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3 Feminism, Domestic Containment, and Cold War Citizenry O n August 9, 1946, the Sea Star, a converted cargo ship full of Americans, was nearing Tokyo Bay after a two-week journey from Seattle. On board was Carmen Johnson, an American woman in her mid-thirties on her way to join the U.S. occupation forces in Japan. Born into a Swedish-American lower-middle-class family in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, and raised in the Midwest, Johnson had no knowledge of the history or language of Japan. To her, the country was an exotic and faraway place, yet she felt no fear. On the contrary, she was eager for the experience. Johnson had joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), which later became the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), and had been sent to Florida for basic training, and then later to Officer Candidate School in Iowa. Stationed in California, she had worked with Air Force combat intelligence during World War II. Throughout her military experience , she had come to appreciate the challenges of new places, meeting people, and tackling demanding jobs. Japan would be her next adventure, albeit on a different scale. As Mt. Fuji rose before her, she stood on the deck of the ship, excited about what lay ahead: a new job in a country she had only dreamed of. What motivated Johnson to apply for a position with the U.S. occupationforcesinJapan ?Theimmediatepostwaryearswereatimeofeconomic retrenchment for many American women. Just as wartime mobilization had required the mass entry of women into the public domain, the end 76 / Chapter 3 of the war and postwar demobilization required that women go home. Like many other WACs, Johnson was being demobilized. However, the taste for adventure and the economic independence she had acquired during the war were hard to give up. With no intention of settling down, she sought an alternative ; the U.S. government’s recruiting of personnel for the occupation of Japan thus came as welcome news. Not only would she have a job, but also a chance to go abroad. Johnson immediately made up her mind to join the occupation forces. Johnson’s autobiography, Wave-Rings in the Water: My Years with the Women of Postwar Japan, documents her experience in occupied Japan.1 Her admitted ignorance of Japanese history, culture, and language was matched by a keen desire to learn. She constantly sought opportunities to meet with Japanese, especially women, outside of her job, offering English conversation classes, giving lectures, and meeting and talking to ordinary Japanese people wherever she went. When her first appointment as a clerk and typist in Nagoya ended in the summer of 1947, she looked for a more challenging position, and in an interview at Eighth Army Headquarters in Yokohama, she requested—rather daringly—a post away from the major urban centers. The interviewers warned her that an assignment in an isolated rural area meant difficulties in getting supplies, the presence of few other American women, a lack of facilities for women occupiers, and other inconveniences. None of these conditions discouraged her. She was delighted when she was given the position of Women’s Affairs Officer on the island of Shikoku. Her responsibility was to “democratize” Japanese organizations, especially women’s, in four prefectures: Ehime, Kagawa, Kōchi, and Tokushima. Johnson was to experience the occupation from a vantage point distinctly different from Beate Sirota Gordon’s—far away from the center and at the grassroots level. As its subtitle suggests, Johnson’s autobiography is a tribute to Japanese women who she came to know during the occupation. Page after page, she describes her encounters with maids and waitresses, housewives and mothers, interpreters and assistants, as well as with leaders of women’s organizations . Although consumed with curiosity about the unfamiliar country and its people, she was also aware of the Japanese gaze back at the occupiers: “Whether we were more curious about the Japanese or they about us was an unanswered question.”2 In stark contrast to Gordon, whose narratives focus on herself as “the only woman in the room” in charge of emancipating Japanese women, Johnson understands the occupation in far more inclusive, and on occasions even seemingly egalitarian, terms. To her, Japanese women were collaborators and coparticipants in democratization. She saw herself as there to aide these women’s struggles. Reading Johnson’s autobiography next to Gordon’s, we begin to sense the diverse backgrounds, motives, and perspectives of the women occupiers. [18.188.168.28] Project MUSE...

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