Asia/Pacific

The war between Japan and the Allied powers.

The industrial complex erected by the German government on a Polish army base at Auschwitz (now Oświęcim, Poland) has long been labelled a “death camp” on the strength of the great numbers of people forcibly sent there as part of extensive ethnic-cleansing programs and as laborers as World War II …

Why I Survived the A-Bomb by Akira Kohchi. Costa Mesa, CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1989, hardbound, 230 pages, photographs, $19.95, ISBN 0-939484-31-5. Why I Survived the A-Bomb is a moving memoir of Akira Kohchi's boyhood in war-time Hiroshima, and of the city's devastation on August 6, 1945. The heart …

War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John W. Dower. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986, xii, 399 pp., illustrated, $22.50, ISBN 0-394-50030-X. Following the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the American people reacted violently with fear and anger at the suddenly ominous power of the …

Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose, by Leonard A. Gordon. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Softcover. 807 pages. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $25.00. ISBN 0-231-07443-3. Srinidhi Anantharamiah was born in 1967 in Bombay, India. He holds a bachelor's degree from Rutgers …

Andrew Montgomery is the pen name of a doctoral candidate in twentieth century history. Last year he was awarded a Master's Degree in history with high honors. A research associate of a US government historical research institute, he is currently working on a doctoral dissertation on the deployment of the …

John Mueller is a professor of political science at the University of Rochester, and the author of Retreat From Doomsday (Basic Books, 1989). This essay, reprinted from the Los Angeles Times, Dec. 6, 1991, is adapted from an article in International Security journal. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor half …

Perhaps the most telling aspect of World War Two historical orthodoxy is its one-dimensional view of war criminals; by current definition these are the losers of a war. The winners decide the degree of the losers' culpability and the depth of their depravity. Apart from this victor's morality play is …

Partly for the bibliographic record, we have begun a preliminary list of some key Revisionist titles and papers spanning several subjects. Although it has been argued that revisionism is as old as history itself, here we will begin with the First World War. The first group of revisionists sought to …

In striking contrast to the situation in North America and Europe, historical revisionism enjoys widespread support and even official sanction in Japan. The growing willingness of the Japanese to reassess their nation's role in the "Greater East Asia War" received worldwide attention during the so-called "textbook controversy" of 1962, when …

The following exchange of letters was published in The Best from Yank, The Army Weekly (Cleveland: The World Publishing Co., 1945). Yank, to quote from its editors introduction to the anthology, "was written by and for enlisted men" during the Second World War; The Best from Yank draws on material …

I. Introduction We are now on the crest of a wave of interest in America's post-war occupation of Japan; many studies of the occupation have recently appeared, both in Japan and the United States.[1] Most of these works, however, are diplomatically, economically, or sociologically oriented. Studies undertaken primarily from …

On August 6, 1945, the world dramatically entered the atomic age: without either warning or precedent, an American plane dropped a single nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosion utterly destroyed more than four square miles of the city center. About about 90,000 people were killed immediately; …

Gregory P. Pavlik wrote this essay as an editor for The Freeman, published monthly by the Foundation for Economic Education (30 S. Broadway, Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533). It is reprinted from the September 1995 issue. Pavlik is also editor of the 1995 work, Forgotten Lessons: Selected Essays of John T. Flynn. …

A long-suppressed report written in June 1945 by the US Army’s Chemical Warfare Service shows that American military leaders made plans for a massive preemptive poison gas attack to accompany an invasion of Japan. The 30-page document designated “gas attack zones” on detailed maps of Tokyo and other major Japanese …