Popular in Arts and Humanities

Arts and Humanities

Titus Quinctius Flamininus’ “Italian triumph”

McGill University Michael Fronda

Arts and Humanities

Lincoln and the Jews

Brandeis University Jonathan Sarna

Arts and Humanities

Amputations and Convalescence

University of Western Australia Emily Brink

Art

Drawing on the past: Palladio, his precursors and knowledge of ancient architecture

University of Birmingham David Hemsoll

Art

Language, Sound, and Image in Wallace Berman’s Aleph, 1956–1966

University of San Diego Chelsea Behle Fralick

Arts and Humanities

Early Modern Natural Law Theories

University of Copenhagen Knud Haakonssen

Of Love and War

View more insights in Arts and Humanities - Books - History - Women's & Gender History

View more figures from University of Otago

View the page of Angela Wanhalla

Read the Study

Next in Arts and Humanities

Casualties of War? Refining the Civilian-Military Dichotomy in World War I

Eric Grube | Boston College

Not in My Backyard

Brian Balogh | University of Virginia

Angela Wanhalla discusses the intimate relationships forged during wartime between women and U.S. servicemen stationed in the South Pacific, traces the fate of wartime marriages, and addresses consequences for the women and children left behind.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 13, 2024

Log-in or Sign-up to Faculti
Currently viewing this subject insight as a guest. You have insight(s) remaining for this month. Login to view 8000+ figures on the platform.

Generating Workspace...

Export as PDF

This video video discusses a research project focused on the relationships between American servicemen and indigenous women in the South Pacific during World War II, particularly emphasizing the phenomenon of "war brides." Led by Professor Judy Bennett, the project examines the social impacts of American military presence in the region and explores the complex dynamics of intimate relationships across cultural and legal lines.

The author of the text expresses interest in the experiences of about 1,600 couples who married during the war years, touching on the challenges these marriages faced, such as divorce, legal recognition, and the ability of war brides to move to the United States. The research involved creating a database from various records, including marriage and consular documents, to track the lives of these couples and their children after the war.

This video video outlines the need to understand how global events like war shape personal lives and relationships in specific cultural contexts. It highlights the vast differences in marriage customs across Pacific nations and the implications of such differences for the war brides, particularly those of indigenous or non-European descent who often faced additional difficulties.

The author aims to shed light on the often-overlooked intimate dimensions of war and colonial interactions, advocating for more attention to the South Pacific in historical analyses of global conflict and its social repercussions. The research aims to honor the lives and struggles of the women and families involved, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of the consequences of international marriages during the wartime period.

Language:

Export as PDF

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

00:00.235 --> 00:03.325
That book emerged out of a different project,

00:03.705 --> 00:04.885
but one that was related.

00:05.815 --> 00:08.515
And that project was led by a colleague of mine,

00:08.515 --> 00:11.595
professor Judy Bennett, now emeritus,

00:11.805 --> 00:13.915
who's a expert on environmental

00:13.915 --> 00:15.355
history in the South Pacific.

00:16.055 --> 00:18.115
And she led a big,

00:18.345 --> 00:22.075
very collaborative project about the social impacts

00:22.135 --> 00:25.315
of American servicemen during World War ii,

00:25.315 --> 00:26.795
and the South Pacific Command.

00:27.215 --> 00:31.195
Um, and what she was particularly interested in is the

00:32.065 --> 00:35.995
impacts that those men had on indigenous communities,

00:36.055 --> 00:40.355
and particular, to the extent to which those men left

00:40.355 --> 00:43.715
behind children, with, indigenous mothers,

00:43.775 --> 00:44.915
in the South Pacific.

00:45.635 --> 00:47.235
'cause there's a really vast scholarship

00:47.255 --> 00:50.195
and growing scholarship on, the stories

00:50.335 --> 00:54.515
of war children born as a result of, wartime relations,

00:54.515 --> 00:58.115
sometimes across, cultural lines

00:58.495 --> 00:59.795
and also political lines.

01:00.495 --> 01:02.835
Um, and so we were interested in it kind

01:02.835 --> 01:04.115
of exploring that question.

01:04.705 --> 01:05.955
What emerged from that project

01:06.055 --> 01:07.275
and the work that I was doing,

01:07.275 --> 01:10.985
which was on the New Zealand side of the story, is the

01:11.785 --> 01:14.305
interesting number of indigenous women who actually managed

01:14.305 --> 01:16.185
to marry American servicemen.

01:16.375 --> 01:18.465
They didn't always get to go to the United States.

01:19.045 --> 01:22.305
So I'm reading any literature that's around war brides,

01:22.485 --> 01:25.145
and there's a kind of big scholarship on that.

