The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 23 (2012)

America’s Racial Limits: U.S. Cinema andthe Occupation of Japan

Hiroshi KITAMURA*

On May 5, 1951, Douglas MacArthur appeared at a U.S. Senate hearing to discuss the military situations in East Asia. Following detailed
exchanges on the tense international conﬂicts in China and Korea, theaging general was asked to comment on the Allied Occupation of Japan.
Proud and conﬁdent, General MacArthur, Supreme Commander of theAllied Powers in Japan (SCAP), stated that “many good results haveﬂowed from its occupation.” His reasoning was simple. In the processof “administer[ing] a decent and just form of government” in the former
Axis state, the Japanese not only “became acquainted with the American
way of life” but also “began to realize that the liberty of an individual,
the dignity of man . . . were real methods” with which they could better“their own basic concepts and methods of life.” Although a great many
Japanese “had never even seen a white face,” the Occupation inspired a“great social revolution” akin to the Magna Carta and the French
Revolution—“the great revolutions of our own types”—with “no dropof blood.” In the end, “a very isolated and backward nation” had cometo “practice . . . the freedoms which you and I learned at our mothers’breasts when we were born.”1
MacArthur’s remarks reveal the permeation of racial thinking in the
U.S.-led Allied Occupation. The six-and-a-half years of occupation afterWorld War II has often been seen as an era in which SCAP launched a*Associate Professor, College of William and Mary

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barrage of political, legal, economic, and social reforms in the name of
demilitarization and “democratization,” but this process also came with
racial bias and conﬂict. Over the past decade and a half, scholars have
explored the racial dimension of the Occupation by looking at white
America’s Orientalist (re)imagination of the Japanese Other, speciﬁcallynoting the changing perceptions of the Japanese from war-mongering
beasts to childlike inferiors who required American tutelage for “uplift”
and “reorientation.”2 Others have explored how the Japanese refashioned
their racialized worldviews after the war by accepting their subservient
status to the West while claiming superiority over Asian neighbors andethnic minorities. The persistence of cultural divides led to tense crosssocial reactions involving miscegenation, pan-pan prostitution, and fraternization.3
In this essay I offer new insight by showing the construction and dissemination of American racial discourse through Hollywood’s business
operation. During the early postwar era, the Occupation utilized cinema
as a tool for the “re-education” and “reorientation” of the war-shattered
Japanese population. Hollywood aided SCAP by claiming to be a“fountain of culture” (bunka no izumi) that offered lessons on “truedemocracy” while entertaining the public.4 Yet the discourses it offeredassumed an imagined social hierarchy ordained by race. The stream of
U.S. narratives and publicity texts by and large celebrated America’s
humanity as a “white” achievement, while erasing ethnic difference
among Europeans, marginalizing Africans and African Americans, andboth suppressing and sensationalizing the presence of Native Americans.
Hollywood constructed a kind of melting-pot whiteness as the norm
superior to the values and lifestyles of nonwhites. In so doing, U.S. studios played an active role in establishing a hegemonic order in Japan—
one that boosted (white) American power over the (nonwhite) Japanese.5
My goal here is not simply to illuminate the racialized discourses inthe screen texts but to situate the ﬁlms in the larger institutional structures and politics that surrounded them. In what follows, I begin by discussing the establishment of the Hollywood apparatus in defeated Japan,
namely the Central Motion Picture Exchange (CMPE), the distribution
outpost of the U.S. major ﬁlm studios. I then examine how occupation
censors, ﬁnding undesirable tropes and ideas on the screens, confronted
Hollywood’s racial representations. Discussions on occupation policy
are followed by a look at the transpaciﬁc dissemination of Hollywood’s
racialized worldview. In addition to ofﬁcial SCAP documents and U.S.

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trade papers, I rely on Hollywood’s Japanese-language publicity materials to elucidate the cultural formations of U.S. cinema. In the end, in
this essay I seek to demonstrate U.S. cinema as a hegemonic instrumentthat reinforced America’s dominant inﬂuence on Japan in the aftermathof World War II. Hollywood, I contend, played a key role in shaping thisuneven transpaciﬁc relationship.
A CHOSEN INSTRUMENTThe end of World War II ushered in a new era in U.S.–Japanese relations. Following the string of island-hopping battles and air bombingsthat scorched much of the Asia-Paciﬁc region, the Japanese government
acquiesced to the Allied Powers on August 15, 1945. Defeat in war led
to the arrival of the U.S.-led forces of occupation, which pursued a farreaching, Herculean program to transform Japan’s political, social, andcultural landscape. Led by General MacArthur, the occupationaires
began with a rigorous effort to dismantle Japan’s military and take chargeof its territorial possessions. In an ambitious attempt to “democratize”
the landscape, SCAP also enacted sweeping political and legal reforms.
While promoting equality and opportunity through suffrage and political activism, MacArthur also sought to empower rank-and-ﬁle workers
by encouraging unionization and collective bargaining. An ambitious
attempt to break up the powerful zaibatsu conglomerates proceeded
simultaneously. Even though the looming “reverse course” soon compromised SCAP’s reform programs, these early initiatives left a lasting
mark on the “new” Japanese state—well beyond MacArthur’s tenure in
East Asia.6
In this climate of change, the occupiers also aimed to inﬂuence
Japanese public opinion. To achieve this, SCAP moved to control thesphere of cultural expression. This was pursued in part through the Civil
Information and Education Section (CIE), a civilian bureau that generated reform in the areas of education, religion, and public information.
MacArthur also relied on the Civil Censorship Detachment (CCD), a
military ofﬁce designed to preserve national security, collect intelligence, and generate counterespionage programs to further SCAP’s
objectives across the Paciﬁc. Together, these ofﬁces censored and monitored the media enterprises—including newspapers, magazines, books,
radio, and the movies. As a result, Japanese ﬁlmmakers, among othercultural producers, were forced to interact with SCAP personnel who

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HIROSHI KITAMURA“instructed” and “advised” them on appropriate on-screen content.
While much less draconian than censors in Nazi Germany or Stalinist
Russia, the Occupation scrutinized synopses, screenplays, and ﬁlm prints
and often conspicuously inﬂuenced the ﬁnal product, to the chagrin of
the local studios.7
The attempts to inﬂuence Japanese cinema coincided with Hollywood’stranspaciﬁc penetration. During World War II, U.S. ﬁlm studios turned
away from their commitment to producing “pure” entertainment andactively assisted the Allied cause. Hollywood studios routinely submitted scripts and prints to the Ofﬁce of War Information, which offered“instructions” and “suggestions” to enhance the U.S. government’s information campaign.8 In return, the U.S. government aided Hollywood’s
operation. During the second half of the war, the State Department
worked with key studio representatives to plan the industry’s postwar
international trade. A string of meetings and discussions between government and industry resulted in the creation of the Motion Picture
Export Association (MPEA). Dubbed “the little State Department,” thislegal cartel of Hollywood studios was used to spearhead the U.S. ﬁlm
trade in state-controlled or protected markets. Japan, one of the four
countries (the others being Germany, Austria, and Korea) occupied by
the Allies, became a prominent site of the MPEA’s action.9
SCAP formed an intimate working relationship with Hollywood. Convinced that message-driven American ﬁlms could offer both entertainment and inspiration, the occupiers privileged the MPEA over otherforeign ﬁlm distributors that sought to break into the Japanese market.
Thanks to this backing, U.S. cinema achieved a dominating presence
within the ﬁeld of “foreign cinema” (yôga). In addition, SCAP assisted
the formation of the Central Motion Picture Exchange (CMPE), the
MPEA’s distribution outpost in Japan (and Korea). Founded in Tokyo
as an institutional arm of the CIE, the CMPE soon earned a U.S. Treasury
license to operate as a full-ﬂedged business enterprise under MacArthur’spresence. Run by former 20th Century-Fox manager Charles Mayer, theoperation expanded as the CMPE founded regional branches in Nagoya,
Osaka, Fukuoka, and Sapporo. Mayer also parceled the required labor
into bureaucratically managed departments that sought efﬁciency andeffectiveness. The newly created departments—publicity, production(for subtitling), accounting, and general affairs—were typically managed by Americans and other foreigners dispatched by Hollywood, while
day-to-day tasks was conducted by the company’s Japanese employees,

