Civilian Refugees Research Articles

Psychohygienic evaluation of depression level among Ukrainian youth forced to emigrate to Canada due to the war in Ukraine

the ongoing war in Ukraine since 2014 has led to the forced migration of thousands ofpeople, resulting in a range of social and psychological problems, including depression. In light of this,the purpose of the research was to investigate the level of depression among youth who were forced toemigrate abroad due to the war. The study was conducted in Canada in 2023 using the Patient HealthQuestionnaire-9 of young people aged 16 to 30 years old who emigrated from Ukraine due to the war
 escalation on the 24th of February 2022. The PHQ-9 is a questionnaire used to assess the level of de-pression symptoms in the last two weeks based on 9 questions which show the level of the depression
 disorder or indicate the risks of its development. The research aims to raise awareness of the psycholog-ical well-being issue among war-displaced people between Russia and Ukraine to determine the level of
 depression, which allows providing practical recommendations for managing depression in the contextof migration and developing psychological support and rehabilitation programs for this population.The study’s findings suggest that a moderate level of depression, with increased levels of the moderateoption, was observed among Ukrainian refugees aged 16 to 30 years old who migrated to Canada. Theresults also showed that the number of respondents who did not have signs of depression decreased dueto the war. The average value of the sample slightly increased from 9.4 in 2022 to 10.9 in the currentstudy. However, values of 9 and 10 are borderline for distinguishing «mild» and «moderate» levels ofdepression, so it can be assumed that this year was transitional between these conditions. The resultsof studying the most popular answers to some survey questions show that problems with falling asleep,poor sleep quality or too much concern more than half of the respondents almost every day. It can beargued that the stress associated with migration and war significantly affected the quality of sleep amongyoung people. One-third of respondents reported poor appetite or overeating, which can be resolvedwith simple recommendations and advice. These findings highlight the potential need for mental healthsupport for this population. The data obtained can be useful for government agencies in Canada andUkraine, social services, psychological counsellors, and all those working with military and civilianrefugees in the territories of North America and Europe.

Relocation and Dislocation: Civilian, Refugee, and Military Movement as Factors in the Disintegration of Postwar China, 1945–49

AbstractThis article argues that massive human displacement was one of the defining factors in China's immediate postwar period (1945–49). It shows that at least three distinctive groups were dispersed during the wartime years and needed to be resettled after the war ended in August 1945: civilian refugees, administrators who had been relocated to the temporary capital at Chongqing, and troops transferred in anticipation of an upcoming civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists. The article argues that China's new sovereign status in 1945 was paradoxically a source of weakness when it came to resettlement and reconstruction, as China sought international funds to undertake its own reconstruction, but could not demit responsibility to an external actor to organise matters as the United States did for western Europe. A growing sense of anomie and unsettlement prevented resettlement and China remained a zone in which international and domestic conflict came together. Both sets of factors shaped the dislocation that destroyed the possibilities of a stable resettlement in China after the great displacement of wartime.

«…ПАРОВОЗЫ ЗАМЕРЗНУТ, НАДВИГАЕТСЯ ГОЛОД, ПОЯВИЛСЯ СЫПНЯК…»: ЖЕЛЕЗНЫЕ ДОРОГИ ВЕЛИКОГО СИБИРСКОГО ПОХОДА: 1919–1920 ГГ.

The publication of documentary materials reflects the history of the organization and conducting of the retreat of the units of Admiral A.V. Kolchak’s Eastern Front and the evacuation of civilian refugees from Omsk and other cities in Siberia in November 1919 – January 1920. The article considers the issues of the technical condition and operation of the TRANSSiberian railway and, in particular, the functioning of the rolling stock. Those aspects for the history of the Civil War in the East of Russia to this day remain poorly studied. Evidence is provided on the state of the military, refugee and civil trains, and about the situation of passengers. Consistently and with the involvement of documentary material, the stages of the preparation and implementation of evacuation measures are described, and the reasons for the failure of planned decisions are analyzed. The article presents evidence on the consequences of full-scale disaster with the railway accident that became part of the Civil War history in Siberia. The materials from the State Archives of the Russian Federation that have not been widely used in scientific research and have not been published yet, as well as some previously published documentary evidence, were used. The study of that aspect of the Civil War history in Siberia allows to get an idea of not only the military, but also of the political importance that the TRANS-Siberian railway played in the absence of developed transport communications in the East of Russia.

The Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan: a cross sectional pharmacist-led study assessing post-traumatic stress disorder.

Background:The United Nations has declared the Syrian crisis as the worst humanitarian crisis of the twenty-first century. Pharmacists play a vital role in humanitarian aid and in delivering health advices for refugees. Many Syrian refugees are in need of psychosocial assessments.Objective:Objective of this study was to investigate the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), assessed by pharmacists among Syrian civilian refugees residing in Amman, Jordan.Methods:A cross-sectional study involving Syrian civilian refugees living in Amman, Jordan, was conducted using the published and validated Arabic version of the Harvard Trauma Questionnaire (HTQ). Pharmacists recruited civilian Syrian refugees and completed the HTQ. The questionnaire included 45 questions, with the first 16 questions (HTQ-16) intended to assess the trauma symptoms felt by refugees. Assessments were done by the pharmacists and refugees were categorized to suffer PTSD if their mean item score for the HTQ-16 scale was > 2.5.Results:Study participants (n=186; mean age 31.5 years; 51.3% males) had a HTQ-16 mean score of 2.35 (SD=0.53), with a range of 1.19 - 3.63. Over a third of participants (38.7%) were categorized as having PTSD. Males reported significantly worse PTSD symptoms (mean=2.42, SD=0.50) compared to females (mean=2.26, SD=0.57). Correlation between the mean item score for the HTQ-16 and characteristics of the study participants showed higher mean item score correlated with being a male, older in age, a smoker, and if trauma was experienced.Conclusions:Many Syrian civilian refugees living in Jordan suffer from PTSD. Male participants were found to be more affected by the severity of the disorder. Pharmacists are suitably situated to identify civilian Syrian refugees suffering from PTSD in dire need of help, paving the way for much needed healthcare resources to be delivered to this particular group of refugees.

II.5. Le passage de l’Allemagne vers la Suisse

Switzerland’s refugee policies during the National Socialist era did not comply with international and humanitarian law. In 1938, at the request of Nazi Germany, Swiss authorities agreed to stamp the passports of German Jews separately in accordance with the Nuremberg Race Laws. With respect to Jewish refugees, Switzerland saw itself as a place of transit—not as a country where Jews could be allowed to resettle. After the failure of the Evian Conference in 1938, Switzerland closed its border to refugees, as did other countries. For humanitarian reasons, however, many refugees continued to be admitted.During WWII, border police records indicate that a total of 25,700 refugees were refused entry. At the border with France, 3,000 Jews were expelled, many of whom originally came from Germany, Poland, or the Benelux Countries. In 1995, President Kaspar Villiger apologised for the suffering Jewish refugees experienced because of Swiss regulations. He recalled that Switzerland had taken in a total of around 296,000 refugees, specifically 104,000 military and 192,000 civilian refugees, including 22,000 Jews fleeing persecution. In Switzerland, the scientific and public debate about the country’s refugee policies during the Holocaust continues. The various parties involved in the debate are still struggling to call attention to their perspectives.