01:25.335 --> 01:27.345
Sometimes that scholarship's quite popular.

01:28.125 --> 01:30.985
Um, a little bit romanticized at times as well.

01:31.445 --> 01:35.465
And then there's also a kind of very important, kind

01:35.465 --> 01:39.345
of academic work on kind of war brides as well that aligns

01:39.345 --> 01:42.265
with some of that popular literature, which kind

01:42.265 --> 01:44.985
of explores questions of the extent

01:44.985 --> 01:47.865
to which these relationships were able to be maintained,

01:48.045 --> 01:51.265
across international lines, across international laws,

01:51.805 --> 01:54.825
and across cultures, as well in the post-war period.

01:55.525 --> 01:56.785
So in that scholarship,

01:56.805 --> 01:59.465
you might not necessarily find very much about the Pacific.

02:00.075 --> 02:02.625
Often it's about Japan,

02:02.805 --> 02:05.105
or Germany, particularly

02:05.105 --> 02:07.425
because the United States was an occupation force,

02:07.765 --> 02:08.785
in those countries.

02:08.785 --> 02:12.505
And there were non fraternization laws, and regulations.

02:12.925 --> 02:15.265
Um, and there's some work on France, as well.

02:16.085 --> 02:19.665
So I was really surprised in doing work in this earlier

02:19.665 --> 02:23.025
project, which is called Mothers Darlings,

02:23.275 --> 02:25.345
about the social impacts for Americans.

02:25.525 --> 02:27.345
Uh, I was very surprised to find

02:27.905 --> 02:29.585
a large number of indigenous women.

02:29.925 --> 02:30.985
It became war brides.

02:31.245 --> 02:33.505
So that was the starting point for kind

02:33.505 --> 02:36.825
of exploring the South Pacific story,

02:36.925 --> 02:41.505
within a slightly wider context, of the story of,

02:41.945 --> 02:44.385
American servicemen, in the Pacific,

02:44.385 --> 02:47.985
and their kind of imperial interests, in the region,

02:47.985 --> 02:51.065
but also the nature of the kind of intimate,

02:51.065 --> 02:54.185
relationships that emerged, as a result

02:54.245 --> 02:57.865
of encountering each other on small islands,

02:57.865 --> 02:58.865
where everybody knew

02:58.865 --> 02:59.885
Each each other too.

03:00.545 --> 03:05.485
Um, so, and also the, I was very interested in the question

03:05.585 --> 03:08.045
of kind of, what,

03:08.445 --> 03:10.605
marriage looked like within the context

03:10.785 --> 03:14.885
of Tonga versus Fiji versus Samoa New Zealand,

03:15.785 --> 03:18.845
or the Cook Islands, which all make up,

03:18.955 --> 03:20.685
what we would call during World War ii,

03:20.705 --> 03:22.245
the South Pacific Command Zone.

03:22.785 --> 03:25.965
Uh, and for people who don't know, during World War ii,

03:25.965 --> 03:29.565
the Pacific was, carved up into four command zones,

03:29.665 --> 03:32.405
and the, the islands that I just named were part

03:32.405 --> 03:35.885
of the South Pacific Australia was in the southwest Pacific.

03:36.125 --> 03:38.085
I keep getting asked questions why I haven't looked at

03:38.085 --> 03:39.765
Australia, but I think it's enough

03:39.765 --> 03:41.525
to just look at several island groups

03:41.905 --> 03:45.645
and very different cultures with very different,

03:45.645 --> 03:48.605
relationships to Britain and the United States as well.

03:48.625 --> 03:51.725
So there's a kind of politically quite interesting context

03:52.465 --> 03:53.885
to explore there as well.

03:54.025 --> 03:56.045
So I'm very interested in the way in which

03:57.125 --> 04:01.285
intimate lives are shaped by big global events like war

04:01.865 --> 04:05.165
and, political, situations

04:05.465 --> 04:07.245
and legal regimes as well.

04:07.385 --> 04:11.085
So that's the setting for, of love and war.

04:11.425 --> 04:15.525
The book focuses on around 1600, couples

04:16.025 --> 04:20.165
who married during the period 1941 through

04:20.165 --> 04:21.725
to about 46, 47.

04:22.305 --> 04:26.045
Um, because even though the war officially ended in, in 45,

04:26.615 --> 04:28.885
there are many more servicemen who were still kind

04:28.885 --> 04:31.605
of occupying, in, the Pacific region.

04:32.465 --> 04:37.245
Um, so it's not easy to track 1600 couples,

04:37.665 --> 04:42.245
across, a time period of the war itself where

04:42.465 --> 04:44.885
so much was in flux and very dynamic.

