[(Securing Paradise: Tourism and Militarism in Hawai'i and the Philippines )] [Author: Vernadette Vicuna Gonzalez] [Aug-2013]

In Securing Paradise, Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez shows how tourism and militarism have worked together in Hawaii and the Philippines, jointly enabling the United States to assert its geostrategic and economic interests in the Pacific. She does so by interpreting fiction, closely examining colonial and military construction projects and delving into present-day tourist practices, spaces, and narratives. For instance, in both Hawaii and the Philippines, U.S. military modes of mobility, control, and surveillance also enable scenic tourist byways. Past and present U.S. military posts, such as the Clark and Subic Bases and the Pearl Harbor complex, have been reincarnated as sites of Second World War history. Military personnel and technology are repurposed for tourism and back again. Through these and other phenomena, tourism and militarism have produced gendered structures of feeling and forms of knowledge that are routinized into everyday life in Hawaii and the Philippines, inculcating U.S. imperialism in the Pacific.