerable state became the aggressor. Western Europe began to take more decisive stances on the ongoing conflict in the Middle East following the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.51 In 1973, Ire- land, the United Kingdom, and Denmark joined the European Economic Community (EEC), a multi- national organization established by the Treaty of Rome in 1957. The organization was founded by ACTIVE NEUTRALITY: IRELAND'S ROLE ON THE INTER- NATIONAL STAGE A 100 TIOCFAIDH ÁR LÁ
- 106. France, Italy, Belgium,West Germany, the Nether- lands, and Luxembourg in order to promote eco- nomic cooperation and establish a common market in western Europe.52 The EEC was “directly affec- ted by the consequences of the [1973 Arab-Israeli War] […] In order to force the Western countries to put pressure on Israel […] the Arab oil-produ- cing countries cut exports to Europe and Ameri- ca.”53 After a ceasefire was declared, the EEC rea- lized that a comprehensive solution to restore peace in the Middle East would be necessary. The EEC called for Israel to return the occupied territories forcefully acquired in the 1967 war and recognized that “in the establishment of a just and lasting peace account must be taken of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.”54 The ambiguity of the statement concerning Palestinian rights ultimately was a re- flection of the EEC’s various and often conflicting geopolitical interests. 52 "The History of the European Union," About the EU, European Union, last modified July 28, 2020. Since 1993, the EEC has been incorporated into the EU. The EEC is generally considered to be the predecessor of the EU. Despite its name, the EEC exercised control over political matters as well. 53 "The EEC as a Major Player in International Relations," 1969-1979 Completion, Deepening and Widening, Histor- ical Events in the European Integration Process (1945-2014); "Relations with the Middle East and the Oil Crises," 1969- 1979 Completion, Deepening and Widening, Historical Events in the European Integration Process (1945-2014). 54 "Declaration of the Nine Foreign Ministers of 6 November 1973, in Brussels, on the Situation in the Middle East," Joint Statement by the Governments of the EEC (6 November 1973). N THE MID-1970s, Ireland was not yet ready to officially endorse Palestinian statehood,but the Irish government believed the Palestinians should have the opportunity to observe UN proceedings. At the same time, Yasser Arafat, founding member of Fatah and Chairman of the PLO, embarked on a new approach to gain Pales- tinian statehood by appealing directly to countries dee- med sympathetic to the cause. When Ireland joined the EEC in 1973, Irish politicians began using this platform to advocate for pro-Palestinian policies. Member states of Free Palestine Murals in Belfast. [4] IRELAND AT THE UN: GIVING THE PLO A SEAT AT THE TABLE I VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 101
- 107. the EEC werebeginning to believe that “a solution to the wider Arab-Israeli conflict necessitated a resolution of the Palestine problem.”55 In particular, Ireland, Italy, and France adopted positions in favor of the Palestinians, but each country’s purpose for doing so differed. Jacob Aba- di states that “Italy’s proximity to the Arab world and its vulnerability not only to the Arab boycott but also to Pa- lestinian terrorism”encouraged Italy to vote in favor of the Palestinian cause, and this policy also helped to appease left-wing members of its Parliament who sought to foster positive relations with Arab nations.56 Similarly, France’s Palestinian support was fueled by self-interest, as France “perceived the advocacy of […] Palestinian rights to be the best means of supporting French interests, which in- cluded the protection of access to Middle East oil, arms sales to the region, regional security through a just peace settlement, and the maintenance of French political in- fluence and independence.”57 Ireland distinguished itself by approaching foreign policy from a moral perspective which encouraged impartiality. In 1974 Arab states voted unanimously to reco- gnize the PLO as the official representative of the Palesti- nians.58 The same month,the United Nations voted in favor of allowing the PLO to participate in the Assembly as an observer.Ireland,Italy,and France voted in favor of this re- solution,sparking outrage among Israeli leaders.59 The