Global Asias Dissertation Workshop with the Cold War Asias Working Group
Friday, November 3, 2023
1:30-3:00 PM
On Zoom: go.rutgers.edu/g2uys9z1
Operation Relax: R&R Centers and Japan’s Korean War
Sara Kang (she/hers) is a PhD candidate in the History Department with a secondary field in the studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University. Transnational and feminist approaches are particularly important to her research in modern Japanese, Korean, and U.S. history.
Her dissertation, “Operation Relax: Empires of Sex in Japan, South Korea, and the Asia-Pacific (1945-1995)” examines the development of a military system that exploited Asian women’s reproductive labor for the purpose of recuperating soldiers from battlefield trauma. This talk will focus on the local history of R&R Centers built across Japan and the ensuing protests that devolved into a nationwide campaign against US neo-colonial presence in post-occupation Japan.