A Heterology of American Gis During World War II

Peter Schrijvers. The GI War against Japan: American Soldiers in Asia and the Pacific during World War II. New York: New York University Press, 2002. xiii + 320 pp. $45.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8147-9816-4. Reviewed by Xavier Guillaume Published on H-US-Japan (July, 2003) An Heterology of American GIs during World adds to the vivid description of several "mental War II maps" or attitudes towards these elements with Based on diaries, letters, and memoirs of U.S. which the soldiers were confronted. As such, my troops as well as on a wide range of secondary review will concentrate on several elements that sources, Peter Schrijvers offers the reader a vivid struck me, while giving the reader an account of yet sober account of these soldiers' "own private this book that will give him/her a general idea of war with the opponent, the environment, and its structure. [themselves]" (p. ix).[1] This book actually follows In the frst part, "Frontier," Schrijvers circum‐ a previous work by Schrijvers dealing with the scribes four mental maps that structured the GIs' American combat soldiers in Europe during narratives throughout the war, each of which are World War II.[2] What is fascinating in the earlier related either to the U.S. image of the American work (The Crash of Ruins) and The GI War West, that Richard Slotkin "has called 'one of the against Japan is their important description of primary organizing principles' of American his‐ U.S. "mental maps" (p. 14) of Europe and Asia, torical memory" (p. 14), or to the exotic image, thus depicting almost coherent "patterns of per‐ commonly shared in Western culture, of Asia and ception, experience, and behavior" (p. ix) among the Pacific. The mythical fgures of the pioneers, the soldiery of the New World.[3] These patterns romantics, missionaries, and other imperialists are unfolded in three parts--Frontier, Frustration, are reproduced and even mimicked by the young Fury--delineating a growing sense of alienation soldiery, who had to rely, consciously or not, on whether from the opponent, the environment, or these fgures in order to make sense of a New oneself. It is difficult to review Schrijvers's book World. Among those four fgures which GIs tend‐ in its detailed account of individual soldiers' per‐ ed to adopt in their narratives about the region, ception of the regions, societies, and people they the fgures of the missionaries and the imperial‐ came across during World War II, as each account ists are probably the most obvious in regards to H-Net Reviews the historical setting of World War II. These two West" of the United States bears the "potential figures are closely linked to each other by their process of continuity in U.S. history. The Pacific common perception of the region and its people and Asian 'far west' was at the same time a 'new as backward and primitive (in the sense of sav‐ west'" (p. 15). It is interesting, then, to note the agism), representing, in the minds of the GIs, a continuous fashbacks in U.S. soldiers' wartime clear instance of a world stagnating for the past narratives to either the Indian wars or to the hundred years. This world, and those inhabiting American Indians themselves, when they are try‐ it, need the moral, religious, political, and eco‐ ing to give meaning to the fghts they are involved nomical guidance of the redemptive and civilizing in or to make sense of the people they are con‐ forces of the United States. fronted with, enemies or allies alike. This pattern Civilization and redemption came at a cost was far from being new as it was present during for the natives, who were often considered "part the Philippines war during which the Filipino re‐ of the rich raw material of the region" (p. 89), as bellion was often depicted in "Indian" terms. The they were being separated, detained, segregated, imagination of the GIs, nurtured by their educa‐ and relocated at will by the U.S. forces. Whether tion, the mass media, and mass entertainment, is through the eyes of the missionary or the imperi‐ also a key factor in understanding the last fgure alist, the natives were mere objects lacking a con‐ pinpointed by Schrijvers, namely the romantics. sciousness of their own selves or of their own ca‐ The Pacific islands, such as Hawaii for instance, pabilities and potentials (especially in regard to were often places that were expected to match the richness of the regions in which they lived). "prefabricated illusions" (p. 28), which soldiers Even more interesting within Schrijvers's narra‐ had been lulled into by flms featuring Dorothy tive are the two remaining fgures which allow a Lamour in the 1930s and 1940s. Even the U.S. better comprehension of the continued alienation armed forces guides, aimed at introducing these in which these young GIs were almost con‐ soldiers to foreign lands and cultures, used strained. All of them shared a