04:45.625 --> 04:48.045
Um, and you don't always have the best records,

04:48.045 --> 04:49.805
available for kind of tracking them.

04:50.585 --> 04:53.165
Um, and I was also trying to track them across their lives

04:53.305 --> 04:55.485
as well, because I'm interested in what happened to them

04:55.775 --> 04:56.965
after the war, whether

04:56.965 --> 04:59.725
or not those marriages, were successful.

05:00.545 --> 05:02.965
Um, 'cause often the story is that sometimes they,

05:02.965 --> 05:04.645
they had high divorce rates.

05:05.305 --> 05:09.445
So the research I did was really, building a database,

05:10.285 --> 05:11.645
tracking every couple I could find

05:11.675 --> 05:14.325
through newspaper reports, marriage records

05:14.585 --> 05:16.005
and tension to marry records,

05:16.965 --> 05:20.325
Imperial records from Great Britain, records

05:20.355 --> 05:22.685
that were held in the Pacific as well, such as,

05:22.825 --> 05:24.085
consular records.

05:24.905 --> 05:28.605
Uh, and I also worked in the United States, looking at,

05:28.865 --> 05:31.125
army and Navy records.

05:31.745 --> 05:35.885
Um, one of my best resources for doing this work was the

05:36.645 --> 05:39.485
American Red Cross Records held in the United States

05:40.185 --> 05:41.405
at College Park, Maryland,

05:41.435 --> 05:43.845
because they dealt with a lot of the welfare issues

05:43.915 --> 05:46.885
that arose as a result of the stationing

05:46.885 --> 05:49.765
of American servicemen in the Pacific as they did,

05:49.785 --> 05:50.805
around the world.

05:51.465 --> 05:53.125
Um, and also,

05:53.645 --> 05:56.685
American consular files. 'cause there were consular

05:56.685 --> 05:59.085
Office offices in New Zealand and Auckland

05:59.085 --> 06:03.845
and Wellington, but also in, in Fiji.

06:04.065 --> 06:07.965
Um, and so there were huge numbers of letters sent

06:07.985 --> 06:11.205
to consular officials from American servicemen

06:11.205 --> 06:13.445
who had married women, and they couldn't get their wives

06:13.515 --> 06:16.365
into United States, or they couldn't get

06:16.365 --> 06:17.565
their children in either.

06:17.945 --> 06:22.725
Um, others that were, letters from the families of women

06:23.305 --> 06:24.845
who felt that they'd been abandoned

06:25.225 --> 06:28.605
by their American husband were seeking to, deal

06:28.605 --> 06:31.605
with paternity issues, divorce, as well.

06:31.865 --> 06:34.125
So those social records

06:34.265 --> 06:36.565
of letters were really quite critical

06:36.625 --> 06:39.125
to helping open up the data set

06:39.145 --> 06:42.925
and give me a little bit of an insight into the anxieties

06:42.945 --> 06:45.165
and the concerns of people,

06:45.225 --> 06:48.125
in the South Pacific on a more intimate level,

06:48.125 --> 06:52.085
and gave me a little bit more flesh to the bones of the data

06:52.275 --> 06:53.365
that I was following.

06:53.905 --> 06:55.885
Um, and if you look at the book, I'm not able

06:55.885 --> 06:57.285
to follow every single couple

06:57.285 --> 07:01.185
because the, the level of information that's available

07:01.725 --> 07:04.025
for all of those people is very buried.

07:04.245 --> 07:06.665
Not everybody is in the archive sometimes, all

07:06.665 --> 07:11.025
that they're represented by, as a marriage record.

07:11.365 --> 07:13.545
Um, and there's not much else that you can follow.

07:14.285 --> 07:15.545
The other source material

07:15.545 --> 07:17.465
that I was looking at were passenger records,

07:18.375 --> 07:23.005
which have been digitized, of the war bride ships,

07:23.005 --> 07:26.805
that were sent out from the states to the South Pacific,

07:26.805 --> 07:28.205
to Australia to New Zealand.

07:28.835 --> 07:33.725
They also went through, American Samoa and also Fiji,

07:34.145 --> 07:36.005
and I think through Tahiti as well.

07:36.425 --> 07:38.405
Uh, and those passenger records are wonderful

07:38.405 --> 07:40.845
because what they show is not, you know, everybody's name,

07:41.505 --> 07:45.005
where they're from, their ethnicity or nationality,

07:45.745 --> 07:48.805
but also who paid for those, passages as well.