II.4. L’afflux des réfugiés juifs de l’Italie vers la Suisse pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale : la question des refoulés

The Swiss policy of turning away Jewish refugees at the border during WWII has sparked endless debates. This article explores the migration of Jews from Italy in particular. The Independent Commission of Swiss Experts — World War II (ICE) found that Switzerland turned away at least 12,500 civilian refugees at the Italian border, most of whom were Jewish.According to this author, a large number of these refugees were in fact not civilians, but rather soldiers from the Italian army who, after the armistice of 8 September 1943, no longer wanted to fight alongside the Wehrmacht. Even though research into this topic is still ongoing, the author can already state that the number of refugees who were turned back at the Italian border was in the hundreds, not thousands.The Swiss Canton of Tessin, which bore the brunt of the influx of immigrants arriving from Italy, took steps to welcome political Italian refugees and provided them with preferential treatment, but was reticent to do the same with Jewish refugees seeking asylum. Like elsewhere in Switzerland, the Canton of Tessin also saw varying levels of anti-Semitic attitudes.It was only in July 1944 that Switzerland formally decided to welcome Jews. By that time, however, very few were requesting asylum. The country’s change of heart had come too late. Switzerland opened its doors to Jewish refugees only after a long and damning delay.

On controversies, battles, raids and an elusive truth: Opposing perspectives on Cassinga, 1978

The South African attack in 1978 on Cassinga, an alleged South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) base during the ‘Border War’, remains highly controversial. For some, Operation Reindeer, as it was called, was an undisputed military highlight, a most successful airborne operation and a victory over the SWAPO and its military arm, the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN). For others, it was an undisputed massacre of civilian refugees in an Angolan town far north of the Namibia/Angola border. The drifting dust and smoke of past battles interfere seriously with seeing a clearer picture. In this review article, works from different (even serious contradictory) perspectives by three authors are discussed in an attempt to get more clarity on this much-disputed event and its outcomes.

İkinci Dünya Savaşı Yıllarında Türkiye’de Sivil ve Askeri Mülteciler Meselesi

İkinci Dünya Savaşı Yıllarında Türkiye’de Sivil ve Askeri Mülteciler Meselesi

Syrian Refugees in Turkey and the Politics of Postconflict Reconciliation

AbstractFinding suitable settlements to civil wars, then proceeding to reconcile and reintegrate civilian communities to realize such settlements and avoid future conflict, poses many seemingly insurmountable challenges. The Syrian conflict is a case in point. Not only has a settlement proved elusive, but little is known about how the millions of civilian refugees who have fled the war feel about postconflict reconciliation and the future of their country. We use an original survey of 1,384 Syrian refugees conducted in Turkey in 2016 to draw attention to how refugees view the politics of postconflict reconciliation and reconstruction. We find that refugees desire peace in Syria more than anything else, yet they also desire harsh punishments for the perpetrators of violence, especially against civilians, from all sides of the conflict, which is likely to complicate any process of reconciliation.

The British Adriatic Squadron and the evacuation of Serbs from the Albanian coast 1915-1916

Unpublished sources and archival material can still shed fresh light upon the history of the evacuation of the Serbian Army and civilian refugees from the Albanian coast in 1915-1916. Among them are reports to the British Admiralty written in 1915 and 1916 by the commander of the British Adriatic Squadron, Rear Admiral Cecil Fiennes Thursby. These documents deposited in the National Archives in Kew Gardens have never been used in reconstructing the evacuation operation. Written on an almost daily basis, Thursby?s reports of 1915 and 1916 constitute a unique source not only for the history of the evacuation of Serbs but also for the history of the South-East Europe in the Great War.

Not For Glory: A Century of Service by Medical Women to the Australian Army and its Allies

