Tropic Knights and Hula Belles: War and Tourism in the South Pacific

Abstract

Through the discussion of a collection of photographs, this paper explores aspects of the relationship between tourism and war in the Pacific islands. These unpublished photographs were taken by a US naval officer stationed on Saipan and Tinian in 1944 and 1945 and are now held in an archive which contains other material from the Pacific War. A brief history is given of the photographer’s military career and of the circumstances in which the images were taken.

In the PhD thesis from which this paper has developed, I distinguish between the imaginative space of the “South Seas” and the material geographies of the South Pacific and Hawaii. In the context of this argument the South Seas is understood as a site of Western fantasy, productive of a set of romantic assumptions which mediate Westerners’ relations with Pacific islands and their peoples (O’Dwyer 2001).

The body of the paper considers the politics of representation through which military and tourist sensibilities overlap. Drawing upon the work of John Urry and Teresia Teaiwa and with close reference to the Yeagar collection I demonstrate the symbiosis between the scopophilic gaze of the first world tourist and the gaze of military surveillance. Simultaneously relying upon tourist stereotypes to distract from military violence while using military force to fulfill touristic fantasies, the Yeagar photographs exemplify the complex looking relations of the soldier‐tourist. This hybrid gaze structure offers a conceptual model for more clearly understanding the development of “militourism” in the Pacific islands during, and since, World War II.

Notes

In the PhD thesis from which this paper has developed, I distinguish between the imaginative space of the “South Seas” and the material geographies of the South Pacific and Hawaii. In the context of this argument the South Seas is understood as a site of Western fantasy, productive of a set of romantic assumptions which mediate Westerners’ relations with Pacific islands and their peoples (O’Dwyer 2001).

In wartime Hawaii roughly 250 prostitutes operating out of 15 registered brothels serviced 250,000 men a month in three minute sessions (O’Hara [undated], pp. 10–18).

The letter which accompanied the donation of the Yeagar collection to the Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaii introduced Yeagar and made a point of specifying his progression from enlisted man to officer. It also noted that the naval slang term for officers who rise through the ranks is “mustang” (a domesticated wild horse or pony) (Ward 1995).

In his detailed account of the shared genesis of the technologies of war and cinema, Virilio argues that they each have their basis in the development of cartographic knowledge and the subsequent need to manage and control space (1984).

It is of value to recall here that policies of racial segregation in the US military meant that African American personnel would have been banned from serving as crew on these planes (Doherty 1993, pp. 205–227).

Meyerowitz defines “cheesecake” as a widely familiar American slang term which “entered common parlance around 1915 as a term for publicly acceptable, mass produced images of semi‐nude women”. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines cheesecake as “photography or photographs (as in advertisements or publicity) featuring the natural curves of shapely female legs, thighs or trunk, usually scantily clothed” (Meyerowitz 1996, pp. 9–35).