Travels in Atomic Sunshine
Australia and the occupation of Japan
Robin Gerster
‘Gerster’s Travels in Atomic Sunshine is a scholarly, superbly documented study and a narrative written in a highly readable style. It incorporates provocative arguments and sophisticated insights without becoming ‘academic’. It is a book that is bound to become a classic social history of a major era of the Australian-Japanese postwar encounter.’
David Palmer, Transnational Literature
In February 1946, the Australians of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) moved into western Japan to ‘demilitarise and democratise’ the atom-bombed backwater of Hiroshima Prefecture. For over six years, up to 20,000 Australian servicemen, including their wives and children, participated in an historic experiment in nation-rebuilding dominated by the United States and the occupation’s supreme commander, General MacArthur.
It was to be a watershed in Australian military history and international relations. BCOF was the last collective armed gesture of a moribund empire. The Chifley government wanted to make Australia’s independent presence felt in post-war Asia-Pacific affairs, yet the venture heralded the nation’s enmeshment in American geopolitics. This was the forerunner of the today’s peacekeeping missions and engagements in contentious US-led military occupations.
Yet the occupation of Japan was also a compelling human experience. It was a cultural reconnaissance — the first time a large number of Australians were able to explore in depth an Asian society and country. It was an unprecedented domestic encounter between peoples with apparently incompatible traditions and temperaments. Many relished exercising power over a despised former enemy, and basked in the ‘atomic sunshine’ of American Japan. Yet numerous Australians developed an intimacy with the old enemy, which put them at odds with the ‘Jap’ haters back home, and became the trailblazers of a new era of bilateral friendship.
Travels in Atomic Sunshine is a salutary study of the neocolonialism of foreign occupation, and of Australia’s characteristic ambivalence about the Asian region.
Reviews
‘elegant and sardonic history …’
Hamish McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald
‘Gerster has a fascinating story to tell and he has done so in a lively and compelling narrative way that makes Travels in Atomic Sunshine accessible to readers well beyond the historical profession.’
judges' comments from the 2009 NSW Premier's History Awards
» All reviews for this title‘Gerster, who draws on a rich supply of sources, tells an absorbing story of two nations in a state of change.’
Lucy Sussex, The Sunday Age
