Thesis examines how the Ford administration created and took advantages of the political symbolic... more Thesis examines how the Ford administration created and took advantages of the political symbolic value of refugee at the end of the war. This paper argues ways in which the Ford administration turned South Vietnamese allies into refugee subjects to position the US as a moral nation and included them as provisional immigrant subjects. In the first chapter, I critique rescue narrative of the evacuation by analyzing South Vietnamese refugee narratives and Ford's administrational decisions, since the evacuation was the US abandonment of South Vietnam and not fully planned for South Vietnamese people. Although Ford claimed it was moral obligation to help South Vietnamese people and asked military force to alleviate the situation, the main issue was to execute the evacuation of Americans safely. In the second chapter, I reveal the resettlement of South Vietnamese refugees was not as humanitarian operation but rather as military operation and management by analyzing resettlement polic...
Author(s): Sahara, Ayako | Abstract: Deploying globalized humanitarianism as a frame of analysis,... more Author(s): Sahara, Ayako | Abstract: Deploying globalized humanitarianism as a frame of analysis, my dissertation (re)conceptualizes the U.S. Indochinese refugee resettlement as an involvement which exemplified the U.S.'s policy objective of trying to sustain its global power in the region during the Cold War. Engaging in a transnational discourse analysis by citing published materials from both the U.S. and Japan, this dissertation elucidates the ways in which the U.S. employed humanitarianism to carry on its resettlement plan and pressure other countries to participate. The evacuation and resettlement of Indochinese refugees was not necessary an act of forgetting the war, but rather an act of rescuing the "wounded," enabling the U.S. to be a savior in Asia and the Pacific. This rescuer image of the U.S. is historically rooted in the U.S.'s presence there. Even though the war in Vietnam could not display the mightiness of the U.S., the rescue of the refugees and o...
Professor Yen Le Espiritu, Chair Deploying globalized humanitarianism as a frame of analysis, my ... more Professor Yen Le Espiritu, Chair Deploying globalized humanitarianism as a frame of analysis, my dissertation (re)conceptualizes the U.S. Indochinese refugee resettlement as an involvement which exemplified the U.S.'s policy objective of trying to sustain its global power in the region during the Cold War. Engaging in a transnational discourse analysis by citing published materials from both the U.S. and Japan, this dissertation elucidates the ways in which the U.S. employed humanitarianism to carry on its resettlement plan and pressure other countries to participate. The evacuation and resettlement of Indochinese refugees was not necessary an act of forgetting the war, but rather an act of rescuing the "wounded," enabling the U.S. to be a savior in Asia and the Pacific. This rescuer image of the U.S. is historically rooted in the U.S.'s presence there. Even though the war in Vietnam could not display the mightiness of the U.S., the rescue of the refugees and orphans at the end of the war xi allowed the U.S. public to differentiate the U.S.'s evacuation from the act of war. The theater of rescue had enormous effects on changing the image of the failure of the war. The act of rescue did not stop with the U.S.'s evacuation from the region. A small group of officers from the State Department propelled Indochinese refugee admissions on a large scale by collaborating with the media and mobilizing various organizations. This dissertation points out that the people involved in the resettlement effort had a humanitarian impulse to help the refugees, but they also upheld the larger context of an anticommunistic understanding of the righteousness of U.S. power in Asia. At the same time, the Indochinese refugee problem became an international burden sharing project. Internationalization of the resettlement efforts allowed the U.S. to act as a leader in Asia, while Asia, especially the first asylum countries, played the role of surrogate refuges to the U.S. This process was also an externalization of the refugee processing to Asia to secure the U.S. border. The U.S. government honed the concept of extraterritoriality, blurring the concept of territory by furthering their association with Asian countries. This internationalization was made possible through the cooperation of other countries. This dissertation examines the relationship between the U.S. and Japan in particular, because I want to show that U.S. hegemony in Asia is not a simple form of domination in which the U.S. coerces other countries to collaborate, but rather an intricate complex of power that enables the U.S. to act as a leader. Japan for the first time opened its doors to the refugees and funded the UNHCR with enormous amounts of money to assist the U.S. in the Indochinese refugee resettlement. By doing so, the Government of Japan gained the honor of being a member of the West that was not only wealthy but moral. 6 From this perspective, the end of the defeat of the Vietnam War can be seen as the beginning of the grand victory of the Cold War. Odd Arne Westad defines the 'Cold War' as "the period in which the global conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union dominated international affairs, roughly between 1945 and 1991." 13 According to Westad, the Cold War was fought in the Third World especially during the 1970s and the early 1980s. 14 Thus, the beginning of the Indochinese refugee resettlement marked a significant moment for the U.S. government and the public to continue the war against the Soviet Union. In fact, the Cold War was "quite hot" in Asia, because it was not only a standoff between superpowers but a conflict fought in Asia and the Pacific. 15 The U.S. Indochinese refugee policy offered a different narration of U.S. war efforts in the region, revising the history, memory and meaning of the Vietnam War. Even after the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger did not believe in the "geopolitical" victory for North Vietnam, claiming that "they [the Vietnamese] have achieved an ideological victory and a geopolitical defeat." 16 He could claim the U.S. geopolitical victory because U.S. domination was sustained in Asia and the Pacific. 17 This geopolitical victory was slowly secured through the creation of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) a part of the victory of the Cold War.
