'Unofficial ambassadors': American military families overseas and Cold War foreign relations, 1945--1965

After World War II, the United States continued to maintain bases around the world. The government allowed family members to join military personnel overseas in 1946. By 1960, over 600,000 service personnel and 460,000 family members resided abroad. This social and cultural history of foreign relations and the military examines the internationalist ideal of service families as "unofficial ambassadors" in the two decades following the end of the Second World War. To those who viewed service wives and children as representatives of the United States, the postwar occupations and opposition to the spread of world communism required not only military might---overseas bases, personnel, and weapons---but also demonstrations of American good will toward residents of occupied and host nations, and understanding of those countries' cultures and customs. While projecting friendliness and respect in their encounters with non-Americans, model military family members---service wives, children, and servicemen as husbands and fathers---also were expected to help wage the ideological war against communism by conveying the superiority of American ideals and institutions through their deportment, family relations, and homes. Prescriptive literature, accounts of encounters between Americans and non-Americans, and reports of Americans' misbehavior reveal that service family members were caught in an ideological double bind between promulgating the ideal of international understanding and cooperation and demonstrating the supremacy of American values and Cold War objectives. Service wives who embraced and expanded the ambassadorial role attempted to guide other military families in encounters with non-Americans in a variety of venues, including homes, charitable activities, excursions into occupied and host communities, women's clubs, youth clubs, and schools. Chapters that focus on West Germany and Okinawa illuminate how interpersonal contacts and American perceptions of cultural commonalities and differences bolstered American military and foreign relations goals in each different context. Sources analyzed include military documents; published and unpublished accounts from service wives, children, and servicemen about their contacts with residents of host and occupied nations; fiction; and illustrations.