U.S. Global Expansion, Tourism, and Food Culture in Asia and the Pacific
The United States emerged from World War II as the new global power and embarked on a campaign to secure the world for capitalism by defeating
Mark Padoongpatt
196
communism. The Cold War between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies was an intense global competition that sparked political tension, a military defense buildup, and anxiety over the possibil- ity of nuclear annihilation. Just as important, the ascendance of the United States as the preeminent world leader coincided with the explosion of Third- World anticolonial movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, which led to numerous interventions, by both the United States and the Soviet Union, into the “darker nations.”
Some scholars have explored the role of U.S. cultural production in the for- mation of postwar U.S. global supremacy. In Cold War Orientalism, Christina Klein argues that while the Truman administration forged a U.S. domestic culture of containment, “liberal” U.S. political elites turned their attention to building stronger relations with their allies, especially in Asia and the Pacific. These liberal officials formulated what she calls a “global imaginary of integra- tion,” a comprehensive way of viewing the world as a place with open pathways between those nations whose differences could be resolved and overcome by forging intellectual and emotional bonds.41 After the defeat of Nazi Germany and amid the growing anticolonial movements for self-determination, the United States had to assure itself and the rest of the world that its new position as the leader of the Free World did not simply mean business as usual, that is, the continuation of white supremacy by way of colonial rule. U.S. officials understood that overt force and violence were no longer acceptable as means to gain political and economic dominance, especially with the natives fighting back. Fueled by the ideology of “modernization,” the post–World War II U.S. Empire opened access to new markets and tried to secure the supremacy of global capitalism by promoting development, democracy, and cultural under- standing.42 Thus, U.S. empire building in the Cold War demanded more than the defensive posture of communist containment. Equally important was the integration of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Pacific.
White American women who traveled in and tasted the foods of Asia and the Pacific did so as a direct result of U.S. global expansion. During this period, the U.S. State Department expanded the definition of “tourist” from “sightseeing traveler” to “the bona fide non-immigrant who desires to make a temporary visit to a foreign country for any legitimate purpose.” In other words, it defined the American traveler as an agent, representative, and diplo- mat of the United States around the world. As Ruby Erskine did, many accom- panied their husbands, who went as military officials, diplomats, businessmen, ambassadors, volunteers, teachers, scholars, and tourists. Marie Wilson trav- eled to Thailand to marry her fiancé, a Fulbright scholar teaching English in
Cold War “Oriental” Food
197
Bangkok. Meda Croizat journeyed wherever her husband, Marine Colonel Victor Croizat, was assigned. Janeth Johnson Nix made her extensive trip to the “Orient” after her husband’s company transferred him to Kobe, Japan, in 1967. Wilson, Croizat, and Johnson Nix joined hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens who traveled around the world. In 1947, approximately 200,000 Amer- icans had valid passports. During the mid-1950s, more than one million U.S. citizens went overseas, and by 1959, around seven million took trips abroad. While only 500,000 tourists visited Asia and the Pacific that year, there was a great deal of interest in the region, in large part because of the boom in travel writing. James Michener’s The Voice of Asia, for instance, made Asia real to U.S. citizens, as did other travel writers who introduced the peoples and cul- tures of Asia and the Pacific through newspapers, magazines, and films.43
White women’s participation in culinary adventure illustrates the central role of women in the development of the informal U.S. Empire after World War II, with U.S. tourism in Asia and the Pacific during the Cold War oper- ating as a “soft” version of U.S. Empire. These women’s appropriation of Asian and Pacific food practices was fueled by the development of tourist infrastruc- ture at a moment when “Third World” countries, having recently won inde- pendence from colonial rule, were trying to establish their economic auton- omy. In fact, as Christina Klein shows, the boom in U.S. tourism in Asia and the Pacific was intertwined with U.S. global expansion, even sharing the same material infrastructure. Not only did the U.S. federal government play a role in funding the construction of airstrips around the world, but the tourist indus- try itself also functioned as a colonial economy in which self-determination shifted from local populations to outside interests and entities: the U.S. corpo- ration and the U.S. consumer.
Members of the travel industry identified the construction of a tourist infra- structure—airports, airstrips, hotels, golf courses, shopping centers, and restau- rants—as both a necessity for U.S. travelers to access foreign places and a prime strategy for the economic development of the “Third World.” The U.S. govern- ment and private companies like Pan American Airlines helped develop this infrastructure, and U.S. travel agents contributed as well. Travel agents encour- aged the professionalization and consolidation of worldwide travel organiza- tions, strengthened relationships between travel agents and government officials, joined the public and private sectors, lobbied governments to ease travel regula- tions in immigration policy, and, most important, secured capital investment to finance the modernization of the Third World’s tourist infrastructure.
