Anne Gedacht
Anne Giblin Gedacht's research focuses on the social and cultural history of modern Japan from 1852-1953. Her interests include Japanese migration, empire/colonialism, expatriate identity, disaster studies, dark tourism, and memory studies. Her first monograph was titled Tohoku Unbounded: Regional Identity and the Mobile Subject in Prewar Japan. She has further published in multiple other venues including in the Journal of Social History.
Seton Hall University
Session
Out of the rubble of the Pacific War, Japan played host to their occupier’s armies throughout the Cold War and beyond. The United States coopted land as bases were built, standing armies were housed, and international diplomatic negotiations were drawn knowing that the United States had supply lines flowing directly through Japanese sovereign territory. However, in this cartographic space still recovering from years of devastation caused by American military initiatives, a newly-liberated Japan became the host for another kind of military consumption. During the Korean War (1950-1953), Japan served as a primary location for US troops to seek refuge and leisure, to escape the horrors of yet another war in Asia. The still-recovering Japan became a playground for American GIs. This paper will explore the intersection of military leisure travel, heritage travel, and a phenomenon known as dark tourism, or the visiting of sites connected with death, tragedy, and catastrophes. Rather than focusing on a particular site, as is so often the case in both the Heritage and Dark Tourism fields, we will consider how forced military tourism in a enemy-turned-ally territory can result in emotional ambivalence for individual GIs. Indeed, this paper will posit that the entirety of Japan, during the period of the Korea War, should be considered a dark tourist site for US military personnel on R&R (Rest and Relaxation).