07:49.025 --> 07:52.485
So whether they were paid for by the, American military,

07:52.945 --> 07:57.405
which was, something that they agreed to,

07:58.225 --> 08:01.885
in 19 42, 43, I think so.

08:02.425 --> 08:04.285
Um, so there's a whole range of records

08:04.425 --> 08:06.125
and a bit of record matching that I had to do

08:06.185 --> 08:07.765
to start following these couples.

08:08.105 --> 08:11.885
And the final source for me was doing interviews,

08:11.915 --> 08:13.485
with some war brides.

08:13.765 --> 08:15.325
I did talk to the families

08:15.325 --> 08:19.045
of three New Zealand war brides in the United States,

08:19.255 --> 08:20.325
about 10 years ago.

08:20.385 --> 08:23.205
And they hosted me in their homes, wonderful people,

08:23.785 --> 08:27.205
and also talked to some in New Zealand, as well.

08:27.705 --> 08:29.045
Uh, and if I could, you know,

08:29.585 --> 08:31.605
had the all the money on the earth,

08:31.835 --> 08:33.205
this is what I'd do, I'd do.

08:33.205 --> 08:35.245
The next stage would be really talking to the,

08:35.505 --> 08:38.605
the descendants, of those marriages to get a real

08:39.535 --> 08:41.825
more kind of complete sense of their lives.

08:42.135 --> 08:45.065
Post World War ii, the Pacific War Brides,

08:45.455 --> 08:48.705
basically were those women who married American servicemen.

08:49.205 --> 08:51.105
Um, and they,

08:51.105 --> 08:53.305
those American servicemen were based in the South Pacific,

08:53.485 --> 08:54.785
command making

08:54.805 --> 08:59.325
Up New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, the Cook Islands,

08:59.345 --> 09:02.325
and Tonga and a number of other kind of small island groups.

09:02.545 --> 09:04.565
Um, and many, I should point out that many women

09:04.565 --> 09:06.325
that were in those island groups did move

09:06.325 --> 09:08.245
around quite a bit during the war.

09:08.245 --> 09:09.645
This is a dynamic period

09:10.065 --> 09:12.045
and quite a bit of mobility going on.

09:12.045 --> 09:15.765
So quite a pe a lot of people from, for instance, Samoa come

09:15.765 --> 09:17.845
to New Zealand because New Zealand has a,

09:18.125 --> 09:21.005
a legal relationship and political relationship with Samoa.

09:21.225 --> 09:22.445
So some of those women will meet

09:22.725 --> 09:23.765
American servicemen in New Zealand.

09:24.225 --> 09:25.965
So it's, it's quite complicated.

09:26.305 --> 09:29.285
Um, and so I was interested in tracking those relationships.

09:30.305 --> 09:33.885
So at the very basics, we're talking about geography

09:33.885 --> 09:37.045
and location, number one about

09:37.045 --> 09:38.565
who those Pacific War brides are.

09:39.265 --> 09:40.685
Um, and as I mentioned earlier,

09:40.835 --> 09:43.405
when thinking about militarization,

09:43.865 --> 09:46.325
and also questions of politics

09:46.345 --> 09:49.565
and global war, we're talking about other part

09:49.565 --> 09:52.845
of the world, that is very far away from most other

09:52.845 --> 09:54.805
parts of, the globe,

09:55.225 --> 09:57.965
but was deeply impacted by global war

09:57.965 --> 10:00.605
because of the opening up of the Pacific Theater.

10:01.225 --> 10:02.285
Um, and

10:02.285 --> 10:05.045
that the South Pacific became a staging post for that.

10:05.505 --> 10:08.765
Uh, and never before had we really had this moment in the

10:08.765 --> 10:12.365
South Pacific, beyond the kind of early encounters,

10:12.365 --> 10:14.805
where, you know, the British explorers coming through

10:15.145 --> 10:20.005
of having, a moment where so many men from this

10:20.555 --> 10:22.765
part of the world that many people kind of knew about

10:22.865 --> 10:25.485
but didn't have much experience of, arrive all

10:25.485 --> 10:27.445
of a sudden in their communities.

10:28.235 --> 10:30.335
And what we're talking about are very small

10:30.335 --> 10:31.455
island societies.

10:31.915 --> 10:34.375
You are looking at Tonga, you might have 30

10:34.435 --> 10:36.135
or 40,000 people who live there,

10:36.195 --> 10:38.695
but we have 30,000 Americans coming through.

10:39.235 --> 10:41.175
Um, so they're doubling the population

10:41.195 --> 10:42.335
and they're overwhelming it,

10:42.715 --> 10:45.415
and they're overwhelming it with American money

10:45.555 --> 10:49.295
and American goods too, which really,

10:49.995 --> 10:52.695
has a significant social and economic impact.