The Pacific Area Travel Association (PATA) is an example of how U.S. travel agents helped develop the tourist infrastructure in Asia and the Pacific that
Mark Padoongpatt
198
facilitated culinary tourism. In 1952, PATA was established in order to increase tourism and encourage U.S. travelers to “discover the Pacific.” PATA, originally named the Pacific Interim Travel Association when it held its first meeting at a conference in Honolulu, advertised the region of Asia and the Pacific to inves- tors as the next big consumer product. PATA’s main mission was to help the people and cultures of Asia and the Pacific “move from post-WWII conditions of poverty to a position of global leadership.”44 In addition to assisting with postwar recovery efforts, PATA’s vision paralleled U.S. attempts to use cultural exchange and understanding as a weapon in the Cold War. “Tourists bring wealth into a country,” wrote U.S. Secretary of Commerce Luther H. Hodges, “wealth in the form of good will and understanding; wealth in the form of for- eign exchange, vitally needed for international trade.”45 So PATA officials did more than just sell tourist packages; they sold the idea of U.S. tourism as an expression of postwar American global leadership and benevolence.
Thailand is a prime example of how PATA promoted tourism in Cold War Asia and the Pacific, as PATA officials worked with Thai leaders and the Thai government to make tourism the country’s top priority for its postwar national development. In the late 1950s, Thai leaders had very little interest in tourism, as the country did not have an organized tourist industry, only 871 standard tourist rooms, and roughly 50,000 visitors per year, most of whom stayed in Bangkok for an average of only two to three days.46 But PATA officials saw Thailand as a site with untapped tourist potential. In a 1958 report written for the U.S. Department of Commerce, PATA listed Thailand’s location as the “air center” of Southeast Asia, its “raw materials” of spectacular temples, “excep- tionally interesting classical Thai dancing,” friendly people, and “colorful” way of life as key ingredients for profitable tourist destination.47 Someone, it urged, just needed to package it. PATA suggested that the Tourism Organization of Thailand (TOT) work closely with the Thai government and especially with outside “specialists” and business leaders with private capital. It also laid out guidelines and ten-year projections, based on empirical research, for Thai lead- ers to follow if they wished to cash in on the booming industry: (1) network with other Asian and Pacific nations to develop regional tourism; (2) ensure the construction of 1,200 new, first-class hotel rooms at a price of $18 million; (3) create a long-term promotional and marketing program; and (4) eliminate government red tape and restrictions on travelers, such as expediting customs procedures, reducing immigration paperwork, and liberalizing visa “formal- ities.” In 1959, the Thai government appeared to have seriously considered PATA’s recommendations, making the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) a part of its development planning. By the mid-1960s, the Thai government
Cold War “Oriental” Food
199
decided to invest heavily in an infrastructure for tourists. With luxury hotels erected for tourists as well as Thailand’s wealthy socialites, the tourist-centered approach to economic development replaced anything resembling urban plan- ning or policy in large cities like Bangkok.
PATA’s effort to turn spaces like Bangkok into tourist playgrounds chal- lenges what scholars have come to call “cultural imperialism.” While the use of the term itself implies the destruction, eradication, and replacement of a culture with the cultural practices of a “superior” culture as an act of dom- ination, this was not how the political economy of tourism functioned. As U.S. travel agents remade Asia and the Pacific to meet their particular vision of postwar development, they also were acutely aware that they had to pre- serve, protect, and respect other cultures. In essence, PATA officials fought to maintain cultural traditions in Asia and the Pacific at the same time that they destroyed them. In Thailand, for instance, PATA recommended that the country “encourage the preservation of Thai art and customs” and concluded that further “study will have to be given to ways and means of retaining their charm and preventing its deterioration and commercialization.”48
U.S. tourism altered Asian and Pacific food culture as dramatically as it did the urban landscape and beaches. The transformation of the food culture during this period best captures the way U.S. tourism breathed life into the U.S. Empire. As a vital aspect of U.S. global capitalist expansion, the growth of tour- ist industries forced countries like Thailand to become service-based economies catering to the desires of both U.S. consumers and national wealthy elites, but at the expense of the local population’s needs. For example, the growing num- ber of hotels in Thailand allowed Thai chefs to interact more closely with U.S. officials and distinguished travelers. Thai sous-chefs learned fruit, vegetable, ice, and butter carving specifically to entertain tourists.49 In Bangkok in the 1960s, Thai restaurants catering to private dining experiences with a Western sequence of courses began to appear along with a range of foreign restaurants—Korean, Lebanese, Japanese, Italian, French, Mexican—in part to attract U.S. diplomats, businessmen, and military officials.50 Classical Thai dinner-and-dance shows also lured more wealthy tourists and visitors, who could experience “authen- tic” Thai food in a palace-like setting of “Old Siam.”51 Hawai‘i, too, a U.S. colony deeply entangled in U.S. militarization and tourism since the late 1800s, under- went considerable changes as its tourist industry set travel records during this period. The island of Hawai‘i became a playground for U.S. military servicemen and other travelers captivated by the hula. By the late 1950s, Hawai‘i’s tourist industry ranked third behind sugarcane and pineapple in economic importance and brought in 35 million tourist dollars annually, as much as Las Vegas did.52
Mark Padoongpatt
200
U.S. culinary tourism in Asia and the Pacific further reveals that the Cold War was as much about global capitalist integration as it was about global com- munist containment. The U.S. travel industry facilitated U.S. Empire, acting literally as an arm of modernization and development that made Asian and Pacific countries and islands accessible for U.S. tourist gustatory consumption. The U.S. tourist industry created, maintained, and justified unequal encoun- ters based on race, gender, and class.