... 1 Biopolitics of Operations New Life/ Arrivals . 9 ... resettlement of Vietnamese refugee... more ... 1 Biopolitics of Operations New Life/ Arrivals . 9 ... resettlement of Vietnamese refugees? 14 How did US policy on refugees, biopolitics and governmentality, provide possibility and impossibility of South Vietnamese collective existence? ...
Creative Citizen Peacebuilding: How Japan Artists and Audiences Responded to the Vietnam-American War, 2022
This article explores two case studies related to South Vietnam and Japan, relating them to the c... more This article explores two case studies related to South Vietnam and Japan, relating them to the controversial history and legacy of the Second Indochina War. The first is the Japanese adoption and adaptation of South Vietnamese antiwar music. The second is a Japanese film, uncovered decades later after the war, exposing the role of Japan in South Vietnam. Cultural productions, from nations allied with the United States, sought to expose the popular struggle for peace against the rising tide of Cold War military violence and corporate capitalist exploitation. Through interviews, archival research, and textual analysis, the article argues for a deeper understanding of the transnational alliances and forms of what we call creative citizen peacebuilding forged among musicians, filmmakers, and audiences.
Thesis examines how the Ford administration created and took advantages of the political symbolic... more Thesis examines how the Ford administration created and took advantages of the political symbolic value of refugee at the end of the war. This paper argues ways in which the Ford administration turned South Vietnamese allies into refugee subjects to position the US as a moral nation and included them as provisional immigrant subjects. In the first chapter, I critique rescue narrative of the evacuation by analyzing South Vietnamese refugee narratives and Ford's administrational decisions, since the evacuation was the US abandonment of South Vietnam and not fully planned for South Vietnamese people. Although Ford claimed it was moral obligation to help South Vietnamese people and asked military force to alleviate the situation, the main issue was to execute the evacuation of Americans safely. In the second chapter, I reveal the resettlement of South Vietnamese refugees was not as humanitarian operation but rather as military operation and management by analyzing resettlement polic...
Author(s): Sahara, Ayako | Abstract: Deploying globalized humanitarianism as a frame of analysis,... more Author(s): Sahara, Ayako | Abstract: Deploying globalized humanitarianism as a frame of analysis, my dissertation (re)conceptualizes the U.S. Indochinese refugee resettlement as an involvement which exemplified the U.S.'s policy objective of trying to sustain its global power in the region during the Cold War. Engaging in a transnational discourse analysis by citing published materials from both the U.S. and Japan, this dissertation elucidates the ways in which the U.S. employed humanitarianism to carry on its resettlement plan and pressure other countries to participate. The evacuation and resettlement of Indochinese refugees was not necessary an act of forgetting the war, but rather an act of rescuing the "wounded," enabling the U.S. to be a savior in Asia and the Pacific. This rescuer image of the U.S. is historically rooted in the U.S.'s presence there. Even though the war in Vietnam could not display the mightiness of the U.S., the rescue of the refugees and o...