82 BOOK REVIEWS relied heavily on input from the APS and a conference organiser specialising in the pain management area, and that project funding came from a pharmaceutical company active in the pain relief medications sector. Judged on the restricted time to completion, this book can be seen as a valiant effort. One cannot help but wonder however what heights it might have reached had its production time been less constrained. ANN WESTMORE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE Susan J. Neuhaus and Sharon Mascall-Dare. Not For Glory:ACentury of Service by Medical Women to the Australian Army and its Allies (Salisbury, Brisbane: Boolarong Press, 2014). ISBN 9781925046663 (PB). B&W and colour illustrations, xxii + 322pp. Not For Glory: A Century of Service by Medical Women to the Australian Army and its Allies is a vital contribution to the history of Australian medical women at war. It spotlights the lives of nonnursing women who performed exceptional professional work in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, and places them centre stage in a brief but compelling collection. The authors are award-winning Canberra-based journalist Susan Mascall-Dare, currently military public affairs officer in the Australian Army Reserve, and Susan J. Neuhaus, an Adelaide-based surgeon who has worked for twenty years in military medicine. Their experience brings great credibility to this work. As Neuhaus has pointed out, nursing is the dominant narrative of women’s service in war. This book challenges that narrative by unearthing the strikingly overlooked contribution of women doctors, physiotherapists, medical scientists, occupational therapists, pharmacists, and dieticians in medical units of the Australian Army over the past one hundred years. The writers have sourced extensive research material from archives, journals, and women’s magazines, as well as through interview. The book opens with an introduction to the earliest pioneer women physicians in military medicine dating back to Ancient Greece, and follows with chapters documenting the contributions of Health & History ● 17/2 ● 2015 83 Australian women medicos in World War I through to contemporary operations in the Middle East. Duly recognised is Dr Phoebe Chapple, the first Australian and only woman doctor to receive the military medal in World War I for gallantry in the field, and Captain Carol Vaughan-Evans, the first woman awarded the medal for gallantry for service during the massacre of civilian refugees in Rwanda in 1995. The book ends with an inspiring piece about Brigadier Georgeina Whelan, a current example of how far women’s roles within the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps have evolved since its inception. As we live through present World War I commemorations, these important stories about the pioneer Australian woman doctors who wanted to serve in this war, but were rejected by their own army, need to be especially remembered. They show how determined these women were to use the professional training they had gained at immense personal sacrifice, and the creative ways they circumvented the rejection they experienced at every step of their careers. Defying convention by using their own money to travel overseas, these women doctors served with distinction in non-nursing military roles with Australia’s allies under atrocious conditions, yet the British Army never formally gazetted their rank for their wartime roles, or allowed them to hold commissions. The writers adeptly illustrate the severe consequences of this discrimination, which resulted in their absence from the official Australian histories of Australian Army medical services in World War I. If even one of these published stories is now retold, it will be a step towards a more balanced narrative of the Australian women surgeons, doctors, and pathologists who served in Britain, France, Belgium, Malta, Egypt, and the Western Front. This book has broad appeal and would interest military and medical historians, as well as readers wanting to know more about Australian women’s history. How many Australians are aware, for example, that pioneer woman pathologist Captain Elsie Dalyell received a military OBE in World War I? Or that medical scientist Major Josephine Mackerras bred mosquitoes to reduce malaria in soldiers during World War II, and had her recommended MBE rejected? These women should be household names in Australia, yet due to prejudice from the medical profession, the military, and the society...

Ocalony z „nieludzkiej ziemi” – losy inspektora Policji Państwowej Józefa Torwińskiego

