ICS Working papers

This article examines disease control and prevention in Occupied Japan (1945-52). It argues that the primary concerns and disease control decisions were chiefly motivated by domestic anxieties and disease burdens in the United States along with a strong commitment to protect its personnel from infections and diseases. The creation of the United States Typhus Commission in 1942 was in line with the US motive to curb Typhus elsewhere (Middle East, Yugoslavia, Egypt amongst others) to prevent disease incidence on the home turf. American public health policy understood that the domestic rise in cases was largely caused by the import of diseases from outside America with no imminent domestic causes. The importance accorded to Typhus and its control in Occupied Japan was an extension of this practice. During and after the Typhus epidemic of 1946, the Occupation created an elaborate mechanism to trace, eradicate, and inoculate against the disease. Typhus received more attention than any other disease because its eradication and prevention aligned with fears and apprehensions of the Occupation. Racial notions of health and hygiene and othering of the Japanese body and physique resulted in efforts to subject the Japanese to immunisation, quarantines, and other forms of disciplining and control for the benefit and protection of the Occupation and its authorities who affected disease control from a safe distance.