 Welcome to Pop Talk. I'm Crystal here. And I have a really interesting topic that's totally up my alley. And this research goes back to wartime and it touches on the woman's role and the position. And we're talking about US-China relations and we're talking about World War II. We're talking about the R&R during this time in many Asian countries. And it's fascinating. So I have here Professor Zach Fredman, associate professor of history at Duke Kunshan University with me to talk about it. So welcome, welcome to my show. Thank you, Crystal. So I just want to say it was a pleasure to meet you at Duke in China, in context, we're talking about American situations. And lo and behold, I stumble on your wonderful research that kind of lines up with my research and talking about, you know, wartime for me in context of Hawaii, but you're talking about wartime US placement in several Asian cities that really kind of make us think about the backdrop and the system that supports this sex industry really, if you will. So why don't we start with you talking about and maybe kind of explaining what R&R really is and how that started. And we can go from there and maybe tap into several of your researches. Sure thing. Yeah. So I've got this new project and it's a history of the US military's overseas restoration or R&R program in the Vietnam War. And so I got into this project because I wrote my first book on the US military presence in China during World War II and the Chinese Civil War. And so to me, what I found in that research, the most interesting angle was actually the gender angle to that project. Because by about 1945, the US military had really wore out its welcome in China during the Second World War. But the one issue that sparked the public backlash was resentment over sexual relations between American soldiers and Chinese women. And this continued to be a big problem for the Chinese government. In fact, after Japan's surrender in the fall of 1945, about 50,000 American Marines occupied China, helping the Chinese Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek take control of formerly Japanese-occupied territories. And there continued to be the severing resentment over a lot of issues related to the conduct of US forces, vehicle accidents, violent crime, a lot of it caused by alcohol. But sexual relations were the most explosive issue. And this really culminated in a massive anti-American protest movement at the end of 1946, early 1947, when two intoxicated Marines raped a 19-year-old student from Peking University. And so within the next week, there were protests involving about half a million people in cities all across China, from Xinjiang all the way to Taiwan, demanding that US forces leave. Sorry, was this news released internationally, or was this kind of a narrative that was supported within China? It was released internationally, but the way it was covered in the American press was that this was like, this was all, these are false allegations. This was a newspaper campaign against Americans by the communists. So it was downplayed in the Western press, but it was a huge deal in China, in cities in China. And so I got into, so I finished this project. And what helped me, what got me into this R&R project was I was doing some research in Taiwan, related to another topic, just something I had to do for an academic journal about something in the 1930s. But I was looking in these foreign ministry files, and I saw these files on R&R during the Vietnam War. And I was glancing through it, and I saw that the whole thing, from the perspective of Chinese nationalist authorities who fled to Taiwan in 1949, of course, Chiang Kai-shek still rules Taiwan in the mid 1960s. And at this R&R program was all about providing Americans with sexual access to local women's bodies, particularly hygienic sexual access, so they wouldn't get venereal disease. It was very regulated. That's right. I was like, I couldn't, I was like, wow, this was, this issue of sexual relations was like, it was an important factor in Chiang Kai-shek losing the Chinese Civil War and losing support for his government in urban areas. Like what would make him participate in this kind of scheme then less than 20 years later? Right. So that was all the timing of that, because I know in your article, what was it called? The US military, I'm sorry, I don't want to re, I don't want to misgrade your title, but the date of the R&R and Taipei, as you had mentioned, is from 1965 to 1972, which is like you said, quite much later than World War II time. And yet this whole kind of R&R recreation is consistently being supported by the military. Yeah. So I was just, yeah, I was so surprised that Chiang Kai-shek's government, given how much these issues of sexual relations had caused problems for him in an earlier period when he still controlled the mainland, what would make him willing to participate in a scheme like this? And the US military also had a different attitude. I mean, during World War II, the official attitude was that the US military didn't support prostitution, but you know, they also shipped millions of condoms overseas. So I mean, they were sort of, there was, there was, there was tacit approval, but by Vietnam, it had changed. And the idea then was to harness access to women's bodies as a tool both, both to boost morale for American soldiers, but also as kind of an engine of economic development. But this is a way back though, right? This is not, it doesn't happen during the Vietnam War. This happened even before World War II. The idea of a military utilizing this kind of comfort to boost morale situation to entice the soldiers and sailors to really kind of look forward to something in their miserable duty. Right, absolutely. I mean, this goes back to the general patent in the European Theater of Operations in World War II as his famous quotation, like a soldier