Professor Yen Le Espiritu, Chair Deploying globalized humanitarianism as a frame of analysis, my ... more Professor Yen Le Espiritu, Chair Deploying globalized humanitarianism as a frame of analysis, my dissertation (re)conceptualizes the U.S. Indochinese refugee resettlement as an involvement which exemplified the U.S.'s policy objective of trying to sustain its global power in the region during the Cold War. Engaging in a transnational discourse analysis by citing published materials from both the U.S. and Japan, this dissertation elucidates the ways in which the U.S. employed humanitarianism to carry on its resettlement plan and pressure other countries to participate. The evacuation and resettlement of Indochinese refugees was not necessary an act of forgetting the war, but rather an act of rescuing the "wounded," enabling the U.S. to be a savior in Asia and the Pacific. This rescuer image of the U.S. is historically rooted in the U.S.'s presence there. Even though the war in Vietnam could not display the mightiness of the U.S., the rescue of the refugees and orphans at the end of the war xi allowed the U.S. public to differentiate the U.S.'s evacuation from the act of war. The theater of rescue had enormous effects on changing the image of the failure of the war. The act of rescue did not stop with the U.S.'s evacuation from the region. A small group of officers from the State Department propelled Indochinese refugee admissions on a large scale by collaborating with the media and mobilizing various organizations. This dissertation points out that the people involved in the resettlement effort had a humanitarian impulse to help the refugees, but they also upheld the larger context of an anticommunistic understanding of the righteousness of U.S. power in Asia. At the same time, the Indochinese refugee problem became an international burden sharing project. Internationalization of the resettlement efforts allowed the U.S. to act as a leader in Asia, while Asia, especially the first asylum countries, played the role of surrogate refuges to the U.S. This process was also an externalization of the refugee processing to Asia to secure the U.S. border. The U.S. government honed the concept of extraterritoriality, blurring the concept of territory by furthering their association with Asian countries. This internationalization was made possible through the cooperation of other countries. This dissertation examines the relationship between the U.S. and Japan in particular, because I want to show that U.S. hegemony in Asia is not a simple form of domination in which the U.S. coerces other countries to collaborate, but rather an intricate complex of power that enables the U.S. to act as a leader. Japan for the first time opened its doors to the refugees and funded the UNHCR with enormous amounts of money to assist the U.S. in the Indochinese refugee resettlement. By doing so, the Government of Japan gained the honor of being a member of the West that was not only wealthy but moral. 6 From this perspective, the end of the defeat of the Vietnam War can be seen as the beginning of the grand victory of the Cold War. Odd Arne Westad defines the 'Cold War' as "the period in which the global conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union dominated international affairs, roughly between 1945 and 1991." 13 According to Westad, the Cold War was fought in the Third World especially during the 1970s and the early 1980s. 14 Thus, the beginning of the Indochinese refugee resettlement marked a significant moment for the U.S. government and the public to continue the war against the Soviet Union. In fact, the Cold War was "quite hot" in Asia, because it was not only a standoff between superpowers but a conflict fought in Asia and the Pacific. 15 The U.S. Indochinese refugee policy offered a different narration of U.S. war efforts in the region, revising the history, memory and meaning of the Vietnam War. Even after the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger did not believe in the "geopolitical" victory for North Vietnam, claiming that "they [the Vietnamese] have achieved an ideological victory and a geopolitical defeat." 16 He could claim the U.S. geopolitical victory because U.S. domination was sustained in Asia and the Pacific. 17 This geopolitical victory was slowly secured through the creation of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) a part of the victory of the Cold War.
... 1 Biopolitics of Operations New Life/ Arrivals . 9 ... resettlement of Vietnamese refugee... more ... 1 Biopolitics of Operations New Life/ Arrivals . 9 ... resettlement of Vietnamese refugees? 14 How did US policy on refugees, biopolitics and governmentality, provide possibility and impossibility of South Vietnamese collective existence? ...
Creative Citizen Peacebuilding: How Japan Artists and Audiences Responded to the Vietnam-American War, 2022
This article explores two case studies related to South Vietnam and Japan, relating them to the c... more This article explores two case studies related to South Vietnam and Japan, relating them to the controversial history and legacy of the Second Indochina War. The first is the Japanese adoption and adaptation of South Vietnamese antiwar music. The second is a Japanese film, uncovered decades later after the war, exposing the role of Japan in South Vietnam. Cultural productions, from nations allied with the United States, sought to expose the popular struggle for peace against the rising tide of Cold War military violence and corporate capitalist exploitation. Through interviews, archival research, and textual analysis, the article argues for a deeper understanding of the transnational alliances and forms of what we call creative citizen peacebuilding forged among musicians, filmmakers, and audiences.
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