Abstract
The U.S. military employed hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians during the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952). These official base workers were as essential to the functioning of U.S. garrisons in postwar Japan as were U.S. soldiers themselves. Despite this, historians know almost nothing about the workplace experiences of these countless men and women. This article demonstrates how, when stepping onto U.S. bases, official base workers entered a world of labor that was importantly different from the one other workers in postwar Japan inhabited. Base workers experienced particular drawbacks in their work for the Occupation, from restrictions on their right to exercise organized labor power to various forms of official and unofficial force and violence. At the same time, base workers also had privileged access to the immense material wealth that the U.S. military project generated—a vital lifeline in a nation where even basic commodities were scarce in the immediate postwar period. These specific benefits and drawbacks resulted in part from the fact that Japanese official base workers represented a form of militarized labor. This article traces this important thread of militarization in a nation that the Occupation was ostensibly demilitarizing.