PORTAL Journal of RESEARCH ARTICLE Multidisciplinary The Internment and Repatriation of the International Studies Japanese-French Nationals Resident in Vol. 14, No. 2 September 2017 New Caledonia, 1941–1946 Rowena G. Ward Communities Acting for Sustainability in the Pacific University of Wollongong Special Issue, guest edited by Anu Bissoonauth and Rowena Corresponding author: Dr Rowena G. Ward, Senior Lecturer in Japanese, School of Humanities Ward. and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong, Northfields Avenue, Wollongong NSW 2522, Australia.
[email protected] DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/portal.v14i2.5478 © 2017 by the author(s). This Article History: Received 03/04/2017; Revised 16/07/2017; Accepted 18/06/2017; is an Open Access article Published 05/10/2017 distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Abstract Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ The pre-1941 Japanese population of New Caledonia was decimated by the French by/4.0/), allowing third parties administration’s decision to transfer most of the Japanese residents to Australia for internment to copy and redistribute the at the outbreak of the Asia-Pacific theatre of the Second World War. Among the men material in any medium transferred to Australia were ten men who had been formerly French nationals but had lost or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the their French nationality by decree. The French Administration’s ability to denationalise and material for any purpose, even intern, and then subsequently repatriate, the former-Japanese French-nationals was possible commercially, provided the due to changes to the French nationality laws and regulations introduced by the Vichy regime.