Asian History Commons^™

The United States And The Origins Of The Second World War, Kerry Irish

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

This brief but detailed narrative of the origins of World War II evaluates the claims by both Axis and Allied powers that they were fighting a just war.

Enduring The Unendurable: Examining Cultural Trauma In Postwar Japanese Film, Joseph Worstall

Capstone Showcase

WWII and its aftermath fundamentally changed the collective consciousness of the Japanese people. For the first time in history, and at a tremendous cost, the country was vanquished. By the end of the war, sixty-seven cities had been firebombed, three million people had been killed, and millions more found themselves suffering from poverty, hunger, and homelessness. Most controversially, the USAAF dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—two acts which have been so universally condemned that they’ve never been repeated. For the next seven years, the U.S. armed forces occupied the country and charted its course, effectively operating …

The Casualties Of U.S. Grand Strategy: Korean Exclusion From The San Francisco Peace Treaty And The Pacific Pact, Syrus Jin

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

From August 1945 to September 1951, the United States had a unique opportunity to define and frame how it would approach its foreign relations in the Asia-Pacific region. As the dominant power in the Pacific after World War II and claiming direct authority over vanquished Japan, the United States had the liberty to design its own post-war vision for the entire region. Until 1951, American State Department diplomats and government planners, attempted—ultimately unsuccessfully—to harmonize the competing motivations of lingering World War II multilateralist idealism and Cold War geopolitics in a postcolonial, postwar world. This thesis examines U.S.-Korean relations in context …

Battlefield Mementos Care Of And Restitution Of Japanese 'Good Luck Flags' And Cultural Heritage Objects From War In Museum Collections, Andrew Armstrong

Master's Projects and Capstones

In World War II one of the most common objects found on the battlefield in the Pacific Theater was that of the Japanese Yosegaki Hinomaru or “Good Luck Flag” These objects were some of the most looted items from the war and soon found themselves in the possession of veterans of World War II and their families. In the past few decades as these veterans pass, increasing numbers of veterans and their families attempt to return the flags to Japan, or museums in the United States, believing they are the most suited to care for such objects. However this presents …

Korean Soil, Japanese Faces, American Empire: Repatriation And The Korean War Experiences Of Japanese Laborers And Japanese American Soldiers, Jaclyn S. Knitter

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper compares the Korean War experiences of two ethnically Japanese groups that served the US military on the Korean Peninsula – second-generation Japanese American (Nisei) soldiers in the US Military Intelligence Service (MIS) and Japanese laborers – to demonstrate the salience of citizenship in the post-1945 Asia Pacific. In particular, this research addresses the question, “how did the politics of repatriation differentiate the experiences of Japanese Americans from those of Japanese nationals, both serving the US military during the Korean War?” This service ranged from (Nisei) American repatriation interrogators of Korean and Chinese civilians, to prisoners of war (POWs), …

The Amoy China Mission Of The Reformed Church In America, 1937-1951, Jame E. Bell

Grand Valley Journal of History

This article analyzes how successful the Reformed missionaries operating in Amoy and the surrounding region were in accomplishing their objectives of evangelism and the establishment of an indigenous Chinese Church from 1937 to 1951. Through a combination of evangelism, education, and medical work the missionaries sought to spread their faith to the lay population of Fujian province. The missionaries’ work became much more difficult in the late 1930s with the Japanese invasion, World War II, and the eventual Communist takeover. In spite of this, their efforts, in conjunction with other missions, built a dedicated Chinese Christian community that proved hardy …

Responding To “Comfort Woman” Denial At Central Washington University, Mark J. Auslander, Chong Eun Ahn

Anthropology and Museum Studies Faculty Scholarship

No abstract available.

Ms-173: Leo Jarboe Papers, Abby M. Rolland

All Finding Aids

This collection consists of many, diverse documents, in both English and Japanese, about the USS Callaghan (DD-792) and other ships, newspaper articles, letters, recollections, and other personal items from Kaoru Hasegawa and Leo Jarboe, reunion and exchange program information, material about the second USS Callaghan (DDG-994), images, and veterans information.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our collections can be found on our website https://www.gettysburg.edu/special-collections/collections/.

The Evoluion Of Pacific War Cinema, Dylan J. Eldridge

History Undergraduate Theses

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th 1942, the United States became involved in World War II. Over the last seventy years film makers have attempted to chronicle the events of this war. As society changed and grew so did the interpretations of the Pacific War. Today we are left with four distinct eras of Pacific War cinema.

Gaman: How Japanese Americans Persevered In The Face Of Racial Injustice 1941-1988, Derek James Koehler

History

A look at the racial injustice of Japanese Americans during WWII including the internment camps and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

我爸爸，中国的朋友 / My Father, A Friend To China, Elizabeth Myers Macinata, Josephine B. Howe, Erik Van Ingen Schenau

College of Arts and Sciences Poster Presentations

This short talk introduces the life of Daniel F. Myers (1889-1973) and his experience in China from 1929 to 1944. Myers was an American automotive engineer selected initially by a representative authorized by Marshal Zhang Xueliang to set up and engineer a truck manufacturing factory in Mukden (Shenyang), Manchuria (Dongbei, North-East China). Although Shenyang fell to the Japanese in 1931, Myers stayed until 1933. Throughout the 1930s, Myers continued to work for the Chinese, first as technical advisor and service manager of Cathay Motors, then as Technical Advisor, regarding the development of automotive and other industries, to the Trust Department …

A War Within World War Ii: Racialized Masculinity And Citizenship Of Japanese Americans And Korean Colonial Subjects, Jeffrey Yamashita

History Honors Projects

Even though the Pacific Ocean stands as an aqueous wall between Japan and the United States, World War II exposed the shared relationship between these two nations in their utilization of racial minority populations for the war effort. I interrogate the intersections of gender identity, race, and citizenship of Japanese Americans and Korean colonial subjects in the Japanese Empire during World War II. Specifically, I compare Japanese Americans—soldiers of the segregated Japanese American100^th/442^nd Regimental Combat Team, draft resisters from Heart Mountain, and prisoners of war—with Korean colonial subjects—soldiers who fought for the Imperial Japanese Army— and hope …

Pibun Songkram's Role In Thailand's Entry Into The Pacific War, Lukasz Staniczek

Honors Theses

On January 25, 1942, Thailand followed the Japanese example and declared war on the United States and Great Britain. The reasons for Thailand's entry into the war remain controversial. The extent and timing of Japanese pressure and the genesis of the Thai commitment to the Axis side are in dispute. There is not a generally accepted view on why Thailand declared war; however, the issue has been thus far analyzed principally in consideration of Thai national interest. This paper provides a different approach by focusing on the main decision-maker: Thai Prime Minister Pibun Songkram, as the key to solve the …