Japanese-Australians in the Post-war Thursday Island Community

Nagata, Yuriko

doi:10.1017/s1321816600001136

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 2 publications

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“…After 1946, there were only 141 ex-internees who were allowed to remain in Australia. According to Yuriko Nagata (1999),The attempted re-establishment of normal life by these Japanese-Australians may only be a small part of the history of postwar reconciliation between Australia and Japan, but their story is significant in that it paralleled the wider regrowth of trust between the two nations and remained the only actual link between pre- and postwar Japanese communities. (p. 30).…”

Section: Calming the Deadmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Why should we care?’: Some thoughts on cosmopolitan hauntings

2013

Memory Studies

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This essay deploys the concept of cosmopolitan haunting to explore entangled relationships with the past, the role of minoritarian and ethnicized subjects of history and the emergence of horizontal post-national solidarities. I focus on two commemorative sites or practices that challenge the limits of transnational memory and its relationship with citizenship. The first is the story of William Cooper, an Aboriginal activist whose critique of the Nazi pogrom has been recognized by a number of commemorative events in Israel, and the second is a performative ritual enacted by migrant artists to honour Australia's early Japanese history. The case studies demonstrate the affective contaminations that provoke not just feeling but also actions that both surpass but then get caught up again within the pressures of the nation state.

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Section: Calming the Deadmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Why should we care?’: Some thoughts on cosmopolitan hauntings

2013

Memory Studies

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Shnukal

2022

QRE

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The last large group of indentured Asian labourers to arrive in Australia disembarked at Thursday Island, North Queensland in 1958. They were imported from US-administered Okinawa, Japan, by master pearlers hoping to restore the fortunes of the ailing pearlshelling industry. In retrospect, the Okinawans’ arrival coincided with the end of the industry and by 1962 only a few remained. This article examines the men’s relations with the remnant Japanese families living on the island and the Indigenous (Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal) residents of Thursday Island. Using written and oral (ethnographic and genealogical) sources, it argues that a small, short-lived but distinctive Okinawan community developed on the island between 1958 and 1962, overlapping the arrival of a small number of Japanese pearl culture technicians (1961–72). The pre-war Asian communities of Northern Australia, generally descended from labourers in its extractive industries, have greatly influenced the culture, genetics, identity, economy and politics of local Indigenous societies. Indeed, they foreshadowed the largely peaceful multicultural experiment that is contemporary Australia. This article identifies the last of North Queensland’s marinebased Asian communities and discusses the mechanisms by which social capital and social stability were created and maintained by an ethnically heterogeneous population.

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Japanese-Australians in the Post-war Thursday Island Community

Cited by 2 publications

References 2 publications

‘Why should we care?’: Some thoughts on cosmopolitan hauntings

‘Why should we care?’: Some thoughts on cosmopolitan hauntings

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