The next meeting of the Japan History Group (JHG) at the Institute of Social Science (ISS), University of Tokyo, will be held on Friday, 13 July 2018, at 6:00 PM in No.1 Meeting Room (Dai-ichi Kaigi-shitsu), 1st floor of the Main Building of ISS, Hongo Campus.



Presenter: Michiko Suzuki(PhD Candidate, Department of History, SOAS)


Title: Red Cross Nurses on the Battlefield


Discussant: Mai Yamashita (Associate Professor, Doshisha University)



Abstract:

During the Second World War, the Japanese Red Cross Society (JRCS) organised a total of 960 relief parties and sent them to battlefields, medical ships, and hospitals. After the war, some of JRCS nurses were captured by the Soviet and Chinese Armed Forces, their internments lasting for decades. There has been considerable areas of confusion over the historiographies of Red Cross relief nurses and Japanese military nurses on the battlefield. They even failed to examine the humanitarian activities of JRCS male nurses. Most historiographies of JRCS nurses focused on the politicisation of gender roles as women mobilised by the wartime state. JRCS nurses, however, still demonstrated their activities as a part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. This presentation will be shaped into a counter-narrative to the military and national history of Red Cross nurses, usually told in terms of the controversial relationships between states and humanitarian organisations. It will explore the extent to which the Red Cross nurses applied the principals of humanitarian professionalism to their battlefield operations.