Remembering Hiroshima

Remembering Hiroshima

Author: Francis X. Winters

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-05

Total Pages: 379

ISBN-13: 1351904515

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Taking the example of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima as a case in point, Francis Winters analyzes the ethics of warfare, demonstrating how the examples of World War II hold relevance to the contemporary world. The volume examines the ethics of Japan's refusal to surrender and seeks to balance the verdict of responsibility for Hiroshima by extending the analysis to the ethics of the end of the war. It also illustrates how two displays of American naval and munitions power had an impact on Japan comparable to the September 11, 2001 assaults on America. Linking his study with two contemporary films on Iwo Jima, the author illustrates how the 1940s were an era of costly triumph that can still inspire national pride in American citizens. Unique in concept and approach, this volume will have relevance to scholars interested in both historical and contemporary politics, US-Japan relations as well as foreign policy and the ethics of warfare.


Flyboys

Flyboys

Author: James Bradley

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2003-09-30

Total Pages: 523

ISBN-13: 0759508321

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Over the remote Pacific island of Chichi Jima, nine American flyers-Navy and Marine pilots sent to bomb Japanese communications towers there-were shot down. Flyboys, a story of war and horror but also of friendship and honor, tells the story of those men. Over the remote Pacific island of Chichi Jima, nine American flyers-Navy and Marine pilots sent to bomb Japanese communications towers there-were shot down. One of those nine was miraculously rescued by a U.S. Navy submarine. The others were captured by Japanese soldiers on Chichi Jima and held prisoner. Then they disappeared. When the war was over, the American government, along with the Japanese, covered up everything that had happened on Chichi Jima. The records of a top-secret military tribunal were sealed, the lives of the eight Flyboys were erased, and the parents, brothers, sisters, and sweethearts they left behind were left to wonder. Flyboys reveals for the first time ever the extraordinary story of those men. Bradley's quest for the truth took him from dusty attics in American small towns, to untapped government archives containing classified documents, to the heart of Japan, and finally to Chichi Jima itself. What he discovered was a mystery that dated back far before World War II-back 150 years, to America's westward expansion and Japan's first confrontation with the western world. Bradley brings into vivid focus these brave young men who went to war for their country, and through their lives he also tells the larger story of two nations in a hellish war. With no easy moralizing, Bradley presents history in all its savage complexity, including the Japanese warrior mentality that fostered inhuman brutality and the U.S. military strategy that justified attacks on millions of civilians. And, after almost sixty years of mystery, Bradley finally reveals the fate of the eight American Flyboys, all of whom would ultimately face a moment and a decision that few of us can even imagine. Flyboys is a story of war and horror but also of friendship and honor. It is about how we die, and how we live-including the tale of the Flyboy who escaped capture, a young Navy pilot named George H. W. Bush who would one day become president of the United States. A masterpiece of historical narrative, Flyboys will change forever our understanding of the Pacific war and the very things we fight for.


The New Middle Kingdom

The New Middle Kingdom

Author: Kendall Johnson

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2017-04-25

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1421422514

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Examining the influential accounts of Westerners at the center of early US cultural development abroad, Johnson conceives a romance of free trade with China as a quest narrative of national accomplishment in a global marketplace. Drawing from a richly descriptive cross-cultural archive, the book presents key moments in early relations among the twenty-first century's superpowers through memoirs, biographies, epistolary journals, magazines, book reviews, fiction and poetry by Melville, Twain, Whitman, and others, travel narratives, and treaties, as well as maps and engraved illustrations. Paying close attention to figurative language, generic forms, and the social dynamics of print cultural production and circulation, Johnson shows how authors, editors, and printers appealed to multiple overlapping audiences in China, in the United States, and throughout the world.


