Introduction: The Asia Pacific War Through Border-Crossing Mobilities

Human migration and mobilities in Europe during World War II are well documented, yet there remains work to be done on the Asia Pacific region, where there were also large numbers of displaced persons. Further, as transnational and transimperial research has shown, other forms of mobilities, such as ideas and knowledge, also need to be considered. This special issue on border-crossing mobilities in the Asia Pacific War aims to redress such omissions, and this Introduction elucidates the innovative contributions these articles make to our knowledge about the Asia Pacific War. The issue challenges methodological nationalism in war history and Eurocentrism in international migration history, and has sympathies with transnational and transimperial projects that reveal the fluidity of border-crossing mobilities, whether via bodies or ideas/knowledge. By placing war at the centre of analysis, the issue highlights the multi-directional, multi-scale, and complex nature of war migrations and mobilities, inclusive of temporary and transitional places of refuge. The issue also reveals continuums of coercion for those undertaking movements, and nuances how we conceive of and define im/mobilities. ‘The Asia Pacific War through Border Crossing Mobilities’, then, contributes to migration and mobilities histories and to histories of the global World War II.