who worked fuck, worked fight. And so I mean, there, there is this kind of attitude, but when you go back to World War I, and the military has like basically the, an abstinence policy. And the idea is that all recreation should be wholesome recreation. And you know, the groups like the YMCA are helping the military. Right, the original. Right, yeah. Yeah, then that it's, but of course in World War I, venereal diseases and massive problems. This effort's not that successful. There's this little bit of a shift in World War II where there's still, there, the official policy is not to condone this, but people are allowing it to happen. And there's studies that have been done, including in my book, I actually look at the way that like a US military, like a base security officer in Kun Ming in the 1940s, during World War II, was actually running a brothel at an enlisted man's club. And you see similar things like this around the world. So there's not support from like top brass, but other people are doing this. And then, so I think the closest thing we get to R&R that occurs in the Vietnam is in the Korean War, soldiers in Korea are coming back to Sasebo in Japan, or R&R. And of course, Japan, because they ran this system of comfort women during World War II, to prepare for the American occupation, they set up this recreation amusement association, I think that's the name, where basically, you know, they are recruiting women to observe and provide sex work for American servicemen as a way to like protect what they so-called Japanese respectable women are really. We need this to distinguish the comfort women from the type of women for comfort in terms of the US R&R, right? These women were not forced to do this. Right. They're not forced to do this. I mean, I think there are a lot of times that women, by circumstances, there's not a whole lot of other options. But in places like, so in the R&R program, in Vietnam, it involves a lot of countries. So it involves Singapore, Taiwan. It also involves Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, and some of these places, there was a pre-existing US military presence. You had soldiers deployed in Taiwan. You had a lot of soldiers deployed in, especially Air Force personnel in Thailand. So already there had been, there was like a sex industry that had emerged to cater to these kind of soldiers. But it really expanded during, as part of the R&R program. And like in the case of Taiwan in particular, it like became much more tightly controlled, involving both like personnel, disease control personnel from the US were coming over and then people in the local government. And so they're trying to confine it to specific areas and regulate it in a way where I feel like it doesn't offend the nationalist sensibilities of local men. Do you think that the local Taiwanese knew this existed and they just kind of let it grow? Or was it something that kept, was coded that they said that these soldiers are here to help protect the civilians? These women are there, you know, just because, I mean, like who started creating these different narratives where they say, oh no, they're taking our women, they're raping our women. So we have to go and make these kind of like structures to protect or so called. Yeah, I think it's important that you bring up this angle about rape, because this is really central and it goes back, it ties into my curiosity over like why the Chinese government got involved in this after the experience in World War II. And so the key thing, the real key difference was in World War II, the US government had exclusive jurisdiction over all military personnel in China. So no matter what kind of crime a soldier committed, US authorities had control over it. It was tried at a US military court. Or, you know, it was ignored. The big point was like the Chinese authorities couldn't do anything other than like protest and center quest the Americans. So when the US government was trying to pressure the Chinese nationalist government on Taiwan in the 60s to join this R&R scheme, they held out for a while. And what they demanded was a status of forces agreement, similar to what the United States had negotiated with Japan, or with NATO allies in Europe. And this was having a clause that would give the government in Taipei jurisdiction in cases of particular interest. So these are cases of murder, rape, robbery. And so once the US government agreed to this, then, you know, in a case of rape, then Chinese authorities have control, have jurisdiction over the matter. So once that was done, that was what finally got the nationalist government to agree on this. But it was, you know, it was still fairly contentious. I think another motivation was economic. Because of the pressures of the Vietnam War, Taiwan was going to finally lose its financial support from the US government. This economic aid. And so for many years, the Department of Commerce had been pressing the Taiwanese government to build up a tourist industry to cater to American military personnel. This is before the Vietnam War even. So it's the cater, the troops stationed in Japan, in Guam and other places. So what did they do? They offered them a choice of going to Taiwan, for example, for what was it, five days of R&R? And what they were enjoying? Yeah. So once the R&R program actually opens up, how it works is basically any American soldier on a one year tour of duty in South Vietnam is entitled to a one overseas R&R trip for that year. And so it's five or I think it's six days in the case of Hawaii, because it's a little further away. And you have your choice of countries. And I think you could fill out a request of where you get to go. And you didn't always get your top choice. But yeah, Taiwan was ended up being pretty popular. People saw it as a good value. And then in the case of Taiwan, it was really centered around sex