This chapter looks at the cooperation and competition between Chinese, British, and American actors in the context of the changing situation and the decline of British influence in South China during the war. The many military formations and organizations of the three powers, often with limited resources because of their relative perceived importance in their countries’ overall planning, competed for influence in the area while waging war against Japan. While the Americans enjoyed clear superiority in materials and resources, the British in South China relied on preexisting networks and local knowledge. The Chinese Nationalists and Communists, on the other hand, interacted with the British and Americans to advance their positions. In all, despite competition, the Allied forces in South China did operate effectively against Japan, especially in terms of sustaining an air campaign against Japanese logistics and infrastructure in the area, although such cooperation was strained to limits in 1944–1945. The war eventually led to a collapse of British influence in South China and the emergence of increased Sino-American ties.

This chapter is an account of my experiences as a member of the faculty in different universities. I taught at Caltech where I was a member of an interdisciplinary group of faculty in the humanities and social sciences and came to know prominent humanists in other fields as well as scientists such as Richard Feynman, Murray Gel Man, and Max Delbruck. I then moved to the University of Michigan where I joined an active group of interdisciplinary scholars, encountered the attractions and problems of cultural studies, and then began to do institutional work by creating a new interdepartmental PhD program in Anthropology and History. Because of the success of that program, I was invited to Columbia University to chair the Anthropology Department and become the Franz Boas Professor at Columbia.

Chapter 1 traces the ideological and practical origins of the inter-Allied denazification campaign and the unorthodox questionnaire program that it proposed. It surveys the wartime planning landscape in 1943 and 1944 and introduces the individuals and institutions that created the Fragebogen. Hundreds of civilian experts, including college professors, police officers, lawyers, and Jewish refugees, were employed to build denazification policy and to overhaul military civil affairs programs. This army of academics brought with them innovative social scientific approaches and instruments, as well as new perspectives and concepts regarding ideological, sociological, and political transformation. This was the rich civilian-engaged environment that permitted the adoption of an experimental political questionnaire. However, the civilian planners were continuously challenged by an inherent contradiction in all strands of occupation policy: the pursuit of both punitive and restorative goals. The result was that a practical strategy for the occupation was never produced by the Allied powers, nor was there a shared consensus on political screening.