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who soon exceeded four hundred. This type of managerial structure,
typical of Hollywood in other eras as well, did not sit well with someJapanese observers, who criticized it as a “colonial” practice.10
CENSORING RACE
SCAP’s institutional support was a blessing for Hollywood, but thisdid not mean that the occupiers were entirely pleased with the U.S. ﬁlm
industry’s ﬁlmic lineup. While believing that many U.S. ﬁlms could aid
Japan’s democratic reconstruction, the occupiers were also troubled by
the presence of ﬁlms that might harm their overall mission. Americanofﬁcials, therefore, censored and monitored Hollywood’s renderings
before they were released to theaters. The censorship of U.S. cinema differed from that of Japanese cinema, partly in that the censors inspected
the ﬁnished products instead of interfering in the production phase. In
addition, the censorship of Hollywood also came with the interventionof the U.S. State Department and the Civil Affairs Division (CAD) of
the U.S. Army in New York. In particular, the CAD employed a stringent control measure, at times taking issue with ﬁlms that SCAP censors
found to be acceptable. This infuriated Charles Mayer, who once complained to his superiors in New York that the U.S. Army was “dumber
than we could ever imagine.”11
The censors’ area of concern was broad and deep. They began by taking issue with Hollywood’s renderings of war and nationalism. Fearingthat ﬁlms with a military backdrop could revive Japan’s perceived warlike tendencies, occupation censors barred the entry of such products.
This, for example, resulted in the suppression of Alfred Hitckcock’s
Lifeboat (1944), a grim survival tale that takes place on a crowded escaperaft, for depicting a Nazi captain’s gradual (albeit failed) control of thefate of the survivors.12 Counter-Attack (1945), a Zoltan Korda ﬁlm starring Paul Muni that depicted a Russian counteroffensive against the
Nazis, bothered a CCD censor, who complained of the ﬁlm’s “gloriﬁcation of war, individual heroism, self-sacriﬁce, and blind obedience.”13
SCAP found problems even in The Major and the Minor (1942), a Billy
Wilder ﬁlm about a young woman who disguises herself as an elevenyear-old to take a train ride at half-price fare. En route to her ﬁnal destination, she meets a U.S. Army major who is deceived by her and a groupof young cadets who, instead of showing discipline, vie for the attentionof the “eleven-year-old.” The ﬁlm bothered CIE because it appeared to144

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ridicule Army ofﬁcers while also creating an impression that militaryeducation was compulsory for American boys.14
Films that depicted political and social disturbance faced the ire ofoccupation censors, as they were presumed to undermine Japan’s social
harmony. For this reason, the CCD decided to suppress In Old Chicago(1938). The story highlighted the off-and-on relationship of two immigrant brothers—one an honest politician and the other a racketeer—anddisplayed bribery, graft, manipulation, rowdy beer parties, and illegal
voting practices in post–Civil War Chicago. Although the ﬁnal scene,
set during the Great Fire of 1871, converts the dishonest brother into a
moral and considerate being, the CCD censor could not dismiss the overall lack of political justice.15 The Fountainhead (1949) signaled trouble
because of its protagonist. This adaptation of the Ayn Rand novel introduced a stubborn architect (Gary Cooper) who resists the temptation tocompromise his aesthetic originality. When a fellow architect begs him
to design a housing project under his name, the main character agrees atﬁrst. But he soon blows up the construction site, particularly because of
the modiﬁcations made later by the client and his cohorts. While acknowledging the ﬁlm’s “thesis that creative spirit in men should be free,”
the CIE was unhappy to ﬁnd that the “action on which the architect hero’s
expression of freedom hinges is criminal action.” The agency denounced
the ﬁlm for its “questionable morality.”16
Scenes of torture and cruelty did not fare well in the eyes of occupation censors. One example was Arabian Nights (1942), which displayed
two scenes that the Army questioned: one in which a half-conscious man
is hanged in a public square under the sharp gaze of hungry vultures, andthe other in which a captive is tortured on a wooden wheel and thenstabbed to death.17 Another troublesome ﬁlm was The Sea Wolf (1941),
an adaptation of Jack London’s bleak novel about an Ahab-esque captain on a scavenger ship. The CIE did not favor the ﬁlm because the Ghost(the name of the vessel)—peopled with criminals, convicts, alcoholics,
and rugged sailors—was heading toward the Japanese coast “for the purpose of piracy on the high seas.”18 Swashbucklers faced criticism in part
because of physical violence, but mostly because they appeared toembody “feudalistic” traits. Occupation censors—oddly, I must add—identiﬁed semblances of the vengeful samurai in the rope-swinging pirates
and saber-rattling duelists in the popular Hollywood genre. Censors
speciﬁcally called for the removal of “excessive swordplay” from The

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Black Swan (1942), The Fighting O’Flynn (1949), and The Son of Monte
Cristo (1941), among others.19
Race was another trope that the U.S. occupiers handled cautiously.
This began with stereotypes of the Japanese. During World War II, U.S.
studios produced a body of war ﬁlms that caricatured the Japanese as sly,malignant, merciless, and faceless enemies.20 While some of those ﬁlms,
such as Across the Pacific (1942) and Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1945),
were immediately approved for release in U.S.-occupied Germany, virtually none of them entered Japan in the wake of the war.21 The reason
had a lot to do with Hollywood’s own decision to avoid showing ﬁlms
about the Paciﬁc War and the U.S. government’s pressure against theirenlistment. Nonetheless, SCAP still detected problematic depictions of
the former Axis enemy—in ﬁlms about the home front and productions
that did not deal with the war. One example was A Medal for Benny(1945), a story in which residents of a small town decide to honor a young
man who died in combat after killing a slew of Japanese soldiers. After
viewing the ﬁlm, the CIE requested the elimination of “all references to
the killing of the Japs.” Later, the CCD veriﬁed that the offensive language was removed, but it spotted one oversight: an image of a man holding a sign that read: “Wipe the Japs off the Map.” This shot was trimmedout of the ﬁnal product.22 In No Leave, No Love (1946), the CIE requested
modiﬁcation of a line that characterized the “Japs” as “savages on theisland.”23 The Lady is Willing (1942) posed no problems except for thefollowing utterance: “I am going to commit hari-kari [sic] in order tokeep us all out of jail.” The CIE argued that this line was “not necessary
in the ﬁlm.” The CMPE agreed to remove it from the celluloid prints.24
The Hollywood western genre included few stereotypes of theJapanese, but it presented a cargo of problems to SCAP. Censors wereroutinely bothered by the depiction of violence as a solution to the crisis at hand. On viewing the John Wayne ﬁlm Tall in the Saddle (1944),
a CCD censor therefore took issue with its presentation of “lawlessness,
killing, gambling, and frontier justice,” all of which could expose “objectionable practices or elements of American life.”25 Another problem withthe genre was the gloriﬁcation of the antihero. Bad Bascomb (1946), forinstance, dramatized the exploits of a notorious outlaw who develops aclose bond with a young Mormon girl as he helps her community. The
CIE was relieved to see that for the protagonist, who is eventually caught
by the U.S. Cavalry, it “appears that . . . [he] will face the law.” But the146