tourism. In places like Hong Kong that existed, that was important. But you also had all this duty free shopping. There were other things that used to sell it. When it moved to Hong Kong, there was still that building where the soldiers and sailors were able to go there to buy cheap magazines or a U.S. product. It was just like a remnant. Yeah, that's interesting. And the whole Suzy Wong era kind of created off of that militarized kind of concept. But what I wanted to say before I forget is we talk about this and we also know that the orientalization of the Asian female body has always been exacerbated through media, through films. But actually started during this time, would you agree? Or how did that exacerbate the kind of the idea of the orientalized, sexualized female body from these situations? Yeah, I mean, I think it really it becomes a major factor. I mean, I think even before the Vietnam War, so there's a there's a historian who teaches, I think he's at UC San Diego called Greg Datus. And he recently published a book called Vietnam. Well, and it's a study of all of these magazines that really like targeted boys, teenagers, after like World War Two on through the 60s, that really built up this idea of this is history of World War Two as like, you know, this as as American soldiers being heroes and being rewarded for their heroism through sex. And so soldiers going to Vietnam expected that. And then of course, you know, you have these kind of orientalized ideas that exist as well. And you see some of that in World War Two. Yeah, I remember the soldiers going to China, the the only preparation they got was this pocket guide to China. And they have one section on women at the very beginning, and you know, they have like this cartoon drawing of a woman. It looks very beautiful in a cheap how dress they talk about, you know, there might be Chinese women in cabarets who are used to like amusements, but you know, traditional Chinese women are not like this and need to be very careful. But yeah, there is this kind of Oriolescent Orientalization from very early on. Right. You also have the you have this this racial angle connected to Chinese exclusion, you know, American soldiers going to Britain going to Australia and World War Two can marry local women in China. They're not allowed to because you know, up until 1943, Chinese are deemed racially inferior and cannot become American citizens because of the Chinese Exclusion Act stretching all the way back to 1882. So the military kind of makes it so that, you know, by policy, any sort of relationship between an American soldier and a Chinese woman is a relationship between, you know, a prostitute and a client. So do you think that the narrative of the kind of the Asian woman as the prostitute was actually built up to kind of set these type of women away from the proper women, you know, to kind of, you know, create these binaries that whether whether you are the kind of the poor or the housewife, really, and how they use that and against the U.S. soldiers saying, hey, you are taking all our women or we're going to take you can use these women as so that you don't go and rape our good women, whatever. Yeah, it's it's the latter, right. And that's actually it's interesting. I mean, this is the way the ROC government frames it as well, because there is there is backlash. I mean, in Taiwan at this time, Taiwan's kind of undergoing its own cultural revitalization movement sort of as a response to the Cultural Revolution on the mainland forces that with a conservative angle. And so people are using that to protest this R&R program. And so the the government, the newspapers, writes things. Well, yeah, I mean, these are like, look, let's be frank, you know, these are not the the best that Taiwan or the best of America, you know, these are sort of our lower class people. And, you know, these are soldiers, you know, they're they're young, uneducated guys, but they are fighting for our freedom. And so, you know, they they need to be able to release steam, have something to boost their morale off of the battlefield. And if they do it here, it's confined to this one area with our sort of equivalent, these lower class women, then it's not going to have such a broader influence on society. All right, that's great. Let me just, what do you think I'm just going to ask you, as a person, as a as a male, as a as an American male, how do you feel about that? You know, if you were going to war, you were an 18 year old boy going out there, and you don't know if you're going to survive this war, you know, ultimately, sex might be on the top of your mind, right? And do you think that the government should regulate this, as opposed to having all these kind of uncontrolled situations where there is accusations of rape, and you know, how much do you think that you agree or not agree with the way it's been systematically regulated on behalf of the military? We think the military, you know, the military has always had a hard time with this issue, right? I mean, there's there has always been this kind of association between military service and sex, but they've really shipped it between World War One and Vietnam, through like going going from this kind of abstinence policy to a policy of militarized sex tourism. And I mean, I think one of it, you know, the I think one of the challenges is in the military at this time, and even more towards the present day, you have this like rigidly kind of heterosexual martial culture that really be littles women, be littles homosexuals. And it kind of it kind of makes it so soldiers feel like they have to act this way to be a man. And I mean, this this leads to all kinds of problems. I mean, in my in my book, I talked about even up to very recently in places like Oganawa. I mean, there's a tremendous amount of sex crime that occurs. I mean, but often, more often now, I think