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Lori Watt
Author of When Empire Comes Home: Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan
About the Author
Lori Watt analyzes how the human remnants of empire, those who were moved and those who were left behind, served as sites of negotiation in the process of the jettisoning of the colonial project and in the creation of new national identities in Japan. Through an exploration of the creation and uses show more of the figure of the repatriate, in political, social, and cultural realms, this study addresses the question of what happens when empire comes home. Lori Watt is Assistant Professor of History and International Area Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. show less
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As such, Watt uses the case of Tsukada Asae as something of an exemplar. One of Watt's interview subjects, this woman went to Manchuria to teach the school children of a farming community and survived by the skin of her teeth, driven by her desperate efforts to save her kids, though she mostly failed. She then went on to lead a life of remembrance and activism (in regards to the Japanese orphans left behind in China) before passing away at 90; always keeping a doll as a reminder of the child she almost got back home to Japan.
In the final analysis, Watt is not enthusiastic about the large-scale forced transfers of populations, though in this case, considering the trends of post-war society, this repatriation process was probably the best thing that could have happened to the Japanese expat population; this is compared and contrasted with what happened to the Germans of Eastern Europe after World War II and the French colonial population of Algeria after Paris washed their hands of that country.… (more)