The Self-Rehabilitation of Homeless Children, Reeducation Programs in the Transwar Transpacific, and the Emergence of Post-Colonial Imperialism

Abstract

The U.S. reeducation program in post-war Japan is usually considered as a quintessential example of liberal democratic pedagogy. This article instead situates the project in the broader historical context of the emergence of a new, post-colonial model of imperialism by demonstrating that the basic tenets of this notion of reeducation, based upon the principles of self-rehabilitation under liberal guidance, resonated broadly within the transwar transpacific. To capture the resonance, I juxtapose three cultural products with the self-rehabilitation of homeless children as their main theme to illustrate the principles of reeducation projects in distinctive but intertwined contexts: The radio serial Bell Hill (1948–1950) designed for the U.S. occupation’s reeducation program in Japan and its cinematic adaptations (1948, 1949); the Hollywood movie Boys Town (1938) set in interwar U.S. as an emerging imperial hegemon without colonies; and the colonial-era Korean film Homeless Angels (1941), which was closely intertwined with the imperial subjectification movement. Drawing upon recent scholarship on trans-imperialism and the compatibilities between wartime Japan and the transwar U.S., I argue that the high adaptability of reeducation ideas and practices were implicated in, and facilitated the shift from, formal to informal notions of imperialism in the transwar transpacific and beyond.