in the US military, it's crimes committed by American soldiers against other American soldiers against female soldiers. So I mean, you do, but yeah, you do have these really kind of disproportionate rates of crime and sexual assault that that soldiers are involved in. I think part of that is this way that they're acculturated into this kind of institution. Right. But do you think that, you know, they try to, you know, like the one case of this one reckless soldier who happened to be intoxicated and had, you know, had a horrible kind of scandalous case, and they blow that out of proportion to kind of create these narratives against the US soldiers stationed there? Or do you think that it's legitimate that, you know, a lot of times from the Asian perspective, they're saying that, oh, all these kind of reckless, veral young soldiers are coming here and just going crazy with our women. Yeah, but I think the context really matters and the history really matters. And in Asia, like we've talked about, you have this you have this history of racism, this history of Chinese exclusion. So local people, they don't see this as an isolated incident, they see this as the latest in a long line of this kind of history being treated as inferiors. And I really saw the difference in my in my first book on World War II, when I compared reactions to some rape cases in the UK, with, with what happened in China. And what's interesting was I saw that in the UK, the first time this happened, the media reaction was much more about, well, does this American military court martial resemble like how it's portrayed in Hollywood movies? Whereas, of course, in China, you have an entirely different kind of context. But then even in Europe, too, it'd be it became a big problem. And I think particularly in France, and in France, it was handled in the way where there was much more sensitivity on the part of the US military towards local perceptions of the behavior of American soldiers. But then what they did is they really just the US military tried to blame it all on African American servicemen. I was going to say the very racialized aspect of it, too. I think in your one of your articles, didn't you say that there's a case where they actually targeted when they saw two African American soldiers with some Asian women and they called them out or something? Absolutely. Because this is in China, Chiang Kai-shek did not want any African American soldiers to serve in China. You know, there's this kind of deep anti black racism that exists in China. If you look at a lot of the writing on eugenics and race by prominent Chinese intellectuals in the Republican period, it's they they really buy into these kind of racist narratives that people like Lothrop Stoddard or Madison Grant were writing in the United States about this hierarchy of races. The only difference is they see like the so called yellow and so called white race as equals, and then the other races as inferiors. And so yeah, I did talk about that because at one point, you know, this this became exposed in the in the American media by black journalists who had come to China and say, Hey, why aren't there any black soldiers here? And so this was especially an issue because the American military personnel in Burma, I mean, I think they were primarily African American. And these are include people that are working in building the road, the Burma Road or the Lido Road, that's connecting India to China is finally completed in February 1945. So these truck drivers are black. Right. And so eventually Chiang Kai-shek under pressure from the US government says we all allow like African American truck drivers to come to China as far east as couldn't make but no further than there. And yeah, there you did. There was this idea like you had in France that it was pushed by the US military that African American soldiers were like a particular danger to local women. And you saw this everywhere. I mean, you saw this like even in the Kachin state in northern Burma. So there is this kind of attitude that is I think also encouraged by the US military in the way that they target African American soldiers for disproportionate punishment for sex crimes. Right, tape goading them so that they kind of have the narrative so that they can blame them. To turn it up, I know we only have a few minutes left. Time goes so fast talking about all this. But you know, going back to the woman's body, why do you think that the woman's body's always been throughout history kind of the pawn of these tensions between places, especially during war? What is it about sexuality that is actually the deeper reason for the tensions between countries? Yeah, that it becomes part of this patriarchal nationalist narrative. And so many national narratives are very patriarchal, but women's bodies come to symbolize sovereignty. And so in the case of China, particularly in World War II, you have this violent backlash because Chinese feel humiliated by American soldiers. And, you know, their taking of women's bodies comes to symbolize the loss of sovereignty to the US military. And their own way so that they're going to use that as an excuse, right, to create a larger narrative. Yeah, that it's one thing I mean, you see across the political spectrum. And this is one thing that unites like hardcore conservatives in China with communists on the left. Yeah, you know, all this idea, you know, to do to regain our masculinity, our manhood, but then like put women in their proper place. But you know, it plays out even today, I'm thinking about like interracial relationships that I know, particularly a lot of Asian women who are either married to, you know, American men, Western men, or there seems to be that also the same thing about the Chinese attitude like, oh, if that Chinese girl goes and marries a Western guy, then, you know, she's sold herself short, you know, they're going to create these narratives because there is that that the insecurity of reflecting on their own manhood, which this isn't the case, but they like to create that narrative. So I feel like it's still playing out today. And it's really interesting how interracial relations I agree with you on that. Definitely. Yeah, you see that, especially in China living there, right? Yeah, I think I would still see that today. I think it has a has a really long history. You know, I think people, and not just in China, but I think, you know, people like, you know, younger men who come to the United States as students and, you know, experience, you know, sexual frustration, feelings of inadequacy, and then that can feel a kind of racialized resentment against the Americans and nationalism. Right. But then what about, you know, the missing narratives? I mean, you do mention it in your in your your articles, too, that you recognize a lack of material that raises the woman's voice on this situation. And what do we do with that? Because, you know, the archives, his historical productions, they don't have access perhaps to these women who had stories, or perhaps they're not published or they're not heard, you know, what are your thoughts on that missing narrative and listening to how the women feel about this? Like, maybe they really genuinely were attracted to that US soldier, or maybe, you know, they were forced into it because of a certain type of economic reason, you know, we don't really know. Yeah, I mean, this is why you just, yeah, on these kind of issues, you have to do really, really deep research. And it's a challenge because victims of sexual assault, people who had, you know, jobs considered humiliating, like being sex worker, don't often leave any kind of record. But I think you do, you do find things. I mean, you find things in, you know, in the example of the 1940s, and in China, I found stuff through like Social Affairs Bureau's police records. And the women's voices, you know, they were writing, particularly after World War Two, there's a brief period of about a year after Japan's surrender in China where the press and Shanghai was like particularly free. And so you had some women writing there, both in Chinese publications, but some also even writing in US military publications about their perspective and say, you know, I'm, you know, for example, I can remember one in an American military publication of a woman who was like a secretary who worked for the US military base, she said, you know, I'm not a prostitute, you know, it was, you know, it was, it was, you know, these are other like young guys, it was fun to hang out with them. And then you see this too, there's, there's more. I think when you get into the post-war period, you do see more writing, you know, in Taiwan, there was like, you know, there was like a series of like, like almost like a subgenre of fiction of these bar girl novels written, you know, that came after R&R to talk about this kind of thing. And then there are people who've done more in-depth research in a lot of fields, anthropologists who spent time in Okinawa and looked at these relationships between local women and American soldiers. That's really fascinating. I think there's still a lot more work to do, but you're kind of really onto something. I feel like your research is intriguing as well as important. Again, reminding people who are listening, you know, Professor Friedman is the author of the Tormented Alliance, American Servicemen and the Occupation of China 1941 to 49. And I don't know, I want to call out your two articles that I read, if you could just give us the titles again to remind people what your specific research is around. Yeah, so I wrote, so I published one article based off the Tormented Alliance, specifically looking at these issues of gender. And I think the title of that article was something like GIs and Jeep Girls, published in the Journal of Modern Chinese History, because Jeep Girls was this name that the Chinese media newspapers coined to describe the women who fraternized the American servicemen, because American soldiers drove around those U.S. military jeeps. And then I published a book chapter about Yaranar Program just in Taipei. And I think the title was something like, you know, U.S. military's Rest in Recreation Program in Taiwan during World War II, or sorry, during the Vietnam War. And that's published in an edited book called Vietnam War, the Making of the Pacific World, the Vietnam War in the Pacific World, edited by Brian Cutty, CUDDY and Fred Logovall. And so that's out, I think, with University of North Carolina Press. And yeah, I'm in the process of trying to do this whole story about the Yaranar Program, not just in Taiwan, but in all the other locations in Asia and Hawaii and also in Australia during the Vietnam War. And so that's in progress. I researched little bits of it summer and winter and what I'm not teaching and hope to get that done in the next couple of years. Good luck. We look forward to seeing all that. And I really appreciate how you are entangling so many issues. You know, the war is usually predominantly kind of just told from this very specific perspective. And even like recently on Netflix, there was this new show with World War II on the front lines. Everything's just kind of like the obvious stuff. But then there's so much intricate nuanced material that deals with the relationship between women and the racialized situations of the context to ethnic groups and how they group together or pit against each other in these backdrops of war. So really appreciate that. Thank you so much for sharing all your research. And hopefully we can talk about your other ones and Jeep Girls another time. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you again. And I hope you join us another time. All right. Thanks so much. Thank you.