10:52.795 --> 10:54.655
And lots of great historians have kind of

10:55.215 --> 10:56.455
explored those kind of questions.

10:57.035 --> 10:59.615
Uh, but what they haven't necessarily explored is the

10:59.775 --> 11:00.895
question of intimate relation.

11:00.955 --> 11:03.095
So our Mother's Darlings project had a look at that.

11:03.835 --> 11:06.095
Um, and this war brides project is a kind

11:06.095 --> 11:07.695
of extension, of that.

11:08.155 --> 11:11.935
So by focusing in on those 1600 war brides, some

11:11.935 --> 11:14.375
of whom are indigenous about 60

11:14.475 --> 11:16.055
or so who are kind of indigenous

11:16.235 --> 11:20.375
or non-European, the vast majority of a European background,

11:20.375 --> 11:22.935
British or Irish heritage, New Zealand born

11:23.015 --> 11:25.735
and whatnot, sometimes Australian born too.

11:26.315 --> 11:30.895
Um, they as, as groups have very distinctive experiences

11:31.355 --> 11:32.415
as war brides as well.

11:32.865 --> 11:36.335
Those who are people of color have greater difficulty,

11:36.655 --> 11:41.375
I found and accessing the ability to marry, legally,

11:41.375 --> 11:43.535
because marriage was controlled by the military.

11:43.915 --> 11:48.455
Um, and then you had local, regulations that had

11:48.455 --> 11:50.295
to be operated, were in operation as well.

11:51.275 --> 11:54.765
Um, and there were also, for those who are indigenous,

11:54.985 --> 11:57.405
didn't always make it into the United States,

11:57.465 --> 11:59.725
if they did manage to get married as well,

12:00.235 --> 12:03.365
sometimes those marriages actually followed local custom

12:03.785 --> 12:05.005
rather than being legal.

12:05.345 --> 12:09.765
So this idea of a war bride is not just about a legal

12:10.285 --> 12:12.725
marriage or a legal relationship under the law.

12:13.195 --> 12:15.845
Sometimes it also comes under the umbrella

12:16.185 --> 12:18.685
of cultural concepts of marriage as well.

12:19.265 --> 12:22.045
So that's what I was trying to explore, in this question

12:22.045 --> 12:25.365
of war brides, too, so the kind of variety

12:25.985 --> 12:29.285
of marital like relationships that emerged.

12:29.505 --> 12:32.285
Um, and so one of the chapters in the book kind of covers,

12:32.625 --> 12:36.325
what happens to those women who had those relationships

12:36.355 --> 12:39.125
that were marriage like, but not necessarily legal

12:39.225 --> 12:41.445
and didn't have the same rights as married couples,

12:41.755 --> 12:43.485
what happens to them and their children?

12:43.905 --> 12:46.165
And those are ones who are often left behind.

12:46.985 --> 12:50.445
Um, so there's a, there's a range of her mutations

12:50.945 --> 12:52.765
and complications that emerge out

12:52.765 --> 12:54.125
of these, relationships.

12:54.925 --> 12:58.465
Uh, and for some it also ended up in divorce too.

12:58.565 --> 13:01.625
And one of the big issues around international marriage

13:01.625 --> 13:05.585
during World War ii, is that, if a,

13:06.005 --> 13:07.265
I'm gonna take an example here.

13:07.345 --> 13:10.545
A New Zealand woman married an American serviceman.

13:10.885 --> 13:14.105
Um, if she wanted to get a divorce, she had to,

13:14.105 --> 13:17.305
under the law, get that divorce from

13:17.925 --> 13:19.425
the place her husband lived,

13:19.425 --> 13:20.865
because once she got married,

13:21.325 --> 13:23.705
she took on her husband's legal identity.

13:24.125 --> 13:26.505
So there was huge complications about

13:26.505 --> 13:27.665
how to actually manage that.

13:28.095 --> 13:31.865
It's not possible for very poor people to get on a boat

13:32.405 --> 13:35.265
and make it over to the United States, find a lawyer,

13:35.725 --> 13:36.785
to assist them.

13:36.925 --> 13:39.105
So often these women ended up finding out

13:39.105 --> 13:42.025
that they were divorced through the post, through,

13:42.485 --> 13:44.585
you know, things arriving in the male.

13:45.045 --> 13:48.965
So divorce was a very kind of,

13:48.985 --> 13:52.965
deeply gendered experience, in the forties made worse

13:53.065 --> 13:55.165
by the complications, of war

13:55.225 --> 13:58.445
and international law around marriage and divorce as well.

