Korean Communities and Wilshire Bus

In previous articles, authors explored Asian brides and their relationship with their husbands, touching on how the Oriental stereotype demanded domesticity and docility from these women. However, in Ji-Yeon Yuh's “Imagined Community Sisterhood and Resistance among Korean Military Brides in America, 1950–1996,” the author states that “the rhetoric of domesticity... expand[ed] the boundaries of acceptable activities for respectable women” as Korean military wives formed groups in order to better their living situations. Their very dissatisfaction with being treated poorly due to “domination... based primarily on gender, race, language, and cultural difference” led them to rebel in “a wide variety of lowprofile forms of resistance” against these restrictions and form groups that provided support.

However, interestingly enough, there were distinctions between these various groups, as military brides were separated from women married to civilians. As military brides were associated with prostitution, “women in the latter category often strive to set themselves apart... perceiving themselves to be superior.” This reflects a similar idea to that expressed in Yamamoto's “Wilshire Bus”: although different individuals are placed in similar situations, fear of discrimination leads them to point out their differences rather than similarities. Just as Esther hopes that the drunk man hurling racial epithets at a Chinese couple does not associate her, a Japanese woman, with them, Korean civilian brides tended to distance themselves from those they believed were beneath them. Some did “try to assume leadership roles over women they view as uneducated and in need of uplift” with the same intention as Esther smiling at the Chinese woman: to establish some sense of camaraderie without being associated with the “inferior” party. The results in both cases suggest that perhaps lines between groups should either be clearly drawn rather than blurred lest the gray area prove detrimental to both factions. Just as the Chinese couple managed to function without Esther, the Korean military brides formed their own successful communities mainly through their own efforts.