War and Conscience in Japan

War and Conscience in Japan PDF Author: Shigeru Nanbara
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 074256813X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 238

Book Description
One of Japan's most important intellectuals, Nambara Shigeru defended Tokyo Imperial University against its rightist critics and opposed Japan's war. His poetic diary (1936-1945), published only after the war, documents his profound disaffection. In 1945 Nambara became president of Tokyo University and was an eloquent and ardent spokesman for academic freedom. Among his most impressive speeches are two memorials to fallen student-soldiers, which directly confront Nambara's wartime dilemma: what and how to advise students called up to fight a war he did not believe in. In this first English-language collection of his key work, historian and translator Richard H. Minear introduces Nambara's career and thinking before presenting translations of the most important of Nambara's essays, poems, and speeches. A courageous but lonely voice of conscience, Nambara is one of the few mid-century Japanese to whom we can turn for inspiration during that dark period in world history.

WE HEREBY REFUSE

WE HEREBY REFUSE PDF Author: Frank Abe
Publisher: Chin Music Press
ISBN: 1634050312
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 164

Book Description
Three voices. Three acts of defiance. One mass injustice. The story of camp as you’ve never seen it before. Japanese Americans complied when evicted from their homes in World War II -- but many refused to submit to imprisonment in American concentration camps without a fight. In this groundbreaking graphic novel, meet JIM AKUTSU, the inspiration for John Okada’s No-No Boy, who refuses to be drafted from the camp at Minidoka when classified as a non-citizen, an enemy alien; HIROSHI KASHIWAGI, who resists government pressure to sign a loyalty oath at Tule Lake, but yields to family pressure to renounce his U.S. citizenship; and MITSUYE ENDO, a reluctant recruit to a lawsuit contesting her imprisonment, who refuses a chance to leave the camp at Topaz so that her case could reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Based upon painstaking research, We Hereby Refuse presents an original vision of America’s past with disturbing links to the American present.

The Victim as Hero

The Victim as Hero PDF Author: James J. Orr
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824865154
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Book Description
This is the first systematic, historical inquiry into the emergence of "victim consciousness" (higaisha ishiki) as an essential component of Japanese pacifist national identity after World War II. In his meticulously crafted narrative and analysis, the author reveals how postwar Japanese elites and American occupying authorities collaborated to structure the parameters of remembrance of the war, including the notion that the emperor and his people had been betrayed and duped by militarists. He goes on to explain the Japanese reliance on victim consciousness through a discussion of the ban-the-bomb movement of the mid-1950s, which raised the prominence of Hiroshima as an archetype of war victimhood and brought about the selective focus on Japanese war victimhood; the political strategies of three self-defined war victim groups (A-bomb victims, repatriates, and dispossessed landlords) to gain state compensation and hence valorization of their war victim experiences; shifting textbook narratives that reflected contemporary attitudes and structured future generations' understanding of the war; and three classic antiwar novels and films that contributed to the shaping of a "sentimental humanism" that continues to leave a strong imprint on the collective Japanese conscience.

Beyond the Betrayal

Beyond the Betrayal PDF Author: Yoshito Kuromiya
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1646421841
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

Book Description
Beyond the Betrayal is a lyrically written memoir by Yoshito Kuromiya (1923–2018), a Nisei member of the Fair Play Committee (FPC), which was organized at the Heart Mountain concentration camp. The first book-length account by a Nisei World War II draft resister, this work presents an insider’s perspective on the FPC and the infamous trial condemning its members' efforts. It offers not only a beautifully written account of an important moment in US history but also a rare acknowledgment of dissension within the resistance movement, both between the young men who went to prison and their older leaders and also among the young men themselves. Kuromiya’s narrative is enriched by contributions from Frank Chin, Eric L. Muller, and Lawson Fusao Inada. Of the 300 Japanese Americans who resisted the military draft on the grounds that the US government had deprived them of their fundamental rights as US citizens, Kuromiya alone has produced an autobiographical volume that explores the short- and long-term causes and consequences of this fateful wartime decision. In his exquisitely written and powerfully documented testament he speaks truth to power, making evident why he is eminently qualified to convey the plight of the Nisei draft resisters. He perceptively reframes the wartime and postwar experiences of the larger Japanese American community, commonly said to have suffered in the spirit of shikata ga nai—enduring that which cannot be changed—and emerged with dignity. Beyond the Betrayal makes abundantly clear that the unjustly imprisoned Nisei could and did exercise their patriotism even when they refused to serve in the military in the name of civil liberties and social justice. Kuromiya’s account, initially privately circulated only to family and friends, is an invaluable and insightful addition to the Nikkei historical record.

