Unthinking Collaboration

Unthinking Collaboration PDF Author: A. Carly Buxton
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824891953
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Unthinking Collaboration uncovers the little-known history of Japanese Americans who weathered the years of World War II on Japanese soil. Severed from the country of their birth when the attack on Pearl Harbor abruptly halted all passenger traffic on the Pacific, these Nisei faced the years of total war as members of the Japanese populace, yet as the target of anti-American propaganda and suspicion. Whereas their white American counterparts were sequestered by Japanese authorities, placed on house arrest, or sent home on exchange ships during the war, American Nisei in Japan were left to contribute to the war effort alongside their Japanese neighbors as soldiers, cryptographers, interpreters, and in farming and manufacturing. When the dust of air raid bombings cleared, many such Nisei transitioned into roles in service of the Allied occupation and its goals of democratization and demilitarization. As censors, translators, interpreters, and administrative staff, they played integral roles in facilitating American-Japanese interaction, as well as in shaping policies and public opinion in the postwar era. Weaving archival data with oral histories, personal narratives, material culture, and fiction, Unthinking Collaboration emphasizes the heterogeneity of Japanese immigrant experiences, and sheds light on broader issues of identity, race, and performance of individuals growing up in a bicultural or multicultural context. By distancing “collaboration” from its default elision with moral judgment, and by incorporating contemporary findings from psychology and behavioral science about the power of the subconscious mind to influence human behavior, author A. Carly Buxton offers an alternative approach to history—one that posits historical subjects as deeply embedded in the realities of their physical and discursive environment. Walking beside Nisei as they navigate their everyday lives in transwar Japan, readers “un-think” long-held assumptions about the actions and decisions of individuals as represented in history. The result is an ambitious historical study that speaks to readers who are interested in broader questions of race and trust, empire-building, World War II and its legacy on both the Western and Pacific fronts, and to all who consider questions of loyalty, treason, assimilation, and collaboration.

Unthinking Collaboration

Unthinking Collaboration PDF Author: A. Carly Buxton
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824891953
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

Get Book Here

Book Description
Unthinking Collaboration uncovers the little-known history of Japanese Americans who weathered the years of World War II on Japanese soil. Severed from the country of their birth when the attack on Pearl Harbor abruptly halted all passenger traffic on the Pacific, these Nisei faced the years of total war as members of the Japanese populace, yet as the target of anti-American propaganda and suspicion. Whereas their white American counterparts were sequestered by Japanese authorities, placed on house arrest, or sent home on exchange ships during the war, American Nisei in Japan were left to contribute to the war effort alongside their Japanese neighbors as soldiers, cryptographers, interpreters, and in farming and manufacturing. When the dust of air raid bombings cleared, many such Nisei transitioned into roles in service of the Allied occupation and its goals of democratization and demilitarization. As censors, translators, interpreters, and administrative staff, they played integral roles in facilitating American-Japanese interaction, as well as in shaping policies and public opinion in the postwar era. Weaving archival data with oral histories, personal narratives, material culture, and fiction, Unthinking Collaboration emphasizes the heterogeneity of Japanese immigrant experiences, and sheds light on broader issues of identity, race, and performance of individuals growing up in a bicultural or multicultural context. By distancing “collaboration” from its default elision with moral judgment, and by incorporating contemporary findings from psychology and behavioral science about the power of the subconscious mind to influence human behavior, author A. Carly Buxton offers an alternative approach to history—one that posits historical subjects as deeply embedded in the realities of their physical and discursive environment. Walking beside Nisei as they navigate their everyday lives in transwar Japan, readers “un-think” long-held assumptions about the actions and decisions of individuals as represented in history. The result is an ambitious historical study that speaks to readers who are interested in broader questions of race and trust, empire-building, World War II and its legacy on both the Western and Pacific fronts, and to all who consider questions of loyalty, treason, assimilation, and collaboration.

