Broken Bodies of the War Machine: The Biopolitics of Rehabilitation for Disabled Veterans in World War II China

This paper traces the emergence of “rehabilitation” (fuyuan) as a biopolitical strategy of national resistance in wartime China. Focusing on a distinct group of rehabilitation recipients---wounded and disabled veterans---this study highlights the workings of labor and education as mutually reinforcing priorities in the making of “disabled but not useless” (can’er bufei) ex-servicemen. War casualties not only embodied the ideological significance of KMT nationalism but also carried practical weight of dealing with the shortage in human resources. Military rehabilitation, which began in 1938 as a Christian social service program led by the Friends of the Wounded Society (FOWS), soon developed into a KMT-supervised organization of military service after 1940. Rehabilitation schemes, including compensation by prosthetics, psychological counselling, vocational training and employment assistance, transformed the meaning of battlefield injuries and impairments as a pathway to self-reliance rather than dependency on the state. These became possible with the collaboration of KMT officials and military personnel, Christian missionary societies, allied powers and international aids. Wounded veterans who returned to combat after recovery became the exemplary model of national resistance, while the disabled won the honor of being “useful” by contributing their labor and intellect to society. Through the use of vocational training handbooks, magazines for disabled veterans and a previously untapped archive of military rehabilitation camps, this paper reconsiders the human cost of war as an active process in which rehabilitation creates new agencies of resistance and possibilities of return.