War bride

Marriage to Asian war brides had a significant impact on United States immigration law, as well as the public perception of interethnic, interracial, interfaith, and interdenominational couples.

[10] This led to widespread defiance of the law by American servicemen, as well as increased tolerance for interethnic and interracial couples in the United States,[11] and ultimately the repeal of the highly restrictive 1924 Immigration Act in 1952.

[18] The U.S. Army's Operation War Bride, which eventually transported an estimated 70,000 women and children, began in Britain in early 1946.

The first group of war brides (452 British women and their 173 children, and one bridegroom) left Southampton harbor on SS Argentina on January 26, 1946, and arrived in the U.S. on February 4, 1946.

war brides left the United Kingdom,[22][9] 15,500 from Australia,[23] 14,000-20,000 from Germany,[24] and 1,500 from New Zealand, between the years 1942 and 1952, having married American soldiers.

[25] Around 50,000 United States servicemen married Japanese wives at the end of World War II and during the occupation period.

Robyn Arrowsmith, a historian who spent nine years researching Australia's war brides, said that between 12,000 and 15,000 Australian women had married visiting U.S. servicemen and moved to the U.S. with their husbands.

The majority of Canadian war brides landed at Pier 21 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, most commonly on the following troop and hospital ships: Queen Mary, Lady Nelson, Letitia, Mauretania, Scythia and SS Île de France.

[34] Significantly, an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 Newfoundland women married American servicemen during the time of Ernest Harmon Air Force Base's existence (1941–1966), in which tens of thousands of U.S. servicemen arrived to defend the island and North America from Nazi Germany during World War II and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

So many of those war brides settled in the U.S. that in 1966, the Newfoundland government created a tourism campaign specifically tailored to provide opportunities for them and their families to reunite.

[2][41] From relationships between Italian women and African American soldiers, mulattini were born; many of those children were abandoned in orphanages,[2] because interracial marriage was then not legal in many US states.

[42][43] A Japanese war bride is a woman who married an American citizen following the post WW II military occupation of their home country.

Following Japan's defeat and post war food shortages, many women sought employment as a means to provide for their families.

Many were also enamored by the status, power, and prestige the GIs carried with them because of their victory, and sought new economic opportunity through immigration to the United States.

Their classes offered textbooks in home economics, U.S. history, housekeeping, child raising, and ultimately shaped the modern Japanese woman's beliefs so that these actions were in accordance with mainstream American views on gender roles.

Thus, by conforming to an idealized concept of how a good housewife behaved, these Japanese women often became model minorities promoted as what others should strive to personify, held up as examples of what an assimilated immigrant should look like.

[59][60] A Korean comfort woman named Kim Ch'un-hui stayed behind in Vietnam and died there when she was 44 in 1963, owning a dairy farm, cafe, U.S. cash, and diamonds worth 200,000 U.S.

[62] The now-abandoned Vietnamese war brides who had mothered children would be forced to raise them by themselves and often faced harsh criticism for having relations with members of an enemy army that had occupied Vietnam.

[62] Korean war brides were those who married American GIs and immigrated to the United States to pursue opportunities for freedom and economic advancement.

Many Korean women followed a similar path as the Japanese war brides above after Korea became an independent nation following Japan's defeat in WWII.

These war brides often met American servicemen in military bases through gambling halls, prostitution, or other illicit businesses.

Although it was a struggle for Korean war brides to assimilate into American society, they generally enjoyed greater economic opportunity in their new country.