| Summary/Abstract |
In January 1947, William W. Lockwood, future president of the Association for Asian Studies, who had served for eighteen months as a U.S. Army officer in China, wrote that the “first venture in large scale American tourism in China” caused “many sour, even hostile, reactions to the Chinese.” He asked: Did millions of returned young GIs “gain a sympathetic and tolerant understanding of that world? Or were their home town prejudices simply confirmed?”1 This intriguing question should be understood not only as a critical reflection on the U.S. wartime presence in China, but also in the context of U.S. postwar involvement in the region.
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