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rest of the ﬁlm was nothing but troubling because the outlaw’s “entire
appearance in the picture is one of sentimentality, which could easily
creates [sic] sympathy.”26 Westerns, furthermore, often came with depictions of revenge, vengeance, and retaliation, which, as with the swashbuckler and the Japanese period ﬁlm ( jidaigeki), seemed to represent“feudalistic” traits encoded with loyalty and sacriﬁce. For this reason,
reading the synopsis was enough for a CIE censor to take issue with
Stuart Heisler’s Dallas (1950). “The story synopsis,” noted Donald
Nugent, “gives the impression that the theme [of the ﬁlm] is personal
revenge, with three men killed without punishment of any kind for thekiller.” For this reason, “it would be difﬁcult to give clearance for thispicture,” the CIE ofﬁcer noted.27
The Hollywood western created problems also because of its tendency
to disparage nonwhites. While admitting that the genre “var[ied] in content” and had a “legitimate spot as entertainment,” Nugent “hesitate[d]”to support westerns, especially because “Indians and Mexicans are mistreated by dominant whites.”28 Although the CIE censor did not single
out any ﬁlms, Hollywood of this era had a broad lineup that ﬂaunted violence with Native Americans, such as Stagecoach (1939), She Wore a
Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Ambush (1950). The problem with the depiction of Mexicans was more complex, as a curious controversy emerged
over The Gay Amigo (1949). This ﬁlm from the Cisco Kid series revolved
around the U.S. Cavalry’s attempts to capture a band of robbers in the
Arizona Territory. An ofﬁcer spots the Cisco Kid and Pancho during achase and suspects that these two Mexican American men were leading
the raids. Yet, on the contrary, the sombrero-clad duo, while being followed by law enforcers, turned out to be heroes as they expose the actual
conspirators: two white men. This was not a welcome ending for the CIE,
which complained about “the build-up of the Cisco Kid as compared tothe breakdown of the Army sergeant,” as well as the fact that “the actual
culprits are Americans, not Mexicans.”29
Films that depicted colonial and imperial adventures also faced opposition because of racial issues. This discourse repeatedly emerged with
the Tarzan features. In Tarzan and the Amazons (1945) the chest-thumping hero helps an injured “Amazon woman” and gains the trust of her
people. A British expedition team, however, intrudes in search of hidden treasures and nearly destroys her secret civilization.30 The CIE
expressed reluctance to clear this ﬁlm because it highlighted a “clash
between the white man and the people of a different culture.”31 SCAP

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voiced dismay at Tarzan and the Green Goddess (1938) as well. In thisfeature, set in the Guatemalan jungle, two white expedition teams compete in a search for the Green Goddess, a Mayan idol that contains asecret formula for an explosive that could “destroy the world.” The problem with this ﬁlm was partly the presence of a massive explosive that
seemed to resemble the atomic bomb. This, a CIE censor groused, wasan “unusual coinciden[ce].”32 The other trouble was the existence of
greedy white explorers who exploit the local population. A CIE censor
thus charged that the ﬁlm portrayed “imperialism at its worst.”33
Films that dramatized tension in white colonial governance were also
problematic. The CIE was reluctant to clear John Ford’s The Hurricane(1937), which in Germany received classiﬁcation as a “reorientation”
picture.34 The ﬁlm featured a romance between two Polynesians who survive a colossal hurricane that wipes out the idyllic island of Manacura.
The problem the censor saw was not the presence of French colonists in
the South Paciﬁc but, rather, the violence and animosity that spark
between the islanders and the European interlopers. In the ﬁlm, the darkskinned protagonist, Terangi, suffers from arduous manual labor,
extended jail sentences, and physical punishments imposed on him forstriking a white “man of inﬂuence.” The French governor’s obsession
with punitive law and Terangi’s accidental killing of a prison guard escalate the conﬂict. As a result, The Hurricane appeared unsuitable in Japanbecause it stressed the “clash . . . between the White Man and people ofa different culture.”35
The Letter (1940), a screen adaptation of an acclaimed play by W.
Somerset Maugham, brought about a tense reaction for the same reason.
Set in British Malaya, the ﬁlm dramatized the trial of a white rubber
planter’s wife who is accused of killing a male friend. The jury declares
her “not guilty,” but this happens only after she secretly buys back a key
letter that could have proved her malice. Toward the end, she confesses
that she was actually in love with the murdered man and that she killed
him after discovering that he had married a “native woman” with“cobra’s eyes.” In the ﬁnal scene, the angry widow quietly stabs the protagonist to death under the moonlight. The CIE was willing to clear theﬁlm for release, but the Army found it “entirely unsuitable.” The central
problem did not lie in the white “yellow-face” performance by Gale
Sondergaard, but the “inter-racial theme” that resulted in hatred, jealousy, and death.36
Yet not all colonial stories suffered from SCAP’s hostility. Anna and148

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the King of Siam (1946), for instance, was a favored example. Based on
the life story of Anna Leonowens, the ﬁlm deals with a widowed British
woman’s efforts to tutor the Siamese royal family. A highlight of the
ﬁlm is Anna’s interaction with the crusty king, who aspires to learn about
Western science and “modernization” without losing his pride and dignity as leader of the people. Understanding the king’s status and ambition, Anna inspires him by teaching the principles of Western
democracy, fashion, etiquette, and the English language. Despite the caricatured white-face presentation of the Siamese king by Rex Harrison,
the CCD praised the ﬁlm for showing the “introduction of progressive
Western thought into a Far Eastern nation.”37
While evaluating ﬁlms with colonial backdrops, the occupationaires
encountered Go for Broke! (1951), a narrative that highlighted U.S. servicemen of Japanese descent. The MGM production depicted the 442
Regimental Combat Team, which was made up of young Nisei soldiers
who fought the Axis foes in southern Italy. The narrative couples these
Japanese Americans with a white U.S. lieutenant who reluctantly serves
as the platoon leader (early on, a colonel instructs him not to refer to his
men as “Japs”) but soon comes to respect them for their bravery in battle. The ﬁlm provides an uneven representation of race, as it largely relies
on a single protagonist in presenting (American) whiteness while utilizing a band of Japanese Americans to construct the Japanese American
Other. In the ﬁlm’s formulation, the Nisei can only be protagonized asa collective (not as a single person). The cultural conversion of the prejudiced white lieutenant also exposes the ﬁlm’s “racial limits.” As T.
Fujitani notes, the admiration and tolerance expressed by the white protagonist conformed to a “discourse . . . that countenanced cultural difference as long as it did not upset the top of the racial hierarchy.”38 Yet,in part for starring ﬁve Nisei veterans of the actual 442nd Battalion, theﬁnal product pleased occupation censors. Without hesitation, the CIE
cleared this ﬁlm as a “reorientation” picture to reward its treatment of
the Nisei in the U.S. military.39
INVENTING WHITENESS
Hollywood was sensitive to the politics of the Occupation. Understanding that SCAP’s support was essential to its business in Japan,
MPEA studios, although not always pleased with the criticism, compliedwith most requests for change. Hollywood’s conciliatory attitude was