Taste of War

Taste of War PDF Author: Lizzie Collingham
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143123017
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 666

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Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book of 2012 Food, and in particular the lack of it, was central to the experience of World War II. In this richly detailed and engaging history, Lizzie Collingham establishes how control of food and its production is crucial to total war. How were the imperial ambitions of Germany and Japan - ambitions which sowed the seeds of war - informed by a desire for self-sufficiency in food production? How was the outcome of the war affected by the decisions that the Allies and the Axis took over how to feed their troops? And how did the distinctive ideologies of the different combatant countries determine their attitudes towards those they had to feed? Tracing the interaction between food and strategy, on both the military and home fronts, this gripping, original account demonstrates how the issue of access to food was a driving force within Nazi policy and contributed to the decision to murder hundreds of thousands of 'useless eaters' in Europe. Focusing on both the winners and losers in the battle for food, The Taste of War brings to light the striking fact that war-related hunger and famine was not only caused by Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, but was also the result of Allied mismanagement and neglect, particularly in India, Africa and China. American dominance both during and after the war was not only a result of the United States' immense industrial production but also of its abundance of food. This book traces the establishment of a global pattern of food production and distribution and shows how the war subsequently promoted the pervasive influence of American food habits and tastes in the post-war world. A work of great scope, The Taste of War connects the broad sweep of history to its intimate impact upon the lives of individuals.

Shadow Child

Shadow Child PDF Author: Rahna Reiko Rizzuto
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN: 1538711443
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
For fans of Tayari Jones and Ruth Ozeki, from National Book Critics Circle Award finalist Rizzuto comes a haunting and suspenseful literary tale set in 1970s New York City and World War II-era Japan, about three strong women, the dangerous ties of family and identity, and the long shadow our histories can cast. Twin sisters Hana and Kei grew up in a tiny Hawaiian town in the 1950s and 1960s, so close they shared the same nickname. Raised in dreamlike isolation by their loving but unstable mother, they were fatherless, mixed-race, and utterly inseparable, devoted to one another. But when their cherished threesome with Mama is broken, and then further shattered by a violent, nearly fatal betrayal that neither young woman can forgive, it seems their bond may be severed forever--until, six years later, Kei arrives on Hana's lonely Manhattan doorstep with a secret that will change everything. Told in interwoven narratives that glide seamlessly between the gritty streets of New York, the lush and dangerous landscape of Hawaii, and the horrors of the Japanese internment camps and the bombing of Hiroshima, Shadow Child is set against an epic sweep of history. Volcanos, tsunamis, abandonment, racism, and war form the urgent, unforgettable backdrop of this intimate, evocative, and deeply moving story of motherhood, sisterhood, and second chances.

Between Two Empires

Between Two Empires PDF Author: Eiichiro Azuma
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199882800
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
The incarceration of Japanese Americans has been discredited as a major blemish in American democratic tradition. Accompanying this view is the assumption that the ethnic group help unqualified allegiance to the United States. Between Two Empires probes the complexities of prewar Japanese America to show how Japanese in America held an in-between space between the United States and the empire of Japan, between American nationality and Japanese racial identity.

Asian American Literature in Transition, 1965–1996: Volume 3

Asian American Literature in Transition, 1965–1996: Volume 3 PDF Author: Asha Nadkarni
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108922317
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
Asian American Literature in Transition Volume Three: 1965–1996 offers a multidisciplinary perspective on the political and aesthetic stakes of what is now recognizable as an Asian American literary canon. It takes as its central focus the connections among literature, history, and migration, exploring how the formation of Asian American literary studies is necessarily inflected by demographic changes, student activism, the institutionalization of Asian American studies within the U.S. academy, U.S foreign policy (specifically the Cold War and conflicts in Southeast Asia), and the emergence of 'diaspora' and 'transnationalism' as important critical frames. Moving through sections that consider migration and identity, aesthetics and politics, canon formation, and transnationalism and diaspora, this volume tracks predominant themes within Asian American literature to interrogate an ever-evolving field. It features nineteen original essays by leading scholars, and is accessible to beginners in the field and more advanced researchers alike.

