Mass Tourism in the Jet Age Pacific: Reconsidering Militourism in the “American Lake”

Mass tourism in the Pacific islands developed from two factors: one was the global air network built and operated by the U.S. military mobilizing commercial airlines, and the other was the introduction of jet aircraft by international commercial airlines in the late 1950s. The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the U.S. military origins of jet-era mass tourism in the Pacific and to reveal the concurrent development of tourist resorts for U.S. military personnel in the Pacific during the Cold War.

The United States became a hegemonic power in the Pacific not only by the fight against Japan but also by constructing naval- air bases. The U.S. government attempted to maintain these bases and air routes as early as 1943. However, postwar civil aviation issued became a focal point between U.S. and U.K. governments, because it involved the pressure to dismantle the British empire and the issue of hegemony in postwar aviation. The U.S.-British confrontation at the end of war temporarily sealed the U.S. open skies policy. However, the U.S. government succeeded in turning the Pacific into an "American lake" by acquiring bases through trusteeship and by occupying Japan.

Hawaii and Okinawa, whose lands and beaches were seized and used as bases and resorts exclusively by the US military, were transformed into mass resorts with the introduction of jet planes. Pan Am, United, and TWA, backed by the U.S. government and the military, completed tourism in the Pacific defended by the U.S. military network against Soviets and China, and later Japan Air Lines, which introduced U.S. jets participated in it. In other words, the advent of the jet age, the U.S. military-derived air network and the resort developments made Hawaii and Okinawa resort destinations that had no choice but to accept flows of capital and tourists of Metropoles.