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also evident in the CMPE’s SCAP-friendly attitude. In arranging theﬁlmic programs, the distributor paired feature ﬁlms with CIE ﬁlms andeducational newsreels that showcased world news and pro-American
messages. The CMPE also promoted its features as both educational andentertaining texts. In a full-page magazine ad, the CMPE boasted of its“adaptation of best sellers [and] acclaimed theatrical dramas” as well as“music, sports, dance, science, [and] American history.” In other words,
Hollywood offered “the best guidebook with which to learn about
American culture.”40 U.S. studios were conﬁdent about the results ofthese “pedagogical” endeavors. In 1951 Charles Mayer conﬁdently
reported: “Our pictures have had a vitalizing effect on the thought of the[Japanese] people, and a very far-reaching direct and indirect inﬂuenceon the national life of Japan in the direction of democracy.”41
Yet the cultural kaleidoscope that Hollywood offered was not an egalitarian worldview but a hegemonic construction that celebrated whiteachievements over those of others. In the words of Daniel Bernardi, the“U.S. cinema has consistently constructed whiteness, the representational and narrative form of Eurocentrism, as the norm by which all‘Others’ fail by comparison.”42 The process of privileging whiteness has
involved the diffusion of European ethnicities and nationalities and theirintegration in the broader rubric of a white America. It has also been
shaped by the exoticization, marginalization, and erasure of nonwhites,such as Africans, African Americans, and Native Americans. This exercise of power did not only take place in the spheres of ﬁlm production
and on-screen representation. In the process of distribution and promotion, the CMPE actively employed a similar procedure to inﬂuence theminds of Japanese consumers. Hollywood’s racial formations are particularly visible in the CMPE’s Japanese-language newsletters and press
sheets, which circulated widely to augment publicity campaigns.
The hegemonic process could be seen, ﬁrst, with the celebration ofwhite America. U.S. ﬁlms often developed ﬂattering portraits of representative Americans, praising them as honest, caring, and benevolent
individuals. This was the case for Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). This biopic
dramatized the log-cabin president’s early career. A caring lawyer who
strives to defend an innocent family from a murder charge, Lincoln,
performed by Henry Fonda, is presented as an honest and pure-hearted
man. The CMPE’s press sheet underscored this attribute by boosting thehero as “warm,” “sincere,” and saturated with “humanism.”43 The same
could be said of Pride of the Yankees (1943). This Sam Wood biopic

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dramatized baseball legend Lou Gehrig’s emergence from humble
beginnings to become Yankee ﬁrst baseman; the ﬁlm ends with Gehrig’s
famous speech at Yankee Stadium, which he gave after learning that hehad to retire because of a mysterious illness (ALS, now commonly
known as Lou Gehrig’s disease). What particularly stood out in the narrative, according to the CMPE, was the “sincere” and “warm” characterization of the baseball star, who would teach viewers the “joy to live
as human beings.” Pride of the Yankees celebrated a white American
icon whose path in life seemed to resonate with people around theworld.44
Sergeant York (1941) turned to American heroics in World War I. It
depicted the life story of Alvin York, a poor Tennessee farmer who winsa Congressional Medal of Honor for single-handedly capturing 132
German soldiers in the European trenches. In dealing with a biopic thatused World War I as a pretext to address interventionist politics on theeve of the Pearl Harbor attack, the CMPE stressed that the ﬁlm, which
starred Gary Cooper, was “not merely a war ﬁlm that worshipped ahero.”45 According to the distributor, the narrative—just as Young Mr.
Lincoln and Pride of the Yankees did with their biographical subjects—“sincere[ly]” depicted “York the human being” and highlighted the“beauty of emotion and love” that surrounded the “humble” and “purehearted” protagonist. Additionally, the distributor made special note of
the scene in which York objects to military service due to his religious
convictions. Stressing that such a “ﬁlm with an antiwar theme” would
not have been made in “militaristic Japan,” the CMPE touted this whiteman’s story as an emblem of “America’s humanism,” even though it
involved the theme of war.46
While celebrating the achievements of famous white Americans, the
CMPE also released ﬁlms that touted community life. Rosy depictionsof American life often focused on white families and neighborhoods withlittle ethnic and racial diversity. One example was State Fair (1945), a
Rogers and Hammerstein musical that followed the Frake family’s trip
to the Iowa State Fair, where the daughter meets the love of her life, theson rekindles romantic feelings with a childhood sweetheart, the father
wins a competition with his prize boar, and the mother reigns triumphantin a “pickle and mincemeat” contest. This joyous story in which nonwhites were virtually absent depicted “the center of provincial farmculture and provincial popular entertainment since the early days ofAmerican development,” according to the press sheet.47 The CMPE

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regarded this 1945 Technicolor picture as an ideal vehicle for boosting
Hollywood’s image. Shortly before the ﬁlm’s release, Charles Mayer
penned a letter to General MacArthur to urge the Supreme Commander
to “make a statement for the press that State Fair gives a true and wholesome picture of American home life.” In so doing, Mayer intimated thatthe white small-town farmer in Iowa represented the norms of American
everyday life.48
The presentation of American beneﬁcence and humanitarianism as acontribution by whites required another procedure: the dilution andremoval of European ethnic difference. Hollywood ﬁlms such as Boys
Town (1938) underwent this cultural process. The ﬁlm was based on thereal-life story of Father Edward Flanagan, a Catholic priest who beats
the odds to construct a boys’ self-run orphanage. The narrative focusedon Flanagan’s tireless efforts to build and run this facility in the face ofﬁnancial and social difﬁculties. There is little mention of the protagonist’s Irish origins; thus, in this narrative, the Irish, to borrow thewords of Noel Ignatiev, “became white.”49 While erasing Flanagan’s“Irishness,” the ﬁlm crafted the drama as an American (“national”) story.
In the press sheet, the CMPE’s Tamura Yukihiko noted that Boys Town“teaches us” the “proactive nature of Americans.” According to Tamura,the protagonist seemed to exemplify the following attitude: “State
without hesitation that you don’t like something if there is something
you don’t like. Then work hard yourself to improve on it. This is the true
freedom and democracy.”50 Another example was The Story ofAlexander Graham Bell (1939). Set in Boston during the mid-1870s, thisbiopic largely downplayed the inventor’s Scottish background and choseto underscore his trials and tribulations as an American in developing
the telephone. The press sheet treated Bell as an “inventor of the telephone whom America is proud of.” Hollywood reinforced America’s“ownership” of this ethnically liminal innovator.51
The diffusion of ethnic difference also occurred in community-oriented narratives such as Our Town (1940). Set in Grover’s Corner, New
Hampshire—a “very ordinary town” as noted by one of its characters—
the ﬁlm adaptation of a Thornton Wilder play presented an everyday
drama of small-town America involving romance, marriage, death, andlife. Although someone mentions a Polish town located in the vicinity,
the narrative actually makes little use of this place. Not surprisingly, the
CMPE had little to say about ethnic diversity. Instead, it pointed out thepresence of the narrator who, facing the camera, directly engages the152