Salvaged from the „Inhuman Land” – the History of Jozef Torwinski, State Police InspectorInspector Jozef Torwinski was born on 19 March 1890 in Lwow. He began serving in the State Police in 1919 and in February 1926 attained the rank of inspector at the headquarters of the VIII Lwow Police District; subsequently, he held the post of commander of the X Stanislawow Police District (from 1927), the II Łodź Police District (from 1928), and the I Warsaw Police District (from March 1939). After the outbreak of World War II Torwinski reached Kostopol, which the Soviet army occupied on 18 September. He was dispatched to a distributive camp in Kozielsk and then to a special NKVD camp in Ostashkovo. Torwinski was one of the 395 surviving Polish prisoners of war interned in Kozielsk, Starobielsk and Ostashkovo, and found himself in Pavlishchev Bor, from which he was transferred to Griaztsov on the Volga. After the signing of the Sikorski– Mayski pact, in the second half of October 1941 Torwinski was sent to Penza and entrusted with the task of establishing an institution that would direct discharged Poles to centres created for the formation of the Polish Armed Forces in the USSR; soon, he arrived in Buzuluk, Novosibirsk, and Yangiyul. After the evacuation of the Polish army from the Soviet Union Torwinski stayed in a camp for civilian refugees in Tehran. At the time, he was head of the General Department of Security and Order of the Social Care Delegature. Having left Iran, he lived in Africa (from the middle of 1947) and then returned to Poland where he settled down in Szczecin. Here, he became the object of interest of the local Voivodeship Public Security Office and in January 1951 was detained and interrogated, sharing copious information about the pre–September 1939 activity of the State Police. Two months later plans were made to use Torwinski as an informer. At the beginning of 1954 he was investigated by the functionaries of the Voivodeship Public Security Office in Łodź, who detained him in Szczecin upon the basis of the Decree of 22 January 1946 about responsibility for defeat in September 1939 and the Nazification of state life. Two months later, however, Torwinski was released owing to his ill heath. A further investigation was deemed purposeless due to the suspect’s age, the absence of incriminating evidence, and cooperation with the Szczecin Security Office (1949–1954). Preserved documents show that Torwinski was included in a survey campaign conducted in 1969 upon the order of the Second Department in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Anti-Refugee Violence and African Politics, by Ato Kwamena Onoma

Ato Kwamena Onoma Anti-Refugee Violence and African Politics New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 297 pp., $90.00 (cloth) ISBN: 978-1 107036697With a refugee population of nearly 3 million, Africa is home to over a quarter of the world's refugees. The heavy economic and social toll of managing such large numbers of displaced peoples clearly represents a formidable policy challenge for the continent's hosting countries. In recent years, however, there has also been growing concern over the political costs of hosting refugees since some populations have served to threaten the political stability of both receiving and sending countries. This is largely owing to the militarization of refugees, who mobilize to coordinate violent attacks against their sending-or even host-country. And yet, while there is a burgeoning literature that explains this troubling phenomenon, the vast majority of refugees continue to be victims rather than perpetrators of political violence.In Anti-Refugee Violence and A frican Politics, Ato Kwamena Onoma provides a major contribution to the literature on the refugee-conflict nexus by reorienting the focus on refugees as victims of violence. In order to probe the causes of anti-refugee violence in Africa, Onoma asks a key question: why do some local populations mobilize to commit large-scale violent attacks against civilian refugees whereas others refrain from doing so despite the encouragement of state officials? This question hinges on the assumption that generalized anti-refugee violence is possible only when the state encourages violent attacks on refugee populations that have links with opposition groups. Contrary to dominant arguments that gravitate toward causal explanations based on ethnic affinity, economic competition, or population numbers, Onoma advances an original hypothesis, arguing that the critical distinction for explaining violent outcomes can be found in the difference between residence-privileging versus indigeneity-privileging areas of refuge. In residence-privileging areas, refugees remain autonomous from the host populations, which prevents the forging of relations between these groups and facilitates the demonization of refugees by senior state officials in environments of uncertainty. In indigeneity-privileging areas, the subjugation of refugees generates pacifying effects through the development of hierarchical relationships between host and refugee-relationships that serve to foster knowledge and demystify ideas about refugees.To illustrate the theoretical argument, Onoma draws on four cases from the following regions: (1) Conakry, Guinea; (2) Forest Region of Guinea; (3) southwestern Uganda; and (4) the Kivu region in Democratic Republic of Congo. After outlining the core arguments in the introductory chapter, and providing an elaborate explanation of the theoretical framework in chapter 2, he dedicates separate chapters to each of these regions. Through careful historical analyses, complemented by rich, in-depth fieldwork, the book provides a compelling account of how the structure and system of distribution of rights and resources shapes the likelihood of anti-refugee violence. The argument is powerfully illustrated in chapters 3 and 4 in which Onoma juxtaposes the experiences of refugees in the early 2000s in Guinea's capital (Conakry) and Forest Region, where refugee populations settled into local communities in markedly different ways. Whereas outbursts of anti-refugee violence occurred in the residence-privileging area of Conakry, Onoma explains how the indigeneity-privileging area of the Forest Region adopted a fundamentally different approach to the state's call to violently target migrants. …

