The Dead, the Living, and the Sacred

This article focuses on the antinuclear and antimilitarism politics of Patsy Takemoto Mink (1927–2002), the first Japanese American female lawyer in Hawai‘i, the first woman of color to become a U.S. congressional representative, and the namesake for Title IX. During the late 1960s and 1970s, Mink challenged the use of the Pacific lands, waters, and peoples as sites of military experimentation, subject to nuclear and chemical testing as well as war games. Mink’s political worldview, shaped by her experiences and understanding of the interconnectedness between human and nonhuman life as well as water and land, reflected a Pacific World sensibility. She worked with, but also articulated political priorities that differed from, indigenous peoples of the Pacific. Focusing on these connected yet divergent Pacific imaginaries provides an opportunity to explore the significance of these antimilitarism campaigns for the study of transnational feminisms as well as Asian American and Pacific Islander studies. First, the protests of Mink and Native Hawaiian activists against U.S. militarism in the Pacific represented gendered critiques of U.S. empire, although in different ways. Second, Mink’s advocacy via political liberalism provided opportunities for coalition formation yet also constrained the range of her gendered arguments and limited possible solutions beyond the U.S. polity. Third, the coalitional possibilities and incommensurabilities reveal the points of convergence and divergence between Asian American demands for full inclusion and Pacific Islander calls for decolonization and sovereignty.

Introduction

While recent historical studies of transnational processes, persons, and events within and across the Pacific Ocean have proliferated, they have yet to cohere as part of a single scholarly field. Instead, they stand as hybrid studies bridging two or more conventional fields, including histories of the American West, U.S. immigration and ethnicity, U.S. diplomatic and international relations, Asian American studies, East Asian studies, and Pacific Islander studies. This special issue of the Pacific Historical Review explores important possibilities for the emerging research area of “transpacific history” to interweave these conventional fields in ways that can better explore the social, economic, political, and transnational complexities of developments within and across the Pacific Ocean.