HIROSHI KITAMURA

movie audience. Additionally, it lauded the ﬁlm’s teaching of “the signiﬁcance of life” based on a story about a “typical American small city
[town].”52 Ethnic difference was more apparent in I Remember Mama,
in which a woman novelist reminisces about her upbringing in a
Norwegian American immigrant family in San Francisco. Although themain characters display their ethnicity via their heavy accents, the
CMPE’s press sheet chose to promote the ﬁlm mainly as a story about a“poor but bright family in San Francisco.” The highlight of the narrativeis the mother (played by Irene Dunne). The distributor simply underscored the “warm affection of family centered around a beautiful
mother.”53
The CMPE’s construction and presentation of whiteness involved
more than the “whitening” of European immigrants. It also entailed the
suppression and masking of ethnic and “national” characteristics fromwhites in international contexts. Song of Love (1947), a biopic about
Clara and Robert Schumann, dramatized the pianist wife’s devotion to
her composer-husband. Although set in nineteenth-century Bavaria, theﬁlm “Americanized” the protagonists. This could be seen in thecharacters’ dialogue in English (with, and sometimes almost without,“European” accent) and their use of the U.S. unit of measure (“feet”) andcurrency (“the dollar”) in the dialogue. In advertising the ﬁlm, the CMPE
pointed out another element of “Americanization”: Schumann’s “brightness” (akarusa) and “humanity” (ningensei) that rendered the ﬁlm “mostfun” and “wonderful.” Such “American-ness” that director Clarence
Brown presented, noted the distributor, rendered the ﬁlm worthy of viewing.54 Sister Kenny (1946) dealt with an Australian nurse who fought toheal children infected with polio despite her ridicule by the medical profession. Much of the publicity discourse de-emphasized Kenny’s country of origin and urged viewers to simply appreciate the “fun and beautyin life” that was embedded in this movie. As could be seen in the Japanese
title of this ﬁlm, Sekai no haha (Mother of the World), the CMPE downplayed Kenny’s Australian identity and largely treated her as a ubiquitous white woman.55
ERASING BLACKNESSHollywood’s melting-pot whiteness diffused the differences among
European ethnic subgroups, but it was still inclusive of them. By contrast, Africans and African Americans were largely excluded. In Oc-

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153

cupied Japan, this resulted in the general absence of blacks from thescreen. During the early postwar era, Hollywood actually began toproduce a growing body of provocative pictures that directly engaged
with race and racism. Pictures like Crossfire (1947) and Gentleman’s
Agreement (1948) exposed the widespread existence of anti-Semitism in
the United States and earned noteworthy attention at the Academy
Awards. Others cast a spotlight on the plight of African Americans.
Home of the Brave (1949), for example, told a story of racism against
blacks in the U.S. military, while Lost Boundaries (1949) and Pinky(1949) depicted the struggles of light-featured African Americans who
could “pass” as whites. According to Donald Bogle, these social-problem ﬁlms helped shape an era that “broke the most ground of all forblacks in American ﬁlms.”56
Curiously, the Japanese public encountered none of these ﬁlms during the Occupation. Instead, the ﬁlmic lineup, for the most part, functioned to marginalize blacks from the white mainstream. This could beseen, ﬁrst, in narratives of colonial and imperial adventures, such as King
Solomon’s Mines (1950). Based on Henry Rider Haggard’s popularnovel, this MGM ﬁlm depicted British adventurer Allan Quartermain’squest to ﬁnd a secret treasure buried in a mysterious “dark country” inthe heart of Africa. While integrating a romance plot involving Quartermain and an Englishwoman who hires him to look for her missing
husband in this uncharted territory, the narrative portrays most Africans
as expendable, faceless, and incomprehensible beings. The ﬁlm’s emphasis on white colonial exploits apparently did not sit well with occupation censors, who refused to regard the ﬁlm as a “reorientation” ﬁlm.
This led the CMPE to stress the ﬁlm’s “excellent photography”—partly
shot on location in Africa—as well as its “superior” entertainment qualitythat seemed to inject “happiness into the lives of millions throughout theworld.” This might be read as a tacit admission of the ﬁlm’s racial mistreatments.57
The Tarzan ﬁlm series also came with similarly racialized traits. Despite the resistance of censors, some fourteen Tarzan ﬁlms were screenedin Occupied Japan. For features that involved the presence of Africans,
the CMPE referred to them as “earth people” (dojin), but generally it
chose not to underscore their presence in the marketing campaign.58
Instead, as was done with King Solomon’s Mines, the distributor touted
the ﬁlms’ other highlights. For example, the ad campaign for Tarzan andthe Huntress (1947) stressed the presence of “a great number of animals

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HIROSHI KITAMURA

who will display their interesting ecology.” The list included “lions,zebras, hyenas, panthers, elephants, monkeys, water bulls, deer, bears,
rhinos, American panthers, hippos, raccoons, etc.” To exhibitors, the
CMPE particularly urged tie-in campaigns with local zoos.59 For otherTarzan ﬁlms, the CMPE emphasized discourses of gender and sexuality
over race. In Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (1946), for instance,
Tarzan is captured by a cult in Africa headed by a mysterious “leopard
woman.” The CMPE mounted a publicity campaign around this exoticized character, performed by Venezuelan actress Acquanetta. In thepress sheet her character was presented as a “sensual naked woman,” butlittle was mentioned of her race. The CMPE privileged her sexual attributes over her identity as a nonwhite Other.60
The fate of African Americans was not that different. In the processof ﬁlm selection, few “black” or “ethnic” ﬁlms—let alone social-problem
ﬁlms—actually entered Japan. A notable exception was Stormy Weather(1943), a story about black musical entertainment. A celebration of the“magniﬁcent contribution of the colored race to the entertainment . . .
world during the past twenty-ﬁve years” (as noted by a magazine thatappears in the ﬁlm), it wove the musical performances of Bill Robinson,
Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, and Fats Waller (among others) into a narrative about a pair of ambitious African American men who yearn to reap
success in show business. This was a path-breaking ﬁlm that enlisted an
all-black cast and featured a constellation of their stage performances.
Even though the ﬁlm ironically functioned to reinforce racial divisions
by “blackening” the ﬁeld of American popular music, the CMPE naturally touted the “song and dance and piano and tap-dancing and revues”
presented by “Negroes” (niguro). The distributor ultimately promised an“extravagant musical parade that would thoroughly satisfy [you with]jazz.”61
This effort to present jazz as black performance may not be surprising from our contemporary viewpoint, but it stood out as unique in
Occupied Japan, as Hollywood often identiﬁed the musical genre as awhite creation. One could see this tendency, for instance, in Rhapsodyin Blue (1945), a biopic about George Gershwin. Dealing with the New
York–born composer’s rise to international fame as a jazz composer, thenarrative underscored Gershwin’s training in classical music, while mentioning little of the inspiration he gained from African American music.
The CMPE ampliﬁed the transatlantic connection by titling the ﬁlm inJapanese Amerika kôkyôgaku (American Symphony) and foregroundingAMERICA’S RACIAL LIMITS

155

the white cast of characters—Robert Alda, Joan Leslie, and PaulWhiteman—in publicity. At the same time, the narrative also limited thediscourse on Gershwin’s Jewishness and did little to demonstrate theUnited States as a multiethnic state. Thus, when the CMPE boasted that
Rhapsody in Blue is a ﬁlm with the “true essence of jazz,” the musicalgenre was presented as a white formulation.62 Gershwin himself was portrayed as a sincere and hard-working “white American.”The “whitening” of jazz can also be seen in The Jolson Story (1947).
This biopic about Al Jolson featured the famous minstrel singer’s rise tofame from burlesque performer to Broadway celebrity to movie star. In
contrast to Rhapsody in Blue, the Jolson biopic devoted considerable
attention to the protagonist’s Jewish origins by making note of his actualname (Asa Yoelson) and allotting conspicuous roles for his traditionabiding parents. But Jolson’s success, according to the narrative, owed
to his adoption of an “Americanized” name and life away from his
parents’ Washington, D.C. home—ﬁrst in New York and then in Los
Angeles. Another reason for his success is his “discovery” of jazz in New
Orleans. During his stint as a minstrel performer, Jolson witnesses a
lively jam session for the ﬁrst time and gains inspiration. Impressed withthe performance of unnamed African Americans, Jolson seeks to infuse
his shows with their creative acts despite having a reluctant producer.
He ﬁnally does so by quitting his job in the minstrel-show circuit. Yet
beyond the brief encounter in the Big Easy, African Americans show up
very little in the ﬁlm, which the CMPE championed as a chronicle of“America’s national treasure-singer,” “the greatest singer in America,”
and an “epic music [ﬁlm] . . . for jazz fans!”63 In the end, an assimilated
white man once again became the face of the hybrid musical genre.
DEALING WITH THE INDIAN
While marginalizing blacks from the screens, Hollywood devoted
considerable effort to spreading westerns in the Japanese market. Between 1946 and 1951, the CMPE released 80 westerns out of a total of
619 feature ﬁlms—the proportion of ﬁlms of this genre during this era
reached some 13 percent.64 For Hollywood, it made good business sense
to shower consumers with shoot-’em-up action, as the western had been
popular in Japan since the prewar era. Indeed, the most popular ﬁlm
released by the CMPE during its ﬁrst six months was Tall in the Saddle,
a John Wayne western that was exhibited in spite of SCAP’s

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opposition.65 Yet, from the distributor’s standpoint, there were two
problems with the genre. First, SCAP was highly ambivalent about thepresentation of violence, revenge, and racism against nonwhites. Second, these action-heavy narratives had unquestionable success amongthe “mass” (taishû) audiences, but they seemed to lack the patronage of
the “intelligentsia” or “learned class” (chishikisô or chishiki kaisô).66
These two difﬁculties raised questions as to how to present Native
Americans—often used in ﬁlms to represent an obstacle to the “advancement” of white civilization—in the marketing campaigns.
The CMPE handled Native Americans in two ways. First, it downplayed their existence. This occurred with notable “A” ﬁlms that werearmed with strong name value, such as Stagecoach. This John Ford–
directed western was ﬁrst released in Japan in 1939 and became a major
hit there as it had been in the United States. Conﬁdent in the product, the
CMPE chose to emphasize one selling point: the ﬁlm’s title. As one publicity blurb read, “There is no Stagecoach before Stagecoach, and noStagecoach after Stagecoach!”67 In banking on the drawing power of thenarrative’s label, the CMPE decided not to exploit the Apaches’ dangerous assault on the zooming coach nor to stress the diversity ofAmerican society as represented by the six frightened passengers ridingin the transportation vehicle.68 The presence of Native Americans was
also downplayed in the promotion campaign of Yellow Sky (1948), a 20th
Century–Fox western that concerns a group of gold-seeking outlaws.
The press sheet urged exhibitors to stress the “great name value” of thestars—Gregory Peck, Ann Baxter, and Richard Widmark—as well as the
ﬁlm’s “high artistic value” that separated it from “B westerns.” The
Apache raid—once again, a highlight of the ﬁlm–did not become themain selling point.69
At the same time, the suppression of conﬂict between whites andIndians also occurred with certain “B” ﬁlms that appeared as marketablebeyond the “masses.” This could be seen, for example, in the publicity
for Union Pacific (1939), which dramatized the construction of the ﬁrst
transcontinental railroad. In this Paramount western, the Union Paciﬁc’s
attempts to lay the tracks across the Great Plains are hindered by twoforces: the henchmen of a rival railroad company who repeatedly obstruct the operation and attacks by Sioux. In the press sheet, the CMPE
did not refrain from hyping the Indian attack. One promotional blurb
touted how the white heroes of the story “ﬁght through the obstacles
caused by the wild Indians.” Yet the distributor more actively celebrated

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157

the ﬁlm as a “history of railroad construction.” Noting the “extravagant
and modern facilities” with which contemporary trains were equipped,
the distributor promised that the ﬁlm would reveal the “blood and sweat”
that went to this ambitious engineering project. Learning this history,
stated the press sheet, was “necessary for . . . the youth.” In underscoring this content, the CMPE instructed exhibitors and publicists “not toemphasize the racial struggle [minzoku tôsô] between Indians and whites
too strongly in print.” The ofﬁcial reason was clear: “Today we are in[an era of ] peace after war.”70
Comanche Territory (1950) also involved sensitive marketing. Loosely
based on the life story of James Bowie, the ﬁlm dramatized the white
protagonists’ attempts to peacefully negotiate a new treaty with the
Comanche in order to obtain rights for silver mining. Trouble arises,
however, when a seamy (white) mine seeker tries to wipe out the Native
Americans by coaxing them to give up their weapons. The ﬁlm ends as
Bowie and the villain’s sister save the Indians by returning their munitions during the climactic standoff. The existence of Indian conﬂict
prompted the distributor to exploit the Native American angle. It thus
titled the ﬁlm in Japanese Komanchi zoku no ikari (Rage of the Comanche) and recommended that publicists stress the portrayed “struggle
between whites and Indians.” But, while doing so, the CMPE also
claimed that the forthcoming piece “depicted . . . the cooperation of thetwo parties,” speciﬁcally the Texas folk hero and the elderly Comanche
chief Quisima. Despite the presence of white malice and Indian rage, thepress sheet claimed that the ﬁlm “sung in triumph for humanism [ningensei] and justice.”71
Second, Hollywood played up the violence of Native Americans. Thistactic was used for ﬁlms that appeared to lack marketability to the “intelligentsia.” Examples of this type of western grew abundant as the volume of westerns increased during the second half of the Occupation. The
press sheet of Bad Bascomb, for instance, made note of the “hand-tohand ﬁght with the raiding Indians.”72 Ambush, which in Japan was entitled Apacchi zoku no saigo (The end of the Apache tribe), earned wide
publicity as a “heroic” (yûsô) story about the “ﬁerce clash” (gekitô) and“annihilation” (senmetsu) of the Native American villains.73 The CMPE
highlighted the presence of Native Americans in Canyon Passage (1946)
by retitling it Indian keikoku (Indian valley); ad texts did not fail to stress
the whites’ “ﬁerce struggles with Indians!”74 The press sheet of Fury at
Furnace Creek (1948), a rugged western with Victor Mature, altered