13:59.285 --> 14:02.055
It's a bit complicated, but hopefully I, you know, managed

14:02.055 --> 14:06.925
to get across the, the, the, the cultural complexities

14:07.185 --> 14:10.205
of being in the South Pacific marriage in Tonga looks

14:10.205 --> 14:11.525
different to marriage in New Zealand,

14:12.065 --> 14:14.645
and Americans got caught up in that in terms

14:14.665 --> 14:17.365
of the scholarly work on war brides

14:17.505 --> 14:20.685
and social histories of global war,

14:20.685 --> 14:22.885
that the South Pacific is taken seriously,

14:23.355 --> 14:25.205
that it's a part of that conversation.

14:25.745 --> 14:29.965
Uh, the South Pacific is often, missed out, in kind

14:29.965 --> 14:34.085
of, global and analysis of, social histories of war,

14:34.665 --> 14:38.245
that home fronts matter in the history of war as much

14:38.245 --> 14:39.645
as the battle fronts do as well.

14:40.305 --> 14:41.925
And that on the home fronts,

14:42.465 --> 14:45.415
those home fronts have their own particular complexities

14:45.415 --> 14:48.135
that are associated with intimate relationships.

14:48.475 --> 14:50.855
Um, and what I also hope to get out

14:50.855 --> 14:53.445
Of this, I hope readers will see, is that,

14:54.265 --> 14:57.325
the South Pacific is a really important,

14:57.755 --> 15:00.925
it's an important place for seeing how global war

15:01.925 --> 15:04.205
actually really shapes the lives of people,

15:04.555 --> 15:06.125
literally on the ground.

15:06.705 --> 15:08.485
It shapes their economic life,

15:08.665 --> 15:11.445
it changes the way people work,

15:11.445 --> 15:13.205
because the plantations go,

15:13.205 --> 15:15.125
because the Americans come in with all this money

15:15.125 --> 15:17.125
and these major camps,

15:17.145 --> 15:20.085
and their immobilization really shifts things,

15:20.085 --> 15:22.045
completely, and it's overwhelming

15:22.145 --> 15:24.005
and it's a major,

15:24.005 --> 15:26.285
significant moment in people's memories.

15:26.985 --> 15:31.405
Um, and intimacy is a really important part of that story,

15:31.625 --> 15:33.245
but is often sometimes forgotten

15:33.555 --> 15:36.765
because it's seemed to be less important

15:36.905 --> 15:38.765
or less significant in a political context.

15:39.305 --> 15:42.405
But it has political and legal, complications

15:42.705 --> 15:44.445
and importance for the people

15:44.545 --> 15:45.685
who are stuck in the middle of it.

15:46.425 --> 15:51.005
And the story of, Pacific War Brides, that book is,

15:51.015 --> 15:55.285
tries to tell that story, on behalf of those families

15:55.345 --> 15:59.245
and, and women, and I hope it, does so in a way

15:59.245 --> 16:02.085
that does justice, to those women in their lives.

Intimate Relationships in the South Pacific War

00:00:00 - That book emerged out of a different project, but one that was related. And that project was led by a colleague of mine, professor Judy Bennett, now emeritus, who's a expert on environmental history in the South Pacific. And she led a big, very collaborative project about the social impacts of American servicemen during World War ii, and the South Pacific Command. and what she was particularly interested in is the
00:00:36 - and particular, to the extent to which those men left behind children, with, indigenous mothers, in the South Pacific. 'cause there's a really vast scholarship and growing scholarship on, the stories of war children born as a result of, wartime relations, sometimes across, cultural lines and also political lines. and so we were interested in it kind
00:01:04 - What emerged from that project and the work that I was doing, which was on the New Zealand side of the story, is the interesting number of indigenous women who actually managed to marry American servicemen. They didn't always get to go to the United States. So I'm reading any literature that's around war brides, and there's a kind of big scholarship on that. Sometimes that scholarship's quite popular. a little bit romanticized at times as well. And then there's also a kind of very important, kind
00:01:39 - with some of that popular literature, which kind of explores questions of the extent to which these relationships were able to be maintained, across international lines, across international laws, and across cultures, as well in the post-war period. So in that scholarship, you might not necessarily find very much about the Pacific. Often it's about Japan, or Germany, particularly because the United States was an occupation force,
00:02:08 - And there were non fraternization laws, and regulations. and there's some work on France, as well. So I was really surprised in doing work in this earlier project, which is called Mothers Darlings, about the social impacts for Americans. I was very surprised to find a large number of indigenous women. It became war brides. So that was the starting point for kind of exploring the South Pacific story, within a slightly wider context, of the story of,
00:02:44 - and their kind of imperial interests, in the region, but also the nature of the kind of intimate, relationships that emerged, as a result of encountering each other on small islands, where everybody knew Each each other too. so, and also the, I was very interested in the question of kind of, what, marriage looked like within the context of Tonga versus Fiji versus Samoa New Zealand,

