Table of Contents

Illustrations ix
Tables xi
A Note on Foreign Language Conventions xiii
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction. The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, Race, and Class in the U. S. Military Empire / Maria Hohn and Seungsook Moon 1
Part I. Monitored Liaisons: Local Women and GIs in the Making of Empire
1. Regulating Desire, Managing the Empire: U. S. Military Prostitution in South Korea, 1945–1970 / Seungsook Moon 39
2. "Pan-Pan Girls" Performing and Resisting Neocolonialism(s) in the Pacific Theater: U. S. Military Prostitution in Occupied Japan, 1945–1952 / Michiko Takeuchi 78
3. "You Can't Pin Sergeant's Stripes on an Archangel": Soldiering, Sexuality, and U. S. Politics in Germany / Maria Hohn 109
Part II. Civilian Entanglements with the Empire: American and Foreign Women Abroad and at Home
4. U. S. Military Families Abroad in the Post-Cold War Era and "New Global Posture" / Donna Alvah 149
5. Crossfire Couples: Marginality and Agency among Okinawan Women in Relationships with U. S. Military Men / Chris Ames 176
6. Hidden Soldiers: Working for the "National Defense" / Robin Riley 203
Part III. Talking Back to the Empire: Local Men and Women
7. In the U. S. Army but Not Quite of It: Contesting the Imperial Power in a Discourse of Katusas / Seungsook Moon 231
8. "The American Soldier Dances, the German Soldier Marches": The Transformation of Germans' Views on GIs, Masculinity, and Militarism / Maria Hohn 258
9. In the Middle of the Road I Stand Transfixed / Christopher Nelson 280
Part IV. The Empire Under Siege: Racial Crisis, Abuse, and Violence
10. The Racial Crisis of 1970–1971 in the U. S. Military: Finding Solutions in West Germany and South Korea / Maria Hohn 311
11. Camptown Prostitution and the Imperial SOFA: Abuse and Violence against Transnational Camptown Women in South Korea / Seungsook Moon 337
12. Abu Ghraib: A Predictable Tragedy? / Jeff Bennett 366
Conclusion. The Empire at the Crossroads? / Maria Hohn and Seungsook Moon 397
References 409
Contributors 439
Index 441

Promotional Information

A collection of essays exploring the world-wide US military base system and its interplay with social relations of gender and sexuality in the U.S. and foreign host nations.

About the Author

Maria Höhn is Professor of History at Vassar College. She is the author of GIs and Fräuleins: The German-American Encounter in 1950s West Germany and (with Martin Klimke) A Breath of Freedom: The Civil Rights Struggle, African American GIs, and Germany.

Seungsook Moon is Professor of Sociology at Vassar College. She is the author of Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea, also published by Duke University Press.

Reviews

"This book gives a nuanced analysis of the power relations of the American empire and militarised masculinity within it... a most enlightening comparative overview of the impact of American military bases in the three most important host countries of the US military empire." Trond Ove Tollefsen, European Review of History "This volume investigates the social impact of more than 700 American military bases outside the United States, asking how US military relations with local communitiesare affected by factors such as the host country's political regime, the relationship between soldiers and local women, and the type of community in which bases are located." Survival "Over There is a splendid book. Maria Hohn and Seungsook Moon are themselves experienced investigators into the multi-layerings of U.S. Military influence in Germany and South Korea. Here they've combined their gender-smart research with that of insightful contributors to offer us fresh understandings of how German, Japanese, and Korean women and men see the American bases in their midst and cope with U.S. Policies designed to make them complicit. I have learned a lot from Over There."--Cynthia Enloe, author of Nimo's War, Emma's War: Making Feminist Sense of the Iraq War "This wide-ranging, interdisciplinary collection makes critically visible the sprawling network of U.S. Military bases in two inseparable ways. First, base societies are revealed to be diverse social landscapes in which global questions of sovereignty and the relations of unequal nation-states have been deeply imprinted on everyday life. Second, the book powerfully identifies gendered and sexual politics as central to the construction, and contestation, of the U.S. Military presence. Richly attuned to local variation and perception, resistance and historical change, these essays offer an inspiring agenda for globalized histories of gender and U.S. Militarization."--Paul A. Kramer, author of The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines