Transnational Rations: Feeding the Troops in the Pacific and the Korean War

The saying “an army marches on its stomach” – attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte – acquired entirely new dimensions in the era of modern warfare. The commitment of massive armed forces to battle, along with their intensified mobility, turned feeding the troops into a complex logistical operation that assumed unique strategic significance.

Warfare has long been a tragic source of innovation in terms of food processing. For example, the method of the Parisian confectioner Nicolas Appert, on which the modern canning industry depends, was developed in response to an appeal of the French government for solutions in providing the army with long-life and easy to transport food. Along with canning, a wide variety of foods that have by now entered the mainstream diet of civilian populations, such as crackers and candy bars, had originally been developed with the military purpose in mind.

In this paper, through the analysis of the provisioning of the Japanese and Korean troops during the Pacific and the Korean war, I aim to shed light on the role of warfare in the formation of globalized consumption patterns. During the Pacific War (1941-45), the Japanese colony of Korea functioned as a logistical base for the Japanese Army. Japanese food processing plants contracted by the military were relocated to Korea and new ones were soon constructed in China following the encroachment of the troops. At the time of the Korean War (1950-53), in turn, Japan (the former colonizer) functioned as a logistical base for the South Korean forces, feeding Koreans with food that was more agreeable to them than the field rations provided by Americans. I will argue that transnational connections that developed in the process of provisioning the troops had long-standing implications on the diet of the soldiers, as well as the civilian populations involved in the conflicts.