Marriage and Relationships in the South Pacific

00:03:18 - what we would call during World War ii, the South Pacific Command Zone. and for people who don't know, during World War ii, the Pacific was, carved up into four command zones, and the, the islands that I just named were part of the South Pacific Australia was in the southwest Pacific. I keep getting asked questions why I haven't looked at Australia, but I think it's enough to just look at several island groups and very different cultures with very different, relationships to Britain and the United States as well.
00:03:52 - to explore there as well. So I'm very interested in the way in which intimate lives are shaped by big global events like war and, political, situations and legal regimes as well. So that's the setting for, of love and war. The book focuses on around 1600, couples who married during the period 1941 through
00:04:22 - because even though the war officially ended in, in 45, there are many more servicemen who were still kind of occupying, in, the Pacific region. so it's not easy to track 1600 couples, across, a time period of the war itself where so much was in flux and very dynamic. and you don't always have the best records, available for kind of tracking them.
00:04:53 - as well, because I'm interested in what happened to them after the war, whether or not those marriages, were successful. 'cause often the story is that sometimes they, they had high divorce rates. So the research I did was really, building a database, tracking every couple I could find through newspaper reports, marriage records and tension to marry records, Imperial records from Great Britain, records that were held in the Pacific as well, such as,
00:05:24 - and I also worked in the United States, looking at, army and Navy records. one of my best resources for doing this work was the American Red Cross Records held in the United States at College Park, Maryland, because they dealt with a lot of the welfare issues that arose as a result of the stationing of American servicemen in the Pacific as they did, around the world. and also,
00:05:56 - Office offices in New Zealand and Auckland and Wellington, but also in, in Fiji. and so there were huge numbers of letters sent to consular officials from American servicemen who had married women, and they couldn't get their wives into United States, or they couldn't get their children in either. others that were, letters from the families of women who felt that they'd been abandoned

Exploring Pacific War Brides' Lives and Challenges

00:06:28 - with paternity issues, divorce, as well. So those social records of letters were really quite critical to helping open up the data set and give me a little bit of an insight into the anxieties and the concerns of people, in the South Pacific on a more intimate level, and gave me a little bit more flesh to the bones of the data that I was following. and if you look at the book, I'm not able
00:06:57 - because the, the level of information that's available for all of those people is very buried. Not everybody is in the archive sometimes, all that they're represented by, as a marriage record. and there's not much else that you can follow. The other source material that I was looking at were passenger records, which have been digitized, of the war bride ships, that were sent out from the states to the South Pacific,
00:07:28 - They also went through, American Samoa and also Fiji, and I think through Tahiti as well. and those passenger records are wonderful because what they show is not, you know, everybody's name, where they're from, their ethnicity or nationality, but also who paid for those, passages as well. So whether they were paid for by the, American military, which was, something that they agreed to,
00:08:02 - so there's a whole range of records and a bit of record matching that I had to do to start following these couples. And the final source for me was doing interviews, with some war brides. I did talk to the families of three New Zealand war brides in the United States, about 10 years ago. And they hosted me in their homes, wonderful people, and also talked to some in New Zealand, as well. and if I could, you know,
00:08:31 - this is what I'd do, I'd do. The next stage would be really talking to the, the descendants, of those marriages to get a real more kind of complete sense of their lives. Post World War ii, the Pacific War Brides, basically were those women who married American servicemen. and they, those American servicemen were based in the South Pacific, command making Up New Zealand, Fiji, Samoa, the Cook Islands, and Tonga and a number of other kind of small island groups.
00:09:04 - that were in those island groups did move around quite a bit during the war. This is a dynamic period and quite a bit of mobility going on. So quite a pe a lot of people from, for instance, Samoa come to New Zealand because New Zealand has a, a legal relationship and political relationship with Samoa. So some of those women will meet American servicemen in New Zealand. So it's, it's quite complicated. and so I was interested in tracking those relationships. So at the very basics, we're talking about geography