PTSD symptom structure among West African War trauma survivors living in African refugee camps: A factor-analytic investigation

We examined the factor structure of measured posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in a sample of West African civilian refugees who had fled the civil war in Sierra Leone between 2001 and 2006. Given that such war-affected populations are common but understudied in trauma research, our objective was to examine the similarities and differences in this factor structure compared to prevailing models of PTSD symptom structure. As part of treatment services provided in refugee camps, refugees (2,140 women, 1,662 men, 1 unknown) from Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea completed the 17 symptoms portion of the Posttraumatic Stress Diagnostic Scale (PDS). We used exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to investigate whether there was a factor structure unique to this population, and made comparisons with the numbing, dysphoria, and aroused intrusion models. Results from the confirmatory analyses showed that the dysphoria model best fit the data (root mean square error of approximation [RMSEA] = .062); however, exploratory analyses revealed that 3 items loaded differently than theoretically expected. Psychological distress cross-loaded on reexperiencing and avoidance factors and physiological reactivity loaded on the avoidance factor instead of the reexperiencing factor. The sleep difficulties item was not well explained, generally; the highest loading (λ = .22) was on the dysphoria factor.

After the Fall: War and Occupation in Irène Némirovsky's "Suite française" (review)

Reviewed by: After the Fall: War and Occupation in Irène Némirovsky's "Suite française" Mary Anne Garnett (bio) Nathan Bracher , After the Fall: War and Occupation in Irène Némirovsky's "Suite française."Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010. xxiii + 268 pp. $64.95 (cloth). The publication of Irène Némirovsky's Suite française in 2004, nearly sixty years after her deportation and death at Auschwitz, caused a media sensation in France where the novel received the prestigious Renaudot prize, the first time one had ever been granted posthumously to an author. The novel's success in France and internationally has since led to the rediscovery and republication of Némirovsky's other novels, notably David Golder (1929), and collections of her short stories and novellas. Two biographies—Jonathan Weiss's Irène Némirovsky: Her Life and Works (2006) and an English translation (2010) of Olivier Philipponat and Patrick Leinhardt's La Vie d'Irène Némirovsky (2007)—as well as an exhibition—"Woman of Letters: Irène Némirovsky & Suite française"—at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York (September 2008-August 2009) have increased interest among the English-speaking public in her oeuvre. With renewed fame, however, has come criticism of Némirovsky focusing on her presumed ambiguity in regard to her Jewish identity, based upon depictions of stereotypical Jewish characters in her fiction; her collaboration with right-wing journals such as Gringoire and Candide; and her late conversion to Catholicism. The tendency has also been to cast moral judgments on Suite française, both positive (Némirovsky as a "guardian of memory") and negative (the novel as an apolitical work that doesn't address the real evils of Nazism) (xii). As Nathan Bracher indicates in his introduction, critical assessment of Suite française has often been "confused and contradictory" (x) because it filters the novel through post-Holocaust concerns with identity and the duty to remember rather than approaching the work as "an eminently literary text whose richly composed, multifaceted narrative must first and foremost be analyzed in relation to the literary and ideological contexts of its time" (xi). In his own close reading of the novel, Bracher attempts to avoid, to the extent possible, "the two most common pitfalls of our time: historical anachronism and ideological instrumentalization" (xiii). Bracher devotes the first four chapters of his book to "Tempête en juin" (Tempest in June), Némirovsky's devastating portrayal of the fall of France [End Page 169] in May-June 1940 that focuses on the historically long-neglected flight of civilian refugees from the German onslaught. While noting that the factual accuracy of her depiction has been confirmed by recent scholarship, such as Hanna Diamond's Fleeing Hitler (2007), Bracher stresses that Némirovsky's intention was not to provide a "documentary" account but instead to construct a novel that mediates events through "a number of contrasting and sometimes contradictory perspectives" of characters from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds (26). Rather than quoting from Sandra Smith's translation of Suite française (Knopf, 2006), Bracher provides his own translations of passages from the novel, leading in one case to a significant difference in interpretation. "Mon Dieu, que me fait ce pays?" the oft-quoted first line from Némirovsky's notebooks, written in 1942 and included as appendices to both the French and English editions, is translated by Smith as "My God! What is this country doing to me?" This self interrogation, Bracher observes, has been interpreted by Weiss as Némirovsky's "long overdue awakening to the reality of injustice and anti-Semitism" (7). Bracher convincingly argues that a better translation is "My God! What does this country matter to me?" (7). Considering this citation in the context of her other journal entries, Bracher asserts that Némirovsky is instead questioning what attitude to adopt in face of the historical events in which she is enmeshed, ultimately coming down on the side of "a certain authorial detachment" (9). Bracher defends Némirovsky against those who would accuse her of political and ideological indifference, arguing that, in fact...

