Journal article
The campaign for Japanese-Australian children to enter Australia, 1957-1968: A history of post-war humanitarianism
J Damousi
Australian Journal of Politics and History | WILEY | Published : 2018
DOI: 10.1111/ajph.12461
Abstract
Between 1957 and 1968, the Prime Minister Robert Menzies and several of his ministers, including Alexander Downer, the Minister for Immigration from 1958 to 1963, were inundated with hundreds of letters of protest demanding that action be taken to assist Japanese children fathered by Australian soldiers who had been stationed in Japan during the Allied occupation and beyond it between 1946 and 1956. The response from the Australian public forms the basis of this article to consider how attempts for the transnational movement of children in the postwar period point to understandings of humanitarianism at this time. The response to the predicament of the Japanese-Australian children offers, I ..
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Funding Acknowledgements
I am indebted Rachel Stevens for her meticulous and thorough archival research on which this article is based. I am grateful to Alexandra Dellios, Sarah Green, Niro Kandasamy, Jordana Silverstein, Rachel Stevens, Shurlee Swain and Mary Tomsic, for their valuable and insightful comments on earlier versions of this article. I express my thanks to the Australian Research Council which was made this research possible through the ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellowship.