Does the Constitution Follow the Soldier? Sovereignty, Citizenship, and U.S. Military Bases in Asia, 1945–65

The recent wave of scholarship on Filipino-American citizenship in the early twentieth century has emphasized its ambiguous, in-between nature, a condition that scholars suggest partly reflects the United States's own ambivalence about its republican and imperial traditions. Philippine independence in 1946 was supposed to change that. But as this paper argues, decolonization created as many puzzles about citizenship and sovereignty as it solved. As tens of thousands of American soldiers (and their dependents) passed through such sites as Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Station, some committed crimes. A few were dramatic instances of murder or rape; most were mundane instances of trespassing, black-marketeering, and traffic accidents. Whether those cases would be adjudicated in military courts or the civilian courts of home nations increasingly posed thorny problems of international affairs in a decolonizing world in the midst of a Cold War. Drawing from archival and oral history sources in the United States and the Philippines (with some consideration of Okinawa, Japan, and Korea), this paper connects the diplomatic and military histories of American servicemen in Cold War Asia with the social histories of the cities of Angeles and Olongapo, two cities that adjoined Clark and Subic bases. Contests over jurisdiction and sovereignty reveal the enduring legacy of U.S. colonialism, the crucial (and overlooked) role of law as a medium for the negotiation of North-South power relations, and the powerful role of anti-Americanism in the formation of Cold War-era nationalisms.