Irish government maintained its support,asserting that they held “a ‘nuanced’view […] [The government] does not approve of the terrorism of the PLO, but [believes] the PLO is ca- pable of being ‘nudged’into right directions and nothing is gained by pretending the PLO does not exist.”60 In other words, Ireland hoped by providing support and allowing Palestinian voices to be heard that the PLO in turn would become more moderate, and the Irish government suspec- ted that ignoring the PLO would lead to further radica- lization. The ongoing conflict in Northern Ireland likely influenced this approach.Throughout the Troubles, British 55 Miller, Ireland and the Palestine Question , 74. 56 Jacob Abadi, "Constraints and Adjustments in Italy’s Policy toward Israel," Middle Eastern Studies 38, no. 4 (Ox- fordshire, UK: Taylor & Francis, 2002), 64. 57 Pia Christina Wood, "France and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: The Mitterand Policies, 1981-1992," Middle East Journal 47, no. 1 (Washington D.C.: The Middle East Journal, 1993), 21. 58 Henry Tanners, "Arab Leaders Issue Call for a Palestinian State; Arafat Given Main Role," New York Times, October 29, 1974. 59 Miller, Ireland and the Palestine Question , 79. 60 American Embassy Dublin, Ireland. Telegram to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, U.S. Department of State, American Embassies Algeria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Luxembourg, Mauritania, Northern Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, and Yemen. "Euro-Arab Meeting in Dublin," September 16, 1976, WikiLeaks. attempts to censor and eradicate the IRA often resulted in a surge in the IRA’s membership and deadly retaliation.The Irish government sought to foster a sense of understanding of the PLO’s motives from its own experience and avoid instigating violence. N THE LATE 1970s, Ireland’s interces- sion on behalf of the Palestinians escalated from rhetorical to a fixed commitment as the Irish Defense Forces agreed to be a part of the UN’s intervention in Lebanon. The outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 made evident the ramifica- tions of the failure to resolve the Palestinian issue. Many displaced Palestinians lived in South Lebanon near the Israeli border, and the PLO based many of their opera- tions there. PLO raids into Israel destabilized Lebanon, leading to internal power struggles as seen in a series of violent confrontations between Lebanese Christians and Palestinian Muslims. A ceasefire was brokered by Syria, and Arab states agreed to place peacekeeping troops in Lebanon. Lebanon was divided: West Beirut and sou- thern Lebanon were controlled by the PLO, and East Beirut and northern Lebanon were controlled by Chris- tian militia groups and Syria. The PLO resumed its at- tacks from the Lebanese border into Israel, and Israel retaliated by invading Lebanon in March 1978. The UN quickly intervened, creating the United Nations CAMP SHAMROCK: IRISH EXPERIENCES IN LEBANON I 102 TIOCFAIDH ÁR LÁ
- 108. Interim Force inLebanon (UNIFIL) to ensure Israel’s withdrawal and reinforce the Lebanese government’s authority within its own borders.61 Ireland contributed members of the Irish Army to UNIFIL,continuing the Irish Army’s tradition of ser- ving in peacekeeping missions. UNIFIL peacekeepers were intended to serve as a buffer between Palestinians and Israelis, oversee the withdrawal of IDF forces from southern Lebanon, and restore Lebanese sovereignty.62 61 "UNIFIL Fact Sheet," Current Operations, United Nations Peacekeeping. 62 United Nations, U.N. Security Council Resolution 425, March 19, 1978. 63 Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 135. 64 Fisk, Pity the Nation,136-138. Naqoura is a city in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border and within the se- curity belt formed by Christian militiamen and Israelis. 65 Philip O'Connor, "Palestine in Irish Politics, A History: The Irish State and the 'Question of Palestine' 1918-2011," Sadaka Paper no. 8, The Ireland Palestine Alliance, July 2011, 16. 66 Miller, Ireland and the Palestine Question, 98-99. 