Wedding photograph of Japanese woman Yoshiko Ishikawa and Australian soldier Victor Creagh, 1956

Yoshiko Ishikawa was a Japanese woman who married an Australian solider based in Japan in the aftermath of the Second World War.

In the years following the Second World War, some 12,000 Australian servicemen were posted to Japan as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Forces. Despite a strict ‘no fraternising’ policy, relationships between servicemen and Japanese women developed. By November 1956, at the end of the Australian occupation of Japan, about 650 women had migrated to Australia as the wives or fiancées of servicemen. The arrival of Japanese war brides was the first major relaxation of the White Australia policy. However, the policy was not completely abolished until 1973, when amendments were made to the racial aspects of Australia's immigration laws.