Print & E-books [RU restricted]
General and Transnational
Divided Memories: History Textbooks and War in Asia is an essay by Daniel Sneider about the treatment of history by Japanese textbooks that tend to dryly present a chronology of historical facts, with little interpretive narrative added. Sneider was one of the authors of the Divided Memories and Reconciliation project involving an in-depth comparison of history textbooks used in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and the United States.
War and Media: A View from Asia is a course guide created for the course of the same name, taught previously by Professor Chie Ikeya.
Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War by
With more than 30 primary documents, including proposals, memoranda, decrypted messages, and imperial conferences, Pearl Harbor and the Coming of the Pacific War explores how and why the United States and Japan went to war in 1941.
Call Number: Robeson D742.J3I76 1999
Japan
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
Future Memory (3D portrait of the Museum)
Kyoto Museum of World Peace, Ritsumeikan University. Click on "Web exhibition."
Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims
Godzilla [streaming video] directed by Ichiro Honda, 1954 [Rutgers restricted]
Okinawa: the Afterburn [streaming video] directed by John Junkerman, 2015 [Rutgers restricted]
History Wars: An Oral History by
From the "taming of the West" to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the portrayal of the past has become a battleground at the heart of American politics. What kind of history Americans should read, see, or fund is no longer merely a matter of professional interest to teachers, historians, and museum curators. Everywhere now, history is increasingly being held hostage, but to what end and why? InHistory Wars, eight prominent historians consider the angry swirl of emotions that now surrounds public memory. Included are trenchant essays by Paul Boyer, John W. Dower, Tom Engelhardt, Richard H. Kohn, Edward Linenthal, Micahel S. Sherry, Marilyn B. Young, and Mike Wallace.
Call Number: Dana, Robeson D811.A2C62 1992ISBN: 080504387X
Yasukuni, the War Dead, and the Struggle for Japan's Past by
Located in the heart of Tokyo, Yasukuni is a controversial shrine dedicated to the Japanese war dead. It holds the remains of twelve convicted and two suspected Class A war criminals, and its museum features an account of Japan's involvement in the Second World War that many would describe as revisionist. Visits to Yasukuni by cabinet members often spark protests in Japan and abroad, especially in China, Korea, and Taiwan, and the shrine's existence continues to foster a sense of mistrust between the Chinese and Japanese governments. As the first authoritative volume in English on Yasukuni, John Breen has edited a book that neither commends nor condemns the monument. Instead it renders more complex an issue that, in the media at least, has been portrayed in starkly simplistic terms. Breen presents authoritative yet divergent views on the shrine and its place in postwar Japanese diplomacy, ideology, and history. Critical contributions are written by leading Yasukuni and anti-Yasukuni Japanese intellectuals, as well as Chinese and Western commentators. Yasukuni is a provocative symbol of Japan's nationalist past. With this book, English-speaking readers can now access a full portrait of the shrine's significance and its unique position in the highly contested history of Japan.
Call Number: Alexander BL2225.T62Y3727 2008ISBN: 9780231700429
China
The Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders
USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive - Nanjing Massacre
Yale University Library - Nanking Massacre Project: Photographs and FIlms
The Rape of Nanking [streaming video] directed by Sammy Jackson, 1999 [Rutgers restricted]
The Good Man of Nanking: the diaries of John Rabe by
The personal journals of German businessman John Rabe describe the 1937 Japanese siege of Nanking and his efforts to protect the Chinese from the massacre that followed.
Call Number: Alexander DS796.N2R3313 1998 & RU-onlineISBN: 037540211X
The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography by
The Rape of Nanjing was one of the worst atrocities committed during World War II. On December 13, 1937, the Japanese army captured the city of Nanjing, then the capital of wartime China. According to the International Military Tribunal, during the ensuing massacre 20,000 Chinese men of military age were killed and approximately 20,000 cases of rape occurred; in all, the total number of people killed in and around the city of Nanjing was about 200,000. This carefully researched, intelligent collection of original essays considers the post-World War II treatment in China of the Nanjing Massacre and Japan. The book examines how the issue has developed as a political and diplomatic controversy in the five decades since World War II. In his introduction, Joshua A. Fogel raises the significant moral and historiographical issues that frame the other essays. Mark Eykholt then provides an account of postwar Chinese responses to the massacre. Takashi Yoshida assesses the attempts to downplay the incident and its effects, providing a revealing analysis of Japanese debates over Japan's role in the world and the continuing ambivalence of many Japanese toward their defeat in World War II. In the concluding essay, Daqing Yang widens the scope of the discussion by comparing the Nanjing historiographic debates to similar debates in Germany over the nature of the Holocaust.