67 Fisk, Pity the Nation,152.; Olivia O’Leary, "Hostility Grows as Israeli Envoy Attacks Ireland," Irish Times, The successful execution of the UN mission was thwarted, however, due to “the arrogant assumption that the UN was so august a body that no one—least of all the militias of Lebanon or their regional superpower allies—would dare contradict it.”63 This fallacy became apparent as Christian militiamen formed a security belt along a strip of land in southern Lebanon reaching the Israeli border, in accordance with IDF orders. This en- abled the Israelis to occupy southern Lebanon under the guise of the militias. UNIFIL attempted to reins- tate order by setting up its base of operations in Naqou- ra but found itself surrounded and outnumbered.64 The uneasy relationship between Israel and Ireland worse- ned as “Irish soldiers [faced] the daily arrogance of the Israeli Army, and [grew close] with the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples.” Irish Senator Mick Lannigan as- serted that “it was the experiences of thousands of or- dinary Irish soldiers in Lebanon that lay at the root of the widespread Irish popular sympathy for the Palesti- nians.”65 As Irish UN peacekeepers were routinely tar- geted and killed by Christian militiamen, resentment proliferated back in Ireland. In April 1980,a series of hostage crises in the Irish UNIFIL sector in At Tiri further impaired the tenuous relationship between Ireland and Israel. Israeli-backed militias accused the Irish of allowing the PLO to set up bases within the sector, and militiamen and Irish soldiers had several violent clashes. In a two-week period, Chris- tian militiamen took a total of fifteen Irish soldiers hos- tage.On April 18,Privates John O’Mahony,Thomas Bar- rett, and Derek Smallhorne were taken by militia forces. O’Mahony was shot and abandoned while Barrett and Smallhorne were first held hostage and killed later that day.66 Shlomo Argov,the Israeli ambassador to Britain and Ireland, fueled feelings of hostility during an interview on a Dublin radio station when instead of condemning the men responsible for the deaths of Irish UN peacekeepers, Argov “lectured the Irish on their Christian duties in Le- banon.”67 At the funeral of Private Stephen Griffin,“Irish officers among the mourners spoke angrily of Israel’s ‘com- Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organization giving a speech at the UN General Assembly in 1974. [5] VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 103
- 109. 104 TIOCFAIDH ÁR LÁ plicity’in the killings.”68 Perception of the Irish batta- lion’s role in Lebanon also influenced Irish foreign policy on the wider Arab-Israeli conflict. Miller attests that the hostage crises in April 1980 swiftly crippled Irish-Is- raeli relations, marking “the beginning of two decades during which time tensions over Israeli actions in Leba- non would have a major influence on Irish political and diplomatic attitudes towards the Palestine question.”69 Ireland released a Cabinet statement following the Iri- sh soldiers’ deaths wherein the government emphasized Ireland’s critical role in UN missions to promote peace and, in reference to Israel, condemned the calculated at- tacks on Irish troops by militia groups “supplied, trained, advised,and supported from outside by a United Nations member state.”70 The Irish were enraged, as they viewed their role in UNIFIL as vital for regional peace and sta- bility,and the Irish battalion had a reputation as the most tolerant and even-tempered of the UN’s troops.71 Des- pite this, Irish peacekeepers had the highest number of fatalities out of all countries that served in UNIFIL, and Ireland held Israel responsible for approximately a third of these deaths.72 Irish and Israeli newspapers sharply criticized one another routinely,and Irish public opinion of Israel became increasingly negative as the Israelis failed to display sym- pathy for Irish casualties. Fisk argues that following Irish foreign minister Brian Lennihan’s recognition of the PLO in February 1980,“the Irish [were] singled out for vilifica- tion by the Israelis. Journalists working out of Jerusalem were treated to long and supposedly humorous discourses on the whiskey-drinking Irish, or the ‘Johnny Walker Irish’ as the Israelis and their militia allies dubbed the UN bat- talion.”73 Furthermore, Israeli newspapers accused the Iri- sh battalion of being partisan and demonizing the Israelis and their allies.In May 1980,an article in the Jerusalem Post declared: “‘the pro-Palestinian bias of ordinary soldiers in Ireland’s UN force has been no secret,’” and accused Irish Catholics of supporting the internationalization of Jerusa- lem to appease the Vatican.74 April 21, 1980. 