Exploring Pacific War Brides and Their Experiences

00:09:37 - who those Pacific War brides are. and as I mentioned earlier, when thinking about militarization, and also questions of politics and global war, we're talking about other part of the world, that is very far away from most other parts of, the globe, but was deeply impacted by global war because of the opening up of the Pacific Theater. and that the South Pacific became a staging post for that.
00:10:08 - South Pacific, beyond the kind of early encounters, where, you know, the British explorers coming through of having, a moment where so many men from this part of the world that many people kind of knew about but didn't have much experience of, arrive all of a sudden in their communities. And what we're talking about are very small island societies. You are looking at Tonga, you might have 30 or 40,000 people who live there,
00:10:39 - so they're doubling the population and they're overwhelming it, and they're overwhelming it with American money and American goods too, which really, has a significant social and economic impact. And lots of great historians have kind of explored those kind of questions. but what they haven't necessarily explored is the question of intimate relation. So our Mother's Darlings project had a look at that. and this war brides project is a kind of extension, of that.
00:11:11 - of whom are indigenous about 60 or so who are kind of indigenous or non-European, the vast majority of a European background, British or Irish heritage, New Zealand born and whatnot, sometimes Australian born too. they as, as groups have very distinctive experiences as war brides as well. Those who are people of color have greater difficulty, I found and accessing the ability to marry, legally,
00:11:43 - and then you had local, regulations that had to be operated, were in operation as well. and there were also, for those who are indigenous, didn't always make it into the United States, if they did manage to get married as well, sometimes those marriages actually followed local custom rather than being legal. So this idea of a war bride is not just about a legal marriage or a legal relationship under the law.
00:12:16 - of cultural concepts of marriage as well. So that's what I was trying to explore, in this question of war brides, too, so the kind of variety of marital like relationships that emerged. and so one of the chapters in the book kind of covers, what happens to those women who had those relationships that were marriage like, but not necessarily legal and didn't have the same rights as married couples, what happens to them and their children?

Complicated Legacies of Pacific War Brides

00:12:46 - so there's a, there's a range of her mutations and complications that emerge out of these, relationships. and for some it also ended up in divorce too. And one of the big issues around international marriage during World War ii, is that, if a, I'm gonna take an example here. A New Zealand woman married an American serviceman. if she wanted to get a divorce, she had to,
00:13:17 - the place her husband lived, because once she got married, she took on her husband's legal identity. So there was huge complications about how to actually manage that. It's not possible for very poor people to get on a boat and make it over to the United States, find a lawyer, to assist them. So often these women ended up finding out that they were divorced through the post, through, you know, things arriving in the male.
00:13:48 - deeply gendered experience, in the forties made worse by the complications, of war and international law around marriage and divorce as well. It's a bit complicated, but hopefully I, you know, managed to get across the, the, the, the cultural complexities of being in the South Pacific marriage in Tonga looks different to marriage in New Zealand, and Americans got caught up in that in terms of the scholarly work on war brides
00:14:20 - that the South Pacific is taken seriously, that it's a part of that conversation. the South Pacific is often, missed out, in kind of, global and analysis of, social histories of war, that home fronts matter in the history of war as much as the battle fronts do as well. And that on the home fronts, those home fronts have their own particular complexities that are associated with intimate relationships.
00:14:50 - Of this, I hope readers will see, is that, the South Pacific is a really important, it's an important place for seeing how global war actually really shapes the lives of people, literally on the ground. It shapes their economic life, it changes the way people work, because the plantations go, because the Americans come in with all this money and these major camps, and their immobilization really shifts things,
00:15:22 - and it's a major, significant moment in people's memories. and intimacy is a really important part of that story, but is often sometimes forgotten because it's seemed to be less important or less significant in a political context. But it has political and legal, complications and importance for the people who are stuck in the middle of it. And the story of, Pacific War Brides, that book is,

Honoring Women's Lives and Experiences

00:15:59 - and, and women, and I hope it, does so in a way that does justice, to those women in their lives.

Faculti AI can make mistakes

Faculti

Popular in Arts and Humanities

Titus Quinctius Flamininus’ “Italian triumph”

Lincoln and the Jews

Post-Kantian perfectionism

Amputations and Convalescence

Drawing on the past: Palladio, his precursors and knowledge of ancient architecture

Language, Sound, and Image in Wallace Berman’s Aleph, 1956–1966

Early Modern Natural Law Theories

Of Love and War

Next in Arts and Humanities

Guide

Platform and Category Pages

Contact Us

FAQs

What is Faculti?

How do you select interviews?

Interview Process

Page Structure

Popular in Arts and Humanities

Guide

Platform and Category Pages

Contact Us

FAQs

What is Faculti?

How do you select interviews?

Interview Process

Accessibility Options

Contrast Adjustment

Text Size Adjustment

Text Spacing Adjustment

Line Height Adjustment

Cursor Size Adjustment

Page Structure Options

Page Structure