Call Number: Alexander DS796.N2N346 2000ISBN: 9780520220072
The Nanking Atrocity, 1937-1938: Complicating the Picture by
First published in 2007, The Nanking Atrocity remains an essential resource for understanding the massacre committed by Japanese soldiers in Nanking, China during the winter of 1937-38. Through a series of deeply considered and empirically rigorous essays, it provides a far more complex and nuanced perspective than that found in works like Iris Chang's bestselling The Rape of Nanking. It systematically reveals the flaws and exaggerations in Chang's book while deflating the self-exculpatory narratives that persist in Japan even today. This second edition includes an extensive new introduction by the editor reflecting on the historiographical developments of the last decade, in advance of the 80th anniversary of the massacre.
Call Number: RU-onlineISBN: 9781785335976Publication Date: 2017
The Rape of Nanking: the forgotten holocaust of World War II by
The New York Times bestselling account of one of history's most brutal -- and forgotten -- massacres, when the Japanese army destroyed China's capital city on the eve of World War II In December 1937, one of the most horrific atrocities in the long annals of wartime barbarity occurred. The Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking (what was then the capital of China), and within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians and soldiers were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered. In this seminal work, Iris Chang, whose own grandparents barely escaped the massacre, tells this history from three perspectives: that of the Japanese soldiers, that of the Chinese, and that of a group of Westerners who refused to abandon the city and created a safety zone, which saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Drawing on extensive interviews with survivors and documents brought to light for the first time, Iris Chang's classic book is the definitive history of this horrifying episode. "Chang vividly, methodically, records what happened, piecing together the abundant eyewitness reports into an undeniable tapestry of horror." - Adam Hochschild, Salon
Call Number: RU-onlineISBN: 0465068367Publication Date: 2012
They Were in Nanjing: The Nanjing Massacre Witnessed by American and British Nationals by
The Nanjing Massacre, which took place after the Japanese attacked and captured Nanjing in December 1937, shocked the world with the magnitude of its atrocities. With newly uncovered eye-witness material left behind by American and British journalists, missionaries, and diplomats, They Were in Nanjing takes the readers back in time to revisit the event and live through those horror-filled days. The first-hand accounts range from English media reports, personal records, missionary and Christian organization documents, to American and British diplomatic and military documents. The research yields new discoveries and presents issues that have previously not been adequately dealt with, for instance, Japanese attacks on American citizens, and losses and damage to American and British properties as a result of Japanese atrocities. No other book on the Nanjing Massacre presents the first-hand foreign perspective so thoroughly or consistently.
Call Number: RU-online & Alexander DS797.56.N365L8 2004ISBN: 9789622096851
Korea
Habitual Sadness [streaming video] directed by Byun Young-Joo, 1999 [Rutgers restricted]
Shusenjo: Comfort Women and Japan's War on History [Streaming video] directed by Miki Dezaki, 2019 [Rutgers restricted]
The Transnational Redress Movement for the Victims of Japanese Military Sexual Slavery by
This book examines the redress movement for the victims of Japanese military sexual slavery in South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. comprehensively. The Japanese military forcefully mobilized about 80,000-200,000 Asian women to Japanese military brothels and forced them into sexual slavery during the Asian-Pacific War (1932-1945). Korean "comfort women" are believed to have been the largest group because of Korea's colonial status. The redress movement for the victims started in South Korea in the late 1980s. The emergence of Korean "comfort women" to society to tell the truth beginning in 1991 and the discovery of Japanese historical documents, proving the responsibility of the Japanese military for establishing and operating military brothels by a Japanese historian in 1992 accelerated the redress movement for the victims. The movement has received strong support from UN human rights bodies, the U.S. and other Western countries. It has also greatly contributed to raising people's consciousness of sexual violence against women at war. However, the Japanese government has not made a sincere apology and compensation to the victims to bring justice to the victims.
Call Number: RU-onlineISBN: 311063970XPublication Date: 2020
Embodied Reckonings: "Comfort Women," Performance, and Transpacific Redress by
Embodied Reckonings examines the political and cultural aspects of contemporary performances that have grappled with the history of the "comfort women," the Japanese military's euphemism for the sexual enslavement of girls and young women--mostly Korean--in the years before and during World War II. Long silent, in the early 1990s these women and their supporters initiated varied performance practices--protests, tribunals, theater, and memorial-building projects--to demand justice for those affected by state-sponsored acts of violence. The book provides a critical framework for understanding how actions designed to bring about redress can move from the political and legal aspects of this concept to its cultural and social possibilities. Based on extensive archival and ethnographic research, the study argues for the central role of performance in how Korean survivors, activists, and artists have redressed the histories--and erasures--of this sexual violence. Merging cultural studies and performance theory with a transnational, feminist analysis, the book illuminates the actions of ordinary people, thus offering ways of reconceptualizing legal and political understandings of redress that tend to concentrate on institutionalized forms of state-based remediation.