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HIROSHI KITAMURA

viewers to the “vicious assault of the Apaches,” who were the “most boldand vicious among the belligerent Indians.”75 Omaha Trail (1942), a
decidedly “mass-oriented” MGM western about the business of ox-traintransport companies in the West, promised not only a “bloody and raw
competition of stagecoach companies” but also a “spectacle of Indianattack.”76
Native Americans were not an essential ingredient of the Hollywood
western, but U.S. ﬁlmmakers often turned to them to create tension andenhance the drama of the narrative. As noble or bloodthirsty “savages,”
they served as a “clearly deﬁnable Other” against an “immigrant nation
where the Euro-American is anything but homogeneous,” according toJacquelyn Kilpatrick.77 The tactics used in presenting the “Hollywood
Indian” in Occupied Japan were not monolithic but dual. On one end,
conﬂict with Indians was downplayed (or suppressed) even if it fared
signiﬁcantly on the screens. This was evident in the marketing of “A”
ﬁlms that boasted considerable drawing power and of some “B” ﬁlms
that were expected to perform well beyond attracting “mass” audiences.
The cultural politics of the Occupation also affected the decision to deemphasize racial conﬂict. On the other end, the distributor sensationalized violence and tension involving Native Americans. This publicity
tactic applied to the other, primarily “mass-oriented” (taishû muke), “B”
ﬁlms that were devoid of appeal for “intellectual” moviegoers. Ultimately, both promotional paths marginalized the Native American. Theirrole and signiﬁcance were secondary to that of the white protagonists of
Hollywood narratives.
CONCLUSIONThe Occupation of Japan was a transformative event. U.S. efforts forreform—political, economic, and cultural—were powerful and far-reaching. Described by one political scientist as “one of the world’s mostradical experiments,” General MacArthur’s operation contributed toJapan’s dynamic shift from being a war-mongering Axis empire to alargely demilitarized, democratic-oriented state.78 This helped shape a“solid pro-American consciousness” in Japan during much of the postwar era.79 Yet the Occupation was also an endeavor with limits. This wascreated in part by SCAP’s suppression of union activities, prioritizationof corporate reconstruction, and assault against left-wing movements inthe name of a “reverse course.” The shortcomings of the Occupation also

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surfaced in the arena of race. While arguing for equality, democracy, andtolerance, SCAP celebrated white contributions to society while treating
nonwhites as secondary actors within an imagined racial hierarchy.
MacArthur’s famous (and infamous) statement at the Senate hearings
did not appear in a void. Rather, it exempliﬁed the cultural assumptions
and beliefs that U.S. occupationaires brought to Japan from the other sideof the Paciﬁc.
Hollywood offers us a window to understanding U.S. racialized thinking during the Occupation. A “chosen instrument” of the U.S.-led operation, it dispersed a wide array of genres, stars, and ideas across Japanesecities. Yet, while promising the presentation of “culture” and “democracy,” U.S. studios by and large disseminated a worldview that revolved
around the construction of a melting-pot whiteness. This process
occurred together with the diffusing of European ethnic difference, themarginalization of Africans and African Americans, as well as the suppression and sensationalizing of Native Americans. Overall, Hollywood’s
construction of whiteness over the nonwhite Other demonstrates the limits of the American Occupation. It shows how Japan’s defeat in a “warwithout mercy” did not put an end to racism or racial thinking but, rather,inaugurated a new era of American racial (re-)imagination—one thatremained uneven and unequal despite claims otherwise.80
NOTES
1
Hearings before the Committee on Armed Services and the Committee on Foreign
Relations of the U.S. Senate, 82nd Cong. (1951), 310–11 (statement of Douglas
MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers).
2
John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (NewYork: Pantheon, 1986), esp. 293–317; Naoko Shibusawa, America’s Geisha Ally:
Reimagining the Japanese Enemy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). Although not speciﬁcally about Japan, also see Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism:
Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004).
3
Michael Cullen Green, Black Yanks in the Pacific: Race in the Making of American
Military Empire after World War II (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 1–108;
Yukiko Koshiro, Trans-Pacific Racisms and the U.S. Occupation of Japan (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1999); Michiko Takeuchi, “ ‘Pan-Pan Girls’ Performing andResisting Neocolonialism(s) in the Paciﬁc Theater: U.S. Military Prostitution in Occupied Japan, 1945–1952,” in Over There: Living with the U.S. Military Empire fromWorld War II to the Present, ed. Maria Höhn, and Seungsook Moon (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2010), 78–108.
4
Sentoraru nyûsu 2, n.d., 3. I have discussed this topic at length in Hiroshi Kitamura,
Screening Enlightenment: Hollywood and the Cultural Reconstruction of Defeated

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HIROSHI KITAMURA

Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010). In this essay I offer an analysis of the
racial dimensions that shaped Hollywood’s Occupation-era campaign, a subject I
explore only sparsely in the aforementioned book.
5
On Hollywood’s handling of race, see Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Grifﬁn, America
on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies, 2nd ed.
(Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 49–164; Daniel Bernardi, ed., The Birth ofWhiteness: Race and the Emergence of U.S. Cinema (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press, 1996); Thomas Cripps, Slow Fade to Black: The Negro in American
Film, 1900–1942 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); Yunte Huang, Charlie
Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American
History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010); and Diane Negra, Off-White Hollywood:
American Culture and Ethnic Female Stardom (New York: Routledge, 2001). For general discussions of race in the United States, see, for example, George M. Fredrickson,
The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and
Destiny, 1817–1914 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1971); Noel
Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1995); Michael Omi andHoward Winant, Racial Formations in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s,
2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994); and David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness:
Race and the Making of the American Working Class, new ed. (London: Verso, 2007).
6
For general works on the Occupation, see John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japanin the Wake of World War II (New York: W. W. Norton and the New Press, 1999);
Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in
Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); and Eiji Takemae, Inside GHQ: The
Allied Occupation of Japan and Its Legacy (New York: Continuum, 2002).
7
Kyoko Hirano, Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema under the American
Occupation, 1945–1952 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1992).
8
Clayton R. Koppes and Gregory D. Black, Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics,
Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1987).
9
Kitamura, Screening Enlightenment, 22–29.
10
Asahi shinbun, March 28, 1958, 9.
11
DA (CSCAD EXEC) to SCAP (FOR FOX), February 24, 1949, box 5072, folder 2,
Records of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Record Group 331, National
Archives II, College Park, Maryland (hereafter cited as SCAP Records, NA). Charles
Mayer to Irving Maas, May 12, 1949, Motion Picture Association for America General
Correspondences, roll 14, Special Collections, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles(hereafter cited as MPAA General Correspondences, MHL).
12CIE Teleconference, TT 6895, August 29, 1946, box 743, Records of the Civil
Affairs Division, Record Group 165, National Archives II, College Park (hereafter citedas CAD Records, NA).
13
CCD Memorandum, March 3, 1947, box 8578, folder 33, SCAP Records, NA.
14
CIE Teleconference, TT 6895, August 29, 1946, CAD Records, NA.
15
CCD, “Manual for censors of Motion Picture Department,” August 15, 1946, box
8603, folder 7, SCAP Records, NA.
16
Donald Nugent to Mayer, February 10, 1951, box 5088, folder 16, SCAP Records,
NA.
17
CAD Checklist, “Feature ﬁlms under consideration for overseas use,” n.d., box
5072, folder 2, SCAP Records, NA.
18
Harry Slott to Yukihiko Tamura, August 19, 1948, box 5035, folder 9, SCAP
Records, NA.

