Description
This paper examines to what extent and in which ways UNRRA in China (1944-1947) drew strengthen from the US military presence in Asia. The rise of the US military empire during the Second World War was accompanied by the expansion of international humanitarian sphere: China received the largest amount of aid UNRRA sent to any single recipient country. Military and humanitarian agencies worked toward the same goal of making long-term peace, and in effect, the UNRRA China Office absorbed a crucial cadre of WWII veterans. However, these two histories have so far been studied in parallel lines. We need to bring humanitarianism into the history of war in Asia in mid-twentieth century. This paper presents UNRRA’s capacity – and its limits – of exploiting the US military presence in terms of resources, expertise, information, and power, not merely in a period when the military was in control of everything to ensure an Allied victory, but also in one of demobilization and one when US General George Marshall undertook the peace-making mission of mediating between the two Chinese civil-war parties. Focusing on the field work rather than high-profile politics, it also highlights the smooth, though not always successful, transformation of individual war veterans into humanitarians, at a time when military experience was deemed evidence as being reliable and efficient. Combining institutional and individual perspectives, this paper argues that UNRRA in China readily relied on the US military to such an extent that imperilled its own legitimacy as a multi-lateral humanitarian organization.