68 Fisk, Pity the Nation,153. 69 Miller, Ireland and the Palestine Question , 97. 70 Government of Ireland to United Nations Secretary-General, April 20, 1980. 71 Robert Fisk, "Irish Open Fire after Gun Attack," Irish Times, April 12, 1980. 72 "United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon," Wikipedia; O'Connor, "Palestine in Irish Politics," 16. 73 Fisk, Pity the Nation, 154. 74 Fisk, Pity the Nation, 153-154. 75 Charles Devereaux, "PLO Pledge on IRA Accepted," Irish Times,January 14, 1980. 76 Louvet, " Irish Arab News, " 202. S IRELAND BEGAN adopting more concrete pro-Palestinian policies,Arafat wor- ked to distance himself and the PLO from their previous associations with the IRA. In January 1980, Arafat pledged that the PLO would no longer be involved with the IRA, as doing so would jeo- pardize diplomatic relations with Ireland.75 This suggests that the PLO was willing to concede previous harsh stances in an attempt to gain legitimacy as a political body among the international community. Whether or not Arafat’s pledge was genuine has been debated. As the leader of the PLO,Arafat was associated with several terrorist groups in earlier years. However, this change in approach, from cutting ties to terrorist networks to wor- king through official diplomatic channels, indicates that Arafat knew that in order to gain the support he needed, the PLO must at least appear to be above board.In 1980, at a joint conference for the Palestine National Council and the Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Coo- peration, the PLO reemphasized their abandonment of the IRA cause, stating that “the Palestinians would not cease their armed struggle to achieve the creation of a Palestinian state, ‘but in the process of campaigning for the backing of European governments and establishing respectability, they have dropped all support […] for the provisional IRA and all such groups.’”76 The PLO imple- SEEKING STATEHOOD: YASSER ARAFAT'S PUBLIC RELATIONS CAMPAIGN A
- 110. mented this strategyin order to gain credibility, hoping that Palestinian insurgents would be seen as freedom fi- ghters rather than terrorists. RELAND STRONGLY believed that the Palestinian people had a fundamental right to establish an independent state and argued that diplomatic recognition of the PLO was in accordance with the Palestinians’right to choose their own representative.77 A few weeks after Arafat pledged that the PLO would dissolve its links to the IRA, Irish Foreign Minister Brian Lenihan issued a joint statement, commonly known as the Bahrain Declaration, alongside Bahraini Foreign Minister Shaikh Muhammad Bin Mubarak Al-Khalifa recognizing the PLO as the offi- cial representatives of the Palestinian people and calling 77 "Haughey Claims Good RTE Relations," Irish Times,February 27, 1980. 78 Irish Foreign Minister Brian Lenihan and Bahraini Foreign Minister Shaikh Muhammad Bin Mubarak Al-Khalifa, "The Bahrain Declaration," February 10, 1980, Manama, Bahrain. 79 O'Connor, "Palestine in Irish Politics," 16. 80 Louvet, Civil Society, 3. for an independent Palestinian state.78 In an interview following the release of this statement, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin “[declared] the Declaration ‘a hostile act’ by Ireland against Israel and tantamount to acceptance of the PLO’s ‘right to destroy the Jewish state.’”79 However, rather than appeasing the Israelis, the Irish government doubled down on its support for the Palestinian state by working to gain the support of the EEC. Louvet asserts: With [the Bahrain Declaration] acknowledging the rights of Palestinians to self-determination, Ireland was a precursor in the European Economic Community, as this statement was made a few months before the Venice declaration (June 1980) was issued by the nine member states of the European Community, making much the same commitment.80 The Venice Declaration upheld the same prin- ciples as the Bahrain Declaration, marking a transition in the EEC’s position on Palestine. Rather than trea- ting the Palestinian issue as simply a refugee crisis, the EEC recognized that a comprehensive peace agreement Respects paid to UNIFIL Irish Peacekeepers who lost their lives in the 1980s, April 2021. [6] BAHRAIN AND VENICE I VOLUME XI ISSUE I SPRING 2021 105