Call Number: RU-onlineISBN: 9780472130733Publication Date: 2018
Ianfu-The Comfort Women of the Japanese Imperial Army of the Pacific War by
Three former comfort women, Koreans, broke their silence in 1991 and sued the Japanese government and requested a formal apology and reparations. Their lawsuit made the international community aware of the ianfu issue, which had been concealed for half a century.
Call Number: Douglass D810.C698S25 2000ISBN: 0773478256
United States
Exhibiting the Enola Gay from the Smithsonian Institution Archives is an essay about the controversies regarding an exhibition to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the atomic bomb in 1995.
Pearl Harbor [streaming video] created by Hugh Morgan, 2004 [Rutgers restricted] examines how the Japanese employed new technology to surprise the United States at Pearl Harbor during World War II.
Pearl Harbor National Memorial, a unit of the National Park Service, offers visitors a place to connect with national, international, and personal histories of World War II in the Pacific, ranging from events leading to the December 7, 1941 attack on Oʻahu, to continued peace and reconciliation.
Rutgers Oral History Archives - Special Topics present interviews with Rutgers veterans who served in the World War II. Check out "Pearl Harbor Veterans," "Battle of Guadalcanal, etc. To read the interview transcripts, click on veteran's names.
- History Wars: the Enola Gay and other battles for the American past by
From the "taming of the West" to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the portrayal of the past has become a battleground at the heart of American politics. What kind of history Americans should read, see, or fund is no longer merely a matter of professional interest to teachers, historians, and museum curators. Everywhere now, history is increasingly being held hostage, but to what end and why? InHistory Wars, eight prominent historians consider the angry swirl of emotions that now surrounds public memory. Included are trenchant essays by Paul Boyer, John W. Dower, Tom Engelhardt, Richard H. Kohn, Edward Linenthal, Micahel S. Sherry, Marilyn B. Young, and Mike Wallace.
Call Number: Alexander E840.4.H57 1996ISBN: 080504387XPublication Date: 1996-08-15
The United States Navy in World War II: From Pearl Harbor to Okinawa by
A comprehensive overview of the strategy, operations, and vessels of the United States Navy from 1941 to 1945. Although slowly building its navy while neutral during the early years of World War II, the US was struck a serious blow when its battleships, the lynchpin of US naval doctrine, were the target of the dramatic attack at Pearl Harbor. In the Pacific Theater, the US was thereafter locked into a head to head struggle with the impressive Imperial Japanese Navy, fighting a series of major battles in the Coral Sea, at Midway, the Philippine Sea, Leyte Gulf, and Okinawa in the struggle for supremacy over Japan. Having avoided the decisive defeat sought by the IJN, the US increased industrial production and by the end of the war, the US Navy was larger than any other in the world. Meanwhile in the west, the US Navy operated on a second front, supporting landings in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, and in 1944 played a significant part in the D-Day landings, the largest and most complex amphibious operation of all time. Written by an acknowledged expert and incorporating extensive illustrations including photographs, maps, and color artwork, this book offers a detailed look at the strategy, operations, and vessels of the US Navy in World War II.
Call Number: RU-onlneISBN: 9781472848048Publication Date: 2021
Japanese American Internment
The Executive Order 9066, signed by the President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, authorized what was to become the mass forced removal and incarceration of all Japanese Americans on the West Coast. More information on the Executive Order 9066, visit this entry on Densho Encyclopedia.
WEBSITES:
Densho is a comprehensive online non-profit organization documenting oral histories from Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II. This evolved into a mission to educate, preserve, collaborate and inspire action for equity. The "Collections and Research" tab includes personal history videos; the Sites of Shame, points to maps of internment camps, and Names Registry lists names of individuals that experienced incarceration.
Japanese American Camp Newspapers collection from the Library of Congress showcases the material by the Japanese-Americans interned at assembly centers and relocation centers around the country during World War II. Tthese newspapers provide a unique look into the daily lives of the people who were held in these camps. They include articles written in English and Japanese, typed, handwritten and drawn. They advertise community events, provide logistical information about the camps and relocation, report on news from the community, and include editorials.
Japanese American National Museum is the national repository of Japanese American history, JANM creates groundbreaking historical and arts exhibitions, educational public programs, award-winning documentaries, and innovative curriculum that illuminate the stories and the rich cultural heritage of people of Japanese ancestry in the United States.
Japanese-Americans Research Guide presents the background of the incarceration of people of Japanese descent during the World War II.