This week on the Lectures and History podcast, Santa Clara University History Professor Sonia Gomez explores the intimate relationships that developed between people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds in Hawaii and Japan during and after World War II.

Professor Gomez is the author of Picture Bride War Bride, the role of marriage in shaping Japanese America,

which examines how marriage critically shaped Japanese American identity and community.

More in a moment.

So let's talk about World War II. So World War II entanglements. Today we're just going to talk about Japan and Hawaii.

So we're looking at these entanglements specifically in the Pacific.

So what do I mean by entanglements? So this word refers to the intimate relationships

between people from different racial, ethnic, social,

and economic and religious backgrounds that emerged

during and immediately after World War II,

as we'll see in Hawaii and Japan.

These relationships were the result of increased

US military presence across the globe.

Again, specifically we're talking about Hawaii in Japan today, and existed within a broader system of power.

So we'll kind of flesh some of that out today.

So, strange place. The chapters that I assigned came from this book,

the first strange place. And what do they mean by strange place? Like why is Hawaii considered

a strange place? So Hawaii during World War II is actually a U.S. territory. So it's part, it's not a state, right?

Hawaii does not receive statehood until 1959 after World War II. And as a U.S. territory, almost immediately after territory status, the U.S. military starts to increase on the island.

And what that does is it produces and kind of codifies the power of a hallowly elite.

These are predominantly white, upper middle class mainlanders who come to Hawaii for business, expand on their businesses, they come for leisure.

And so the hallowly elite become economically and politically very powerful before territorial status, but also that power is solidified and codified

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