Christine de Matos

Labor under Military Occupation: Allied POWs and the Allied Occupation of Japan

The above recollection from a former Australian POW of the Japan’s, Bill Wharton, invokes not just an image of the moment of Japan’s defeat in the Asia-Pacific War in 1945; it demonstrates the centrality of labor to the performance of power under conditions of war and military occupation. While it has been widely acknowledged that ‘labour was a central feature of colonialism’,2 it is less recognized in the scholarly literature that labor also has an intimate relationship with military occupation. Occupation, like colonialism, cannot function without access to local labor through various levels of coercion. Labor is not just an economic relationship or structure, but a social act and practice, and it is primarily through sexual relations or work that the occupier and the occupied interact most closely with each other. Perhaps even more important is that labor is a site for the enactment of occupation power, as demonstrated in the epigram, and for its subversion. The primary aim of this chapter, then, is to explore the role of labor in the enactment of power at a grassroots level under conditions of war and military occupation, in the spirit of Foucault’s concept of power as (re)produced and disseminated throughout society, not just as an omnipotent force imposed from above.

Before and after Defeat: Crossing the Great 1945 Divide

Like other Japanese across the empire on August 15, 1945, Saitō Tomoya anticipated that this day would be anything but ordinary, perhaps even a turning point in the war and Japan’s imperial history. The media had alerted the empire of the unprecedented announcement to be made that day at noon by the emperor. All subjects were to gather around a radio at that time, which the vast majority did. Although rather allusive in mentioning the ‘end’ of the war or Japan’s ‘defeat’, the prerecorded message succeeded in achieving its primary purpose: to inform subjects of Japan’s decision to accept the Allied terms of surrender as dictated by the Potsdam Declaration. Saitō recalls the imperial message that they must ‘pave the way for a grand peace … by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable’1 as sufficient in convincing listeners of the decisive turn of events.2