Cold War Manifest Domesticity: The “Kitchen Debate” and Single American Occupationnaire Women in the U.S. Occupation of Japan, 1945–1952

Abstract

On October 18, 1945, the U.S. Women’s Army Corps (WAC) disembarked at Yokohama to participate in the U.S. occupation of Japan (1945–52). Sharply dressed in uniform skirts and wearing aviator glasses, these white American women provided a stark contrast to the majority of Japanese women who, after the horrors and deprivations of World War II, were emaciated and shabbily dressed in wartime workpants. In defeated, bomb-destroyed Japan, where 9 million of the country’s 72 million people were homeless, the division between occupier and occupied was visible not only in terms of race but also in the material affluence of the conquerors.1 Some of these American women, or “occupationnaires,” led by Lieutenant Ethel Weed (1906–75) of the Civil Information and Education Section (CIE) under the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP), were assigned to formulate policies to “liberate” Japanese women. In this context, white American women were to be bearers of democracy, while Japanese women were to be subject to “liberation” and tutelage at their hands.2 The occupation highlighted this cultural construction of American and Japanese women, including the economic divide between them, to justify the imposition of policies that purported to offer the Japanese a better life—that is, a more