Echoes of Chongqing: Women in Wartime China by Danke Li (review)

Reviewed by: Echoes of Chongqing: Women in Wartime China by Danke Li Shana Brown (bio) Danke Li. Echoes of Chongqing: Women in Wartime China. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2010. 232 pp. 19 photographs. Hardcover $70.00, isbn 978-0-252-03489-3. Paperback $25.00, isbn 978-0-252-07674-9. The Chinese war of resistance against Japan officially began in the summer of 1937, although frequent fighting, colonial incursion, economic disputes and strikes, and diplomatic sparring had characterized Sino-Japanese relations for decades. Beginning in July 1937, the war moved to a very active tense. Shanghai was quickly conquered, the capital of Nanjing succumbed a few months later, and thousands of civilians fell prey to murder, torture, and rape by soldiers of the imperial Japanese army. The Chinese government retreated to Wuhan. After destroying Yellow River levees to try to prevent further Japanese success (and drowning civilians in the process) in the summer of 1938, the government retreated for a final time up the Yangtze River to the Sichuan city of Chongqing. Chongqing remained the wartime capital for seven years. The influx of officials, army personnel, and foreign diplomats and staff was dwarfed by the number of civilian refugees who flocked to the city—not only individuals, but entire hospitals, universities, and other institutions made the trek to the picturesque city, stacked like bricks on narrow terraces above the river. They carried their books and equipment up the stairs that served as the city’s throughways and turned a sleepy river town into the hub of China’s government, economic, academic, and artistic life. Thanks to opaque fogs that hampered Japanese bombing, the Nationalist government remained there in relative safety until the end of the war. Arguably, Chongqing’s survival made Chinese victory possible. Given these momentous consequences, what made it possible for Chongqing to survive? As Danke Li argues, to understand Chongqing’s endurance, we need to rediscover the accomplishments of the women of the city. As Li writes, “collectively, women as a social group were indispensable during the war; without their sacrifices and contributions China would not have been able to sustain the eight years of bitter war” (p. 8). Working within a network of government-sponsored organizations that sought to tap the energies of native female residents (“Chongqingese”) and refugees (xiajiang or down-river newcomers), women contributed extensively to the war effort. They brought gifts to soldiers and their families, established social groups to safeguard civilians and promote their welfare, and bolstered wartime economic efforts. Indeed, the war created important opportunities for women to join the government and its sponsored organizations, within which women “seriously practiced politics” for virtually the first time in the history of the Republic (p. 9). But not all of the contributions of women to the war effort were made through the framework of official relief organizations. Indeed, Danke Li argues that the success of women in “innovating and managing everyday survival” (p. 8) was just [End Page 523] as significant to the survival of Chongqing and the nation as a whole. Even a teenage xiajiang woman who became a prostitute in order to help her family is rendered a heroic figure (p. 32). “Ordinary women were the unsung heroes who witnessed and endured much more of the war’s detrimental harm than did many men and never received any recognition,” Li contends (p. 32). She hopes that oral history accounts by these women can provide an alternative to the “gendered discourse” (p. 5) of some scholarship, where the men are heroic actors and the women are tragic victims. In contrast, Li argues that a mother “routinely running for air shelters with her children and going out to salvage edibles expanded a mother’s sphere and blurred the boundary between domestic and public spheres” (p. 36). Even in their most intimate domestic moments, women were political actors, heroic survivors, and contributors to national victory. The personal was political, indeed. Li’s book is divided into three main categories of experience: gender and social roles, economic impact, and political impact. Across these thematic categories, all the book’s histories share the quality of dramatic personal experience. In several cases, the women Li...

