Transversal Social Movements and Deserting Subjects: JATEC's Assistance to Deserters and the U.S. Army Destruction Movement

ONO Mitsuaki
Abstract:
This paper focuses on JATEC (Japan Technical Committee for Assistance to U.S. Anti-War Deserters), which assisted deserters and carried out "U.S. army destruction" movements in Japan in the Vietnam War era. JATEC was organized by a wide network of people in Japan who opposed the Vietnam War. This movement, consisting of a wide range of anti-Vietnam war groups, has been explained in some studies as an attempt to transcend nationalism by making fruitful solidarity with people of the U.S.A. to stop the war. In this paper, I consider this understanding of JATEC as a transversal movement from the viewpoint of the network's continuous face-to-face communications with U.S. army personnel.

I explain the background and contents of the JATEC movement, the reasons why JATEC participants supported desertions and resistance by U.S. soldiers, and the philosophy of the transversal anti-war movements that developed from the face-to-face communications between the participants and the U.S. army deserters and rebels. Finally, I consider how the participants experienced their activities, which pushed back borderlines such as the fences of U.S. bases and nationalities, and how the subjects of the participants were changed by these activities.


Keywords: JATEC, transversality, Vietnam War, desertion, U.S. Army Destruction Movements