Soldiers of Conscience

Soldiers of Conscience PDF Author: Shirley Castelnuovo
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803232888
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
The history of Japanese Americans in World War II does not record the stories of these resisters. It does not mention the War Department Special Organization, to which many of them were transferred, or the individuals who were tried and sentenced by military courts to long prison terms. The two hundred conscientious military resisters felt betrayed by the government and viewed the decision to imprison Japanese Americans as an immoral acquiescence to West Coast racism."--Pub. desc.

A Matter of Conscience

A Matter of Conscience PDF Author: Mike Mackey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Book Description
This book is a collection of essays that look at various aspects of the heart mountain draft resistance movement during world war II.

War and the Liberal Conscience

War and the Liberal Conscience PDF Author: Michael Howard
Publisher: C. HURST & CO. PUBLISHERS
ISBN: 9781850658917
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Book Description
Sir Michael Howard traces the pattern in the attitudes of liberal-minded men and women in the face of war, from Erasmus to the Americans after Vietnam, and concludes that peacemaking is a task which has to be tackled afresh every day of our lives.

The Japanese and the War

The Japanese and the War PDF Author: Michael Lucken
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780231177023
Category : Collective memory
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Japanese memories of World War II exert a powerful influence over the nation's society and culture. Michael Lucken explores how the war manifested in literature, art, film, funerary practices, and education reform, creating an idea of Japanese identity that still resonates from soap operas to the response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Japan in the American Century

Japan in the American Century PDF Author: Kenneth B. Pyle
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674989082
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

Book Description
No nation was more deeply affected by America’s rise to world power than Japan. President Franklin Roosevelt’s uncompromising policy of unconditional surrender led to the catastrophic finale of the Asia-Pacific War and the most intrusive international reconstruction of another nation in modern history. Japan in the American Century examines how Japan, with its deeply conservative heritage, responded to the imposition of a new liberal order. The price Japan paid to end the occupation was a cold war alliance with the United States that ensured America’s dominance in the region. Still traumatized by its wartime experience, Japan developed a grand strategy of dependence on U.S. security guarantees so that the nation could concentrate on economic growth. Yet from the start, despite American expectations, Japan reworked the American reforms to fit its own circumstances and cultural preferences, fashioning distinctively Japanese variations on capitalism, democracy, and social institutions. Today, with the postwar world order in retreat, Japan is undergoing a sea change in its foreign policy, returning to an activist, independent role in global politics not seen since 1945. Distilling a lifetime of work on Japan and the United States, Kenneth Pyle offers a thoughtful history of the two nations’ relationship at a time when the character of that alliance is changing. Japan has begun to pull free from the constraints established after World War II, with repercussions for its relations with the United States and its role in Asian geopolitics.

Burning Conscience: The Case Of The Hiroshima Pilot Claude Eatherly

Burning Conscience: The Case Of The Hiroshima Pilot Claude Eatherly PDF Author: Claude Eatherly
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786256924
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
A collection of correspondence between Claude Eatherly, a former air force pilot, and Günther Anders, a German philosopher. Eatherly was the pilot who gave the all-clear for the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima: an action the implications of which he had not known at the time. Returning from the mission and learning of the devastating impact of the atomic bomb Eatherly was unable to calmly accept his role. Though he was treated as a hero in the press, Eatherly was morally distraught over his actions and felt that he could not silently accept the accolades. Over the course of some 71 letters Anders and Eatherly struggled with the problem of taking moral responsibility in a time when ethics were the last thing that most people seemed to want to discuss. Part of what fascinated Anders about Eatherly – and prompted the former to contact the latter – was precisely this way in which Eatherly sought to take responsibility for something which he easily could have ignored as having been a matter of “just following orders.” Burning Conscience is a fascinating and troubling book – not simply because it provides a first-hand account of an oft untold moral story in the aftermath of World War II, but because the matters being discussed by Anders and Eatherly are as important today as they were during the lives of the correspondents.— Lib. Ship.