common under‐ "colourful vignettes and facile generalization, standing that they were new frontiersmen. Fur‐ leaving many blank spaces for the reader to fll thermore, by their origins as migrants, it made in" (p. 29). them somehow aware that their transfer to the Schrijvers sums up very nicely a fundamental Asia/Pacific front was a form of passage to the un‐ issue regarding the fantasies and "prefabricated known. For instance, the symbolic maritime pas‐ illusions" of the American and Western imagina‐ sage across the equator was often the occasion to tion concerning Asia and the Pacific, which is that enact forms of initiation rites celebrating the of their confrontation with the reality of the coun‐ crossing of "the line." "Although most Americans tries, societies, and cultures the GIs will be con‐ had already assumed a radically new identity by fronted with: donning a uniform, it was Neptune's ritual on the "Having learned much of what they knew open seas which seemed to make them shed their about this distant region from literary and cine‐ past entirely" (p. 9). They were heading from matic sources, GIs sailed into the Pacific with vi‐ peace to war and from the known to the un‐ sions so romantic that not even the thought of known, thus allowing them to identify themselves war could chase them from their minds entirely. with the pioneers of the American West, the fron‐ The images that the American soldiers carried tier. with them were rooted in long-standing tradi‐ Schrijvers is thus correct to underline that tions. And they were romantic not only because what was designated geographically as the "Far they were fantasies that had no basis in fact, but 2 H-Net Reviews also because they were idealizations that gave the following words from a sailor, referring to the rise to dangerously high expectations." (p. 33) ocean as the "implacable opponent," perfectly il‐ The high expectations often resulted in the lustrate this point: "It is pitiless, relentless, never- frustrations that Schrijvers depicts in the second ceasing, unconquerable, and restless. Yes, and part of his book, frustrations that will lead to the even treacherous" (p. 103). Nature--whether the fury discussed in part 3. In part 1, it is interesting tangled mass of tropical vegetation, the heat, the that Asian countries and the Pacific islands were insects, the mud, the dust, the illnesses--came to seen by U.S. soldiers as what Michel Foucault be treated "as an enemy of its own right" (p. 123) would call a "heterotopia," a real location setting by the U.S. military. Furthermore, the sense of es‐ in space a myth reflecting "a form of mythical and trangement and vulnerability felt when facing real contestation of the space in which we are liv‐ this exotic environment parallels the ways Ameri‐ ing."[4] They represented idealized and pic‐ can soldiers felt isolated and alienated with re‐ turesque sites, "prefabricated illusions," the myth gards to the people they encountered. The follow‐ of the hedonic, naive, pure, adolescent nature of ing anecdote set in Papua New Guinea delineates the East and its infant people. On the one hand, starkly this ongoing alienation with either the au‐ the U.S. soldiery chose to act in a civilizing and re‐ tochthones or the environment: "By refusing to demptive manner, since it was required to bring help set up camp amidst kunai grass ... indigenous modernity to these remote places. On the other bearers on Goodenough Island escaped the havoc hand, contemplative and participative stances that scrub typhus brought down on Americans. were deemed more suited "to allow oneself to be‐ The bearers had insisted that evil spirits dwelt in come dissolved in wilderness, primitive existence, the grass. GIs had laughed it away as superstition" the simple life, [and thus] to participate in the re‐ (p. 134). generation not only of primal and virtuous society As mentioned, the American soldiers quickly but of original and unspoiled man" (p. 47). The adopted an analogical mode of reasoning linking first part of Schrijvers's book is, thus, an interest‐ the masses of the East and their environment, as ing exercise in drawing a heterology of the Ameri‐ the latter's overwhelming and aggressive pres‐ can soldiery and, by extension, of the American ence promptly brought "deeply rooted fears of society. In other words, Peter Schrijvers offers us Yellow Peril to the surface" (p. 135). The analogy mental maps and a selection of coherent narra‐ between Asians (not only the Japanese) and in‐ tives, from very diverse individuals, which enable sects is striking in that matter. Asians' "tireless, the reader to construct an intelligibility of this sol‐ unquestioning industriousness" rendered, to the diery's self-understanding and representation as eyes of many GIs, "the uncanny resemblance to "American," an intelligibility of their selves consti‐ ants and bees in particular" (p.

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