Beyond Collaboration and Resistance: Accommodation at the Weihsien Internment Camp, China, 1943-1945

Abstract

In this thesis, I explore the experiences of some 2,000 allied civilians in the Japanese-run Weihsien Internment Camp (濰縣集中營) in Shandong, China from 1943 to 1945. Beyond serving as a counterpoint to the Japanese internment in North America during the Second World War, the Weihsien Camp also represents a rare point of contact between Western civilians and the Japanese that came about as part of Japan's effort to sweep away any remaining vestiges of Western colonial society in Asia. Government documents, supplemented by both published and unpublished memoirs, letters, and diaries reveal the ways in which the internee community organised camp life under Japanese guard in a manner that defies straightforward categorisation as either "resistance" or "collaboration." Instead, the internees as a community reached an accommodation to the realities of life in a Japanese internment camp that allowed them considerable latitude and agency in their daily life.