American officials allowed only Caucasian Bonin islanders to return after WWII.

Evidence

The displacement of Chagossians, Marshallese islanders, and other groups demonstrates the vulnerability of small, isolated populations whose forcible relocation U.S. officials have so often treated as a matter of negligible concern. The story of another group of islands underscores the decisive role that ideas about race have played in such decisions. Before World War II, Japan’s Bonin-Volcano (also known as Ogasawara) islands, which include Iwo Jima, had a population of roughly seven thousand. The islanders were the descendants of nineteenth-century settlers, most of whom had come from Japan but also from the United States and Europe. In 1944, Japanese officials evacuated all the Bonin-Volcano islanders to Japan’s main islands to protect them from impending U.S. attack. After the U.S. capture of the Bonin-Volcanos, American officials prohibited the locals from returning in order to give the military unhindered use of the islands. In 1946, however, officials modified the decision: they would “permit the return of those residents of Caucasian extraction who had been forcibly removed to Japan during the war and who had petitioned the United States to return.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 217

Categorization

• XREF: The racial exception for Euro-American Bonin islanders stands as a stark contrast to the Chagossians’ total rejection, underscoring the racial logic of displacement.