The “Japanese” Locals of Davao and of Guam: Shifting Belongings amidst Successive Empires during and after the Pacific War

This dissertation examines the experiences of Japanese locals of Davao and of Guam to understand the shifting belongings of people amidst the changing US-Japan empires during and immediately after the Pacific War. Living in US territories invaded and occupied by the Japanese military in December 1941, the Japanese locals of Davao and of Guam had the unique experience of being part of a hybrid locality, then declared enemy aliens at the outbreak of the war, then co-patriots of the new imperial masters after the Japanese invasion, and then again as enemies to be shipped out at Japan’s defeat. Existing histories of the Japanese in Davao treat them as Japanese, even those born of mixed Filipino-Japanese parentage. The Japanese of Guam, because they were numerically insignificant and barely any of them (if at all) stayed in Japan postwar as repatriates, are largely ignored. To such Japan-oriented scholarship, my study seeks to provide an alternative perspective. It questions the current portrayal of them as belonging solely to Japan. Using a postcolonial historical perspective, it holds that notions of “Japanese,” “Filipino,” and “Guam Chamorro” are shifting and unsettled. Employing historical analysis and comparing Davao and Guam, it seeks to answer: How did the Japanese locals’ belongings shift during the turbulent 1940s when the US and the Japanese empires alternated in dominance?

It finds that before the war, the Japanese locals were classified either as Japanese or as otherwise, with racially mixed persons fitted into one or another. At the war’s outbreak, civilian hostilities between Filipinos and Japanese broke out in Davao, but amidst the violence Filipino-Japanese prewar ties mediated on behalf of locals in the opposing side. During the Japanese Occupation, Japanese locals serving Japan fought against Filipino guerrillas, though a discreet few gave and received information that allowed them and fellow Filipino locals to survive. As the war worsened for Japan, the Japanese evacuated en masse to the mountains, while Filipinos fell victim to Japanese war crimes. Postwar, they were shipped out and were unable to return for decades, while new Filipino settlers poured in. As the physically separated people continued to narrativize Davao, two histories of the same locality emerged. In the Japanese Davao, the place was “Dabao-kuo” and Filipino-Japanese mestizos were Japanese. In the Filipino Davao, the Japanese were minute and demonized. Outside history, however, cross-racial ties persisted, obscurely traversing the gap between Davao and Japan.

In contrast, neither civilian hostilities nor contending armed forces clashed in Guam. Japanese locals served as a bridge between the two disconnected worlds of the Japanese military and the Chamorros. At Japan’s defeat, they were shipped out along with other POWs, but immediately came home thanks to their Chamorro families. Rather than a physical divide, a polarized grand narrative of us-versus-enemy was created as a result of postwar racial discourses, mop-up operations, and POW traffic. In this divide, Japanese locals were embraced by their Chamorro families as part of “us” and distinguished them from “the enemy,” hence creating the contradiction of being Japanese but not “The Japanese.” Despite differing experiences, histories of both Davao and Guam were polarized into us-versus-enemy, a polarization that leaves no option to be in between. Outside history, several Japanese locals and their families continued to live between conflicting poles or to live with both poles conflicting within them.

The dissertation argues that successive empires classified peoples of hybrid spaces into mutually exclusive racial categories which were actualized socially during the war. Although these racial categories were external in origin, it was the locals’ participation in the imperial war and their acquiescence to total war ideologies that gave it social force and embedded it into history. Having shown this, the dissertation supports the capacity of the locals to write their own histories and address the social-historical ruptures that emerged because of imperialism. Moreover, it converses with Japanese historical studies for which “Japanese” is a defined category, albeit heterogeneous and transforming. Seen from a postcolonial perspective, “Japanese” is racial and thus is relational and contested alongside other belongings. The dissertation contributes to the resolution of locals’ conflicting belongings as well as to furthering Japanese diaspora studies’ notion of overseas Japanese and the localities where they lived.

Keywords: Japanese locals, Davao, Guam, shifting belongings