Uprooted

Uprooted PDF Author: Albert Marrin
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 0553509381
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year A Booklist Editor's Choice On the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor comes a harrowing and enlightening look at the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II— from National Book Award finalist Albert Marrin Just seventy-five years ago, the American government did something that most would consider unthinkable today: it rounded up over 100,000 of its own citizens based on nothing more than their ancestry and, suspicious of their loyalty, kept them in concentration camps for the better part of four years. How could this have happened? Uprooted takes a close look at the history of racism in America and carefully follows the treacherous path that led one of our nation’s most beloved presidents to make this decision. Meanwhile, it also illuminates the history of Japan and its own struggles with racism and xenophobia, which led to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, ultimately tying the two countries together. Today, America is still filled with racial tension, and personal liberty in wartime is as relevant a topic as ever. Moving and impactful, National Book Award finalist Albert Marrin’s sobering exploration of this monumental injustice shines as bright a light on current events as it does on the past.

Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless

Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless PDF Author: Michael R. Jin
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503628329
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
From the 1920s to the eve of the Pacific War in 1941, more than 50,000 young second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) embarked on transpacific journeys to the Japanese Empire, putting an ocean between themselves and pervasive anti-Asian racism in the American West. Born U.S. citizens but treated as unwelcome aliens, this contingent of Japanese Americans—one in four U.S.-born Nisei—came in search of better lives but instead encountered a world shaped by increasingly volatile relations between the U.S. and Japan. Based on transnational and bilingual research in the United States and Japan, Michael R. Jin recuperates the stories of this unique group of American emigrants at the crossroads of U.S. and Japanese empire. From the Jim Crow American West to the Japanese colonial frontiers in Asia, and from internment camps in America to Hiroshima on the eve of the atomic bombing, these individuals redefined ideas about home, identity, citizenship, and belonging as they encountered multiple social realities on both sides of the Pacific. Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless examines the deeply intertwined histories of Asian exclusion in the United States, Japanese colonialism in Asia, and volatile geopolitical changes in the Pacific world that converged in the lives of Japanese American migrants.

Honored and Dishonored Guests

Honored and Dishonored Guests PDF Author: Puck W. Brecher
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684175747
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
"The brutality and racial hatred exhibited by Japan’s military during the Pacific War piqued outrage in the West and fanned resentments throughout Asia. Public understanding of Japan’s wartime atrocities, however, often fails to differentiate the racial agendas of its military and government elites from the racial values held by the Japanese people. While not denying brutalities committed by the Japanese military, Honored and Dishonored Guests overturns these standard narratives and demonstrates rather that Japan’s racial attitudes during wartime are more accurately discerned in the treatment of Western civilians living in Japan than the experiences of enemy POWs. The book chronicles Western communities in wartime Japan, using this body of experiences to reconsider allegations of Japanese racism and racial hatred. Its bold thesis is borne out by a broad mosaic of stories from dozens of foreign families and individuals who variously endured police harassment, suspicion, relocation, starvation, denaturalization, internment, and torture, as well as extraordinary acts of charity. The book’s account of stranded Westerners—from Tokyo, Yokohama, and Kobe to the mountain resorts of Karuizawa and Hakone—yields a unique interpretation of race relations and wartime life in Japan."

Orientations

Orientations PDF Author: Kandice Chuh
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822327394
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
DIVA critical examination of what constitutes the varied positions grouped together as Asian American, seen in relation to both American and transnational forces./div

Japanese Americans

Japanese Americans PDF Author: Jonathan H. X. Lee
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 144084190X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive story of the complicated and rich story of the Japanese American experience-from immigration, to discrimination, to adaptation, achievement and contributions to the American mosaic. Japanese Americans: The History and Culture of a People highlights the enormous contributions of Japanese Americans in history, civil rights, politics, economic development, arts, literature, film, popular culture, sports, and religious landscapes. It not only provides context to important events in Japanese American history and in-depth information about the lives and backgrounds of well-known Japanese Americans, but also captures the essence of everyday life for Japanese Americans as they have adjusted their identities, established communities, and interacted with other ethnic groups. This innovative volume will become the standard resource for exploring why the Japanese came to the USA more than 130 years ago, where they settled, and what experiences played a role in forming the distinctive Japanese American identity.