Communicating Trauma: Female Survivors’ Witnessing the No Gun Ri Killings

In 2000, the Associated Press investigative report team won the Pulitzer Prize award for reporting on the No Gun Ri incident in which American troops during the Korean War killed innocent civilian refugees who had taken shelter near and under the bridge called No Gun Ri. As the primary witnesses of the No Gun Ri killings, female survivors have courageously communicated their unutterable trauma through both scripting and exorcizing. Through oral history interviews with survivors in South Korea, this article examines how the Confucian script of motherhood (i.e., mothers as reproducers, protectors, and expandable assistants of the male blood line) has enabled the No Gun Ri female rhetors on one hand to weave trauma into plausible stories, yet on the other hand provoked them to reflect on their memories with a sense of culpability. The findings of the study also suggest that the oral form of communication has facilitated the female rhetors to exorcize inarticulable memories which cannot be subject to the Confucian script of motherhood.

The Interplay Between International Humanitarian Law and Refugee Law

AbstractInternational humanitarian law (IHL) is not the sole body of international law that applies in armed conflicts. Among the different legal bodies that may be subject to the simultaneous application during armed conflicts is refugee law. The questions considered in this article are the protection of refugees under IHL, including the right of non-refoulement during armed conflicts. The cumulative application of IHL and refugee law is another focus of analysis. This article deals with inter alia the reinforced extension of alien rights to refugees during armed conflict, the possibility to grant refugee status to new actors which appear during armed conflict, the obligation to disarm and separate armed elements, the forced transfer of refugees for military or humanitarian reasons, and the right of ex-combatants to be treated as civilian refugees once they have disarmed and their legal status can be determined.

Massacre at No Gun Ri?: American Military Policy Toward Civilian Refugees during the Korean War

Although we often refer to Korea as the forgotten war, news paper headlines in the last ten years have forced Americans to remember a painful chapter of Korean War history. The stories, most recently published in August 2008, have focused on the killing by American troops of hundreds, if not thousands, of South Korean civilians suspected of being North Korean infiltrators and spies. Most notably, an intense controversy has arisen over an alleged massacre of South Korean refugees by mem bers of the 2nd Battalion of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment (ist Cavalry Division, 8th Army) in late July 1950 at a village called No Gun Ri (1). Just as the documents on the My Lai Massacre of 1968 can illuminate the military history of the Vietnam War, a 1950 letter from U.S. Ambassador to South Korea John Muccio to Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk for Far Eastern Affairs, on the subject of Korean refugees, as well as the excerpt from an oral history of U.S. soldier Don F. Adams can help teachers and students better understand the history of the Ko rean War Traditionally, the Korean War has been portrayed as a conflict between North and South Korea. Each side was allied with super powers, which fought the first hot of the cold war era. Increas

Forgotten war, forgotten massacres—the Korean War (1950–1953) as licensed mass killings

In 1999, the Associated Press (AP) revealed the existence of startling documents about the Korean War showing that United States troops had killed hundreds of civilian refugees in the early stages ...