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161

19
Slott to Mayer and William Schwartz, September 24, 1949, box 5305, folder 3,
SCAP Records, NA; CAD Checklist, box 5072, folder 2, SCAP Records, NA; Slott toMayer, April 17, 1950, box 5308, folder 13, SCAP Records, NA; William C. Rogers toFrancis Harmon, October 6, 1948, roll 13, MPAA General Correspondences, MHL.
20
Thomas Doherty, Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and WorldWar II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 133–39.
21
Heide Fehrenbach, Cinema in Democratizing Germany: Reconstructing National
Identity after Hitler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 261–64.
22
Memorandum by Walter Mihata, April 29, 1947, box 8579, folder 38, SCAP
Records, NA.
23
Slott to Takada, January 29, 1948, box 5304, folder 12, SCAP Records, NA.
24
Slott to Tamura and Takada, December 13, 1949, box 5305, folder 9, SCAP Records,
NA.
25
CCD Memorandum, March 3, 1947, box 8578, folder 33, SCAP Records, NA.
26
Report by Slott, July 2, 1948, box 5305, folder 8, SCAP Records, NA.
27
Nugent to Mayer, August 28, 1951, box 5088, folder 15, SCAP Records, NA.
28
Nugent to Mayer, November 4, 1950, box 5081, CIE(B)-08389, Records of theSupreme Commander for the Allied Powers, National Diet Library, Tokyo (hereafter
cited as SCAP Records, NDL).
29
OIC, MPU to Chief, Info Div, April 17, 1951, box 5231, folder 3, SCAP Records,
NA.
30
Note how European imperialism is depicted as a gendered project, with white maleconquerors itching to take over feminized lands beyond the boundaries of civilization.
See Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial
Conquest (New York: Routledge, 1995).
31
K. C. Grew to Tom Blakemore, November 25, 1950, box 5081, CIE(B)-08388,
SCAP Records, NDL.
32
CIE Memorandum to Kenneth R. Dyke, October 31, 1945, CIE, “Consolidated
Report of Civil Information and Education Section Activities, 11 Oct 1945–1 Dec 1945,”
unpublished document collection, SCAP Records, NDL.
33
Notes on Conference of Wadsworth, Putnam, Blake, Dibella, Kunzman, Costello,
Conde, March 11, 1946, box 8520, folder 8, SCAP Records, NA.
34
A. L. Caplan to Nugent, November 16, 1950, box 5081,CIE(B)–08388, SCAP
Records, NDL.
35
Grew to Caplan, November 22, 1950, box 5081, CIE(B)-08388, SCAP Records,
NDL.
36
CIE Teleconference, April 16, 1948, TT9367, CAD Records, NA; Rogers toHarmon, October 6, 1948, roll 13, MPAA General Correspondences, MHL.
37
CCD, “CCD Monthly Report,” February 1–29, 1948, box 8565, folder 5, SCAP
Records, NA.
38
T. Fujitani, “Go for Broke, the Movie: Japanese American Soldiers in U.S. National,
Military, and Racial Discourses,” in Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s), ed.
T. Fujitani, Geoffrey M. White, and Lisa Yoneyama (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2001), 251.
39
Nugent to Mayer, July 21, 1951, box 5088, CIE(B)-00837, SCAP Records, NDL.
40
Eiga no tomo, October 1947, back cover.
41
Mayer to G. P. Waller, May 23, 1951, box 7494, folder 22, SCAP Records, NA.
42
Daniel Bernardi, “Introduction: Race and the Emergence of U.S. Cinema,” inBernardi, Birth of Whiteness, 5.
43
CMPE, press sheet of Young Mr. Lincoln, n.d.

162

HIROSHI KITAMURAMPEA News 29, March 1, 1949, 2.
Doherty, Projections of War, 100–103; CMPE, press sheet of Sergeant York, n.d.
46
CMPE, press sheet of Sergeant York, n.d.
47
CMPE, press sheet of State Fair, n.d.
48
Mayer to MacArthur, August 24, 1948, “MPEA” folder, OMS Correspondence,
SCAP Papers, RG-5, Records of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers,
MacArthur Memorial Library, Norfolk, Virginia.
49
Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 4.
50
CMPE, press sheet of Boys Town, n.d.
51
CMPE, press sheet of The Story of Alexander Bell, n.d.
52
MPEA News 7, n.d., 3.
53
CMPE, press sheet of I Remember Mama, n.d.
54
MPEA News 28, February 1, 1949, 2.
55
CMPE, press sheet of Sister Kenny, n.d.
56
Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive
History of Blacks in American Films, new exp. ed. (New York: Continuum, 1993), 118.
57
Extract from letter by Maas, August 8, 1951, box 5233, folder 2, SCAP Records,
NA.
58
CMPE, press sheet of Tarzan and the Leopard Woman, n.d.
59
CMPE, press sheet of Tarzan and the Huntress, n.d. Also see CMPE, press sheet of
Tarzan and the Desert Mystery, n.d.
60
CMPE, press sheet of Tarzan and the Leopard Woman, n.d.
61
CMPE, press sheet of Stormy Weather, n.d. For more on the mixed “success” of thispath-breaking ﬁlm, see Arthur Knight, Disintegrating the Musical: Black Performanceand American Musical Film (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 110–19.
62
Sentoraru nyûsu 4, n.d., 2.
63
CMPE, press sheet of The Jolson Story, n.d.
64
Kitamura, Screening Enlightenment, 68.
65
CMPE News 1, n.d., 1.
66
CMPE, press sheet of Yellow Sky, n.d.; CMPE, press sheet of Pursued, n.d.
67
CMPE, press sheet of Stagecoach, n.d.
68
Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 89.
69
CMPE, press sheet of Yellow Sky, n.d.
70
CMPE, press sheet of Union Pacific, n.d.
71
CMPE, press sheet of Comanche Territory, n.d.
72
CMPE, press sheet of Bad Bascomb, n.d.
73
CMPE, press sheet of Ambush, n.d.
74
CMPE, press sheet of Canyon Passage, n.d.
75
CMPE, press sheet of Fury at Furnace Creek, n.d.
76
CMPE, press sheet of Omaha Trail, n.d.
77
Jacquelyn Kilpatrick, Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film (Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1999), xvi.
78
Susan J. Pharr, “The Politics of Women’s Rights,” in Democratizing Japan: The
Allied Occupation, ed. Robert Ward and Yoshikazu Sakamoto (Honolulu: University of
Hawai’i Press, 1987), 222. Pharr uses this phrase to discuss SCAP’s efforts to instill newrights and opportunities for women.
79
Yoshimi Shun’ya, Shinbei to hanbei: Sengo Nihon no seijiteki muishiki (Tokyo:
Iwanami shoten, 2007), 13.
80
Dower, War without Mercy.
44
45