concluded, “There is no information to indicate that Kim has ever embraced foreign ideologies or that his racial background makes him vulnerable to Communist propaganda.” As for Kim’s earlier political involvements, “[h]e was apparently duped by the IPP in 1948, as were many politically naïve people.”60
From one report to the next, G-2 probed the political pasts of army personnel to determine their loyalty, especially those of a particular “racial background.” Another report in 1953 sought to determine if a “Charles Kim” stationed in Pusan, Korea, was the son of Diamond Kimm, the Korean leftist from Los Angeles who was then facing deportation charges for his political activities.61 Indeed, if the “foreign-born” had emerged as particular targets of the burgeoning anticommunist regime of the early 1950s, which sought to monitor and exclude “subversives” from the nation, then the army came under scrutiny for channeling in such large numbers of Asians and foreign nationals over the years. “The over-riding necessity to make maximum use of all available manpower” during World War II, a report stated in 1954, had led to “the liberalization of policy toward Communists in the Army.” Accordingly, Senator Joseph McCarthy urged the Secretary of the Army to do everything to “wee[d] out … the misfits, the incompetents, the Communists and the fellow travelers who infiltrated the Army during the twenty years of Communist coddling.”62
Determined to root out subversives hiding in plain sight, G-2 with its case files in fact accomplished something else entirely: it reinforced and reproduced the fear of racialized Asian subjects plotting against the U.S. empire. Although rare, when G-2 uncovered “conclusive proof” of actual subversion, it only confirmed the reality of this fear. The case of Yi Sa Min was one such case that elicited the intervention of the State Department in January 1950. According to the U.S. embassy in Seoul, Yi, an American citizen, traveled to Pyongyang in December as a representative of the Korean Democratic Front of North America and sought to secure the group’s membership in the North Korean Democratic Front. At a press conference, Yi stated the following: “The American people and Koreans residing [in the United States] are supporting the unified independence of Korea and her democratic development. Because we live in America, we know very well what kind of country America is and what kind of fello[w] Rhee Syngman … [is].” He minced no words as he condemned the American “invasion” of “the southern half of our fatherland,” and castigated Rhee and “his stooges” for “selling our country” to the Americans. “We will consolidate our efforts and fight for our Republic and for the unification of the North and South, and we will not permit American interference, whatever it may be.”63
To state officials, the speech lent every indication that Yi was “an active agent of the Communist-controlled North Korean regime,” and they became obsessed with his political past. As a telegram revealed, in 1919 Yi had taken part in the Korean underground independence movement in Shanghai, which led to his arrest and imprisonment for four years by Japanese authorities. Upon his release he founded the Korean Revolutionary Party and gained membership in the Korean Nationalist Association, a group “which had connections with the Chinese Communist Party.” Like many others, Yi sensed an opportunity when the United States declared war on Japan; he enlisted in the U.S. Army, served in the India and China theaters, and acquired citizenship through his military service. Earning his citizenship did little to sway his political convictions. Disillusioned by the U.S. military occupation in Korea after the war, Yi maintained associations with Korean leftists in the United States and continued to agitate for Korean independence, all while working as a Korean-language instructor in Seattle and occasionally living in Los Angeles.64 Looking back at Yi’s thirty-plus years of “communist” activities, state officials wondered how such an outlaw ever managed to slip into the military, much less to obtain citizenship. In 1950, the State Department recommended that Yi’s naturalization be deemed “fraudently [sic] obtained” and permanently revoked.65
The apparent ease by which Yi Sa Min led his dual lives as a domesticated U.S. citizen and a foreign agent confounded state officials beyond anything else. In ensuing years, it was precisely the indecipherability of these slippery categories that fueled the anticommunist persecution of Asian residents in the United States, resulting in the deportation of Filipino labor activists and the forced confessions of tens of thousands of “illegal” Chinese residents.66 But Yi’s expulsion also took place in the context of pressing geopolitical events, which renewed the question about the utility of Asians in the military. In the fall of 1949, the Chinese civil war between Communist and Nationalist forces came to a decisive end with the former declaring victory. The “loss” of China to communism stoked fears among some U.S. officials about the region’s stability, especially if China should export its revolution to Southeast Asia and Korea. The imminence of Japan’s economic collapse in 1949 compounded this scenario.67 The specter of a sweeping revolution in Asia and the loss of Japan as a regional surrogate demanded a new U.S. strategy, one that would secure the region through communist containment and economic integration.
This strategy was provided by the Mutual Defense Assistance Act, approved by Congress on October 6, 1949. The act consolidated all U.S. foreign military aid projects up to that time under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program (MDAP), appropriating $1.5 billion in aid for the first year; and in August 1950, with the Korean War in full swing, President Truman requested an additional $4 billion. Beyond the scope and price tag, MDAP’s more enduring significance rested on its conception of Pacific security. MDAP created essentially a “hub-and-spokes” security system in Asia, in which bilateral treaties between the United States and particular nation-states provided the basis for the security of the entire region. MDAP furnished new and old allied states with military equipment, economic aid, training, and technical assistance, granted with the firm assurance that an attack on one country was an attack on the United States and the “free world,” and would be met with swift retaliation.68
From the beginning, this transnational security state in Asia drew on a language of “self-help” and “mutual aid” to underscore its legitimacy as a decidedly anticolonial arrangement. MDAP granted aid to those who requested it, to give “free nations which intend to remain free” the tools to defend themselves from communism.69 On the ground, this discourse of helping Asians help themselves translated into the growing presence of U.S. military advisers that assisted with the buildup and training of national armed forces, a process that was under way in countries such as the Philippines and South Korea. In the fall of 1948, the first six Korean Constabulary officers arrived in the United States to receive training in U.S. military service schools, as part of a new training program initiated by the U.S. Military Advisory Group to the Republic of Korea (KMAG). This initial cohort was the precursor to the tens of thousands more from South Korea and other countries in Asia who did the same over the course of the 1950s through MDAP. After their training, these trainees were expected to return to their home countries, having acquired “first-hand knowledge of how Americans do things,” and to help develop and modernize their own militaries.70
In the name of promoting freedom, MDAP thus set the foundation for the United States to extend its military empire in Asia. It was a process that led to the transit and circulation of “free” Asian soldiers across the Pacific, and their arrival in the United States occurred at the precise moment when U.S. officials faced growing concerns about the presence of “subversives” in the military. Their racialized presence reproduced and magnified the threat of communist subversion even as they were hailed as the solution to curbing its global spread.
STIMULATING A “GENUINE WILL TO FIGHT”
In September 1951, through MDAP, the first group of 263 Koreans arrived in the United States. A majority of them enrolled in a special twenty-week course at the U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. The official records of G-2 identified each individual by first and last name, a headshot photograph, and scant biographical information. The file on Kang Chun Gill, for example, revealed that he was born on October 15, 1928, married with no children, and an educated man, having attended primary and secondary schools in Japan as well as two years each at Hanguk University