The Imperial Cruise

The Imperial Cruise

Author: James Bradley

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2009-11-24

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 0316039667

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In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in history to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. Roosevelt's glamorous twenty-one year old daughter Alice served as mistress of the cruise, which included senators and congressmen. On this trip, Taft concluded secret agreements in Roosevelt's name. In 2005, a century later, James Bradley traveled in the wake of Roosevelt's mission and discovered what had transpired in Honolulu, Tokyo, Manila, Beijing and Seoul. In 1905, Roosevelt was bully-confident and made secret agreements that he though would secure America's westward push into the Pacific. Instead, he lit the long fuse on the Asian firecrackers that would singe America's hands for a century.


This Rebellious House

This Rebellious House

Author: Steven J. Keillor

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 1996-10-03

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780830818778

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Examining United States history from Columbus to Clinton, Steven J. Keillor disabuses us of the notion that our nation has ever been a genuinely "Christian" one. He focuses on various political, economic and cultural policies or events (the Civil War, westward expansion) that are now often cited to "disprove" or "debunk" Christianity.


The Making of Modern Japan

The Making of Modern Japan

Author: Marius B. Jansen

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2002-10-15

Total Pages: 932

ISBN-13: 0674503996

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Magisterial in vision, sweeping in scope, this monumental work presents a seamless account of Japanese society during the modern era, from 1600 to the present. A distillation of more than fifty years’ engagement with Japan and its history, it is the crowning work of our leading interpreter of the modern Japanese experience. Since 1600 Japan has undergone three periods of wrenching social and institutional change, following the imposition of hegemonic order on feudal society by the Tokugawa shogun; the opening of Japan’s ports by Commodore Perry; and defeat in World War II. The Making of Modern Japan charts these changes: the social engineering begun with the founding of the shogunate in 1600, the emergence of village and castle towns with consumer populations, and the diffusion of samurai values in the culture. Marius Jansen covers the making of the modern state, the adaptation of Western models, growing international trade, the broadening opportunity in Japanese society with industrialization, and the postwar occupation reforms imposed by General MacArthur. Throughout, the book gives voice to the individuals and views that have shaped the actions and beliefs of the Japanese, with writers, artists, and thinkers, as well as political leaders given their due. The story this book tells, though marked by profound changes, is also one of remarkable consistency, in which continuities outweigh upheavals in the development of society, and successive waves of outside influence have only served to strengthen a sense of what is unique and native to Japanese experience. The Making of Modern Japan takes us to the core of this experience as it illuminates one of the contemporary world’s most compelling transformations.


Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America

Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America

Author: Eric Jay Dolin

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2008-07-17

Total Pages: 512

ISBN-13: 0393066665

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A Los Angeles Times Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007 A Boston Globe Best Non-Fiction Book of 2007 Amazon.com Editors pick as one of the 10 best history books of 2007 Winner of the 2007 John Lyman Award for U. S. Maritime History, given by the North American Society for Oceanic History "The best history of American whaling to come along in a generation." —Nathaniel Philbrick The epic history of the "iron men in wooden boats" who built an industrial empire through the pursuit of whales. "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme," Herman Melville proclaimed, and this absorbing history demonstrates that few things can capture the sheer danger and desperation of men on the deep sea as dramatically as whaling. Eric Jay Dolin begins his vivid narrative with Captain John Smith's botched whaling expedition to the New World in 1614. He then chronicles the rise of a burgeoning industry—from its brutal struggles during the Revolutionary period to its golden age in the mid-1800s when a fleet of more than 700 ships hunted the seas and American whale oil lit the world, to its decline as the twentieth century dawned. This sweeping social and economic history provides rich and often fantastic accounts of the men themselves, who mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, scrimshawed, and recorded their experiences in journals and memoirs. Containing a wealth of naturalistic detail on whales, Leviathan is the most original and stirring history of American whaling in many decades.


American Political and Cultural Perspectives on Japan

American Political and Cultural Perspectives on Japan

Author: John H. Miller

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2014-04-02

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 0739189131

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American Political and Cultural Perspectives on Japan: From Perry to Obama is an historical survey of how Americans have viewed Japan during the past 160 years. It encompasses the diplomatic, political, economic, social, and cultural dimensions of the relationship, with an emphasis on changing American images, myths, and stereotypes of Japan and the Japanese. It begins with the American “