- 111. 106 TIOCFAIDH ÁR LÁ betweenboth sides would be necessary. The Venice De- claration certified the Palestinians’ right to self-deter- mination and acknowledged the PLO as the legitimate representative body for the Palestinian people.81 RELAND'S SUPPORT OF Palestine has been characterized by some scholars as part of a broader Irish tendency to in- terpret current events around the world within Irish historical context. However, a myriad of external factors led up to Ireland’s call for Palestinian self-determination, including: the influence of the IRA, Irish civilian pro-Palestinian campaigns, the deterioration of Irish-Israeli relations, and the PLO’s commitment to severing ties with terrorist groups. Ireland’s initial support for Palestine was a consequence of the rise of the Provisional IRA du- ring the Troubles. The IRA’s alliance with the PLO aided in directing Irish citizens’ attention to the Is- rael-Palestine conflict. Many Irish citizens rejected the violent tactics of the IRA but sympathized with the reasoning behind the insurgency, and the mo- tivations of the PLO were seen in a similar light. The goodwill fostered between Irish soldiers and the Palestinians in the mid-to-late 1970s during the Lebanese Civil War prompted the PLO to begin to rescind its ties to the IRA in favor of the Irish go- vernment, in hopes of gaining legitimacy. International attention was drawn to the Iri- sh peacekeepers’ role in Lebanon, enabling Ireland to ascend as an influential diplomatic power. Irish peacekeepers had been stationed in the Middle East since 1958, but it was not until after the 1967 Six Day War that Irish sympathies shifted to support Palestine more earnestly. At this time, the govern- ment of Ireland began vocalizing support for Pales- tinians from a humanitarian perspective, and the war provoked Irish journalists to write from increasingly pro-Arab stances which placed further pressure on the Irish government. Irish diplomats were cautious, 81 European Council, "Venice Declaration," June 13, 1980, Venice, Italy. 82 Miller, Ireland and the Palestine Question , 68, 74, 85. 83 O'Connor, "Palestine in Irish Politics," 15. 84 Shane O'Brien, "'Ireland has become an Unlikely Diplomatic Superpower,' says The Economist," Irish Central , July 20, 2020. however, not to needlessly antagonize Israel and sought to advocate for Palestinian rights while main- taining Ireland’s political and economic responsibi- lites as a member of the EEC and the UN.82 As the 1970s progressed, the war in Leba- non, notably the hostage crises in 1980, stripped Ire- land of its sympathy towards Israel. When Ireland began developing formal diplomatic relations with the PLO, Israeli politicians denounced the Irish for “lending support ‘to an organisation of murderers.’”83 Further verbal attacks paired with the hostile, so- metimes deadly, treatment of Irish peacekeepers in Lebanon brought about an antagonistic relationship between the Irish and the Israelis. The Irish percep- tion of Israel transformed from passive criticism to blatant antipathy, coinciding with a rise in Irish soli- darity with the Palestinians. By the early 1980s, despite ongoing domestic turmoil, Ireland had transformed from a previously neutral small state to what would later be called “an unlikely diplomatic superpower,” due to its tendency “to punch above its own weight on the internatio- nal stage.”84 Ireland advantageously used its position within the EEC to steer European foreign relations in favor of supporting Palestine, and Ireland’s stance on this issue certainly enabled Ireland to develop strong ties with the Arab world. Ireland’s deep sym- pathy with Palestine has been in part influenced by Irish postcolonialism. However, Ireland’s promotion of international cooperation required a recognition of the rule of law by all parties. The Irish govern- ment was not willing to condone terrorism; thus, Ireland did not recognize Palestine until the PLO renounced ties with the IRA and other notable violent associations. Irish foreign policy continues to display distinct moral considerations, drawing from Irish experiences of violence and oppression under British rule and throughout the Troubles. In Pales- tine as elsewhere, Ireland’s foreign policy remains defined by its use of soft power that reflects a desire to advocate on behalf of oppressed populations and support for international cooperation as a means of achieving peace. CONCLUSION I
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