Annotation source: Seoul Metropolitan Archive
Annotation and image link:https://archives.seoul.go.kr/item/9
ANNOTATION
Office of War Information (OWI) was a U.S. government agency, created for propaganda activities in and around the U.S. during WWII. Direct contacts with the targets were necessary to carry out propaganda activities. For this purpose, OWI outposts that succeeded the local branches of the overseas intelligence agency were established in different regions.
OWI set up propaganda targets and goals for its outposts in China, Burma (today’s Myanmar), India, the Philippines, Japan, and Korea as follows: 1. Long-term propaganda to prevent Japan’s influence from persisting, expanding, and strengthening in its occupied territories, 2. Long-term propaganda toward Japanese civilians, 3. White and black forms of propaganda with respect to the Japanese soldiers in each war theater, in cooperation with commanding officers of the theaters of war, 4. Propaganda toward local residents to make them solidify and cooperate with the Allied Forces in the U.S. occupied territories or where the U.S. forces were stationed, and 5. Propaganda activities to boost morale of the US troops dispatched overseas.
This is an outpost report from an OWI outpost in New Delhi, containing an interrogation report of a Japanese lance corporal, Fuyumoto Ichiro. This report numbered #J-POW-1 was the first interrogation report of a POW by the Psychological Warfare team in the Ledoarea of Burma. The interrogation was assisted by a foreign service officer named John K. Emmerson.
This POW (Ichiro) stated that “Comfort Units” accompanied all Japanese units and that “comfort women” were mostly Koreans, but some were Chinese and Japanese. He asked the interrogator if there were no “comfort units” attached to the US military and was very surprised to hear that there wasn’t.
Contributors
[Organization] Seoul National University, Chin-sung Chung Research Team, 2015~
[Organization] Seoul National University, Chin-sung Chung Research Team, 2015~
[Organization] City of Seoul, Women and Family Policy Affairs Office 2011~
[Organization] National Archives and Records Administration 1934~
#OWI #New_Delhi #India #Burma #Myanmar
Download file: https://international.ucla.edu/media/files/US-13-Outpost-Report-WDC-400-rg-k3y.pdf
LESSON PLAN
Note to teachers:
1. the discussion questions below are designed based on the original document, not the annotation. Teachers are recommended to use the primary document in teaching, instead of the annotation. However, the annotation provides useful background information for teachers when they prepare for the lesson.
2. The scaffolded questions below are based on the cover page, the top part of page 2, and the last paragraph on page 3.
Explain the following words to your students before asking them to read the required sections:
- A.P.O.: Army Post Office
- Burma: nowadays Myanmar
- C.B.I.: China Burma India Theater, the U.S. military designation during World War II for the China and Southeast Asian or India-Burma (IBT) theaters.
- POW: prisoner of war
- outpost: a small military camp or position at some distace from the main force, used especially as a guard against surprise attack
- OWI: Office of War Information, a U.S. government agency created for propaganda activities in and around the U.S. during WWII. The annotation provides more information about the OWI (2nd paragraph).
- WDC: Western Defense Command, established on March 17, 1941, as the command formation of the U.S. Army responsible for coordinating the defense of the Pacific Coast region of the U.S. during World War II
Direct students to read the cover page, the top part of page 2, and the last paragraph on page 3. After reading the primary document, please answer the following questions:
1. What kind of document is this?
2. What are the physical characteristics of this document?
a. Is it handwritten or typed?
b. Are there any marks? If so, what are they?
c. Any other physical features do you notice?
d. Does any of these physical characteristics interest you?
3. What's the title of the document?
4. Who created it?
5. When was it created?
6. What was the historical context in East and Southeast Asia during the time?
7. What's the name of the prisoner of war? What's his rank? What's his nationality?
8. What do you know about the "comfort unit" based on the prisoner of war's statement? What does it tell you?
9. Why do you think he was much surprised when hearing no "comfort units" attached to the American troops?
10. According to this prisoner of war, what nationalities of "comfort women" were recruited?
*This lesson plan was designed by Jing Williams, Associate Professor of Social Studies Education at University of South Dakota.