4 - War and Work Across the Pacific

Summary

Chapter 4 examines US survivors‘ history after they came or returned to America. Particularly, the chapter highlights US survivors‘ memories of rebuilding their lives in a society that regarded Asians as both “perpetual foreigners” and ‘model minorities.’ Many Japanese American families included both those who had been in a Japanese American incarceration camp and those who had been attacked by the bomb. Many considered it best if their experiences were forgotten or left unspoken while they focused on their work and family lives. Some survivors served in the Korean War, while many others quietly grappled with the fear of radiation illness that might strike them anytime. Among Korean and Japanese military brides who came to America in these decades, too, their physicians’ lack of understanding about radiation effects became a concern. Social isolation, as well as physical ailments, became part of US survivors’ radiation illness. Throughout, the chapter focuses on how their layered silence about their experiences embodied an unspoken, yet powerful, norm for Asian America in the Cold War culture of conformity.