UC Press Blog

By Charles Dawn-William Huxley

The fall issue of Pacific Historical Review features four new articles in U.S. and Pacific history–topics include the narrative behind JFK’s torpedo boat (PT-109), epidemics and health administration in Japanese internment camps, pollution and the tech industry in California, and U.S.-Thai relations and democracy. Additionally, the issue includes the first-ever English translations of two essays by the Okinawan scholar Gabe Masao. 

“Lost in Translation: PT-109 and Storytelling in U.S.-Japan Relations” by Jeremy Yellen and Phil Tomsovic 

The story is legendary. On a dark night in 1943, a lieutenant (junior grade) named John F. Kennedy was at the command of a Navy patrol boat in the Solomon Islands, when the craft was suddenly struck by a much larger Japanese ship. Kennedy’s boat sank, and two of his crew died—but the other eleven survived in an epic swim to safety, earning Kennedy a Navy and Marine Corps Medal and a Purple Heart and creating a heroic narrative that would help launch his political career. Scholars have looked at this story from the U.S. perspective, noting how it was popularized by American journalists and popular writers, but historians Jeremy Yellen and Phil Tomsovic show how the tale was co-created in both the U.S. and Japan. Indeed, the story was promoted by Kennedy himself and by the Japanese ship’s captain, Hanami Kohei, when letter exchanges and publicized meetings between the two promoted a narrative of friendship and forgiveness not just between Kennedy and Hanami, but also between the two nations they represented. 

“Nowhere to Go: Epidemiology, Quarantine Orders, and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II” by Jonathan Van Harmelen

In the summer of 1942, a kitchen worker at California’s Tanforan Assembly Center came down with measles, ultimately leading to the quarantining of a whole barracks section. Indeed, families could be confined to their small quarters for up to three weeks. Writing in his diary while at the Center, Ben Iijima reacted to the quarantine with alarm: “I can’t possibly see how anyone could endure such an ordeal.” Analyzing epidemics and quarantine orders among Japanese Americans in War Relocation Authority camps, historian Jonathan Van Harmelen reveals the intense psychological impact of the camp experience on incarcerees, the social fears generated by communicable disease, the ways that these camps became unique spaces for medical professionals to study epidemiology, and the ethical quandaries in such epidemiological research. 

"When Silicon Valley Feared Bhopal" by Christophe Lécuyer

In December of 1984, the Union Carbide Factory in Bhopal, India, blew up in the dead of night, releasing 40 tons of toxic chemicals into the atmosphere and injuring upwards of 500,000 people. Far away in California, Silicon Valley residents wondered if a similar disaster could occur in their own backyard. Historian Christopher Lécuyer traces how the Bhopal gas disaster led to a public reckoning over the use of poisonous gas in high-tech manufacturing in Silicon Valley. With the Bhopal disaster as a backdrop, fire departments drafted strict ordinances, triggering a bitter battle among microelectronics firms, government officials, environmental groups, and the public. What resulted set the standard for the utilization of toxic gasses in manufacturing in the American West. 

“Security or Democracy? U.S.-Thai Relations in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries” by P. Mike Rattanasenghchanh

For most of modern history, the United States has tried to balance both democracy and security in U.S.-Thai relations. However, says historian P. Mike Rattanasenghchanh, security has taken the front burner more often than not, leaving democracy as an afterthought. Rattanasenghchanh examines the Cold War period and compares it to the past decade, finding this pattern in foreign policy toward Thailand during both periods. Evidence points to the likelihood of this pattern being maintained well into the future, even as the U.S. government’s public face promotes progressivism.

“Gabe Masao in Translation” ed. and trans. by Wendy Matsumura and Tze M. Loo

Appearing for the first time in English, these essays from Okinawan historian Gabe Masao have been edited and translated by Wendy Matsumura and Tze M. Loo. In their introduction, Matsumura and Loo place Gabe’s “From Ryūkyū to Okinawa” and “Actions toward Modern Japanese National Consciousness” within the scholarly literature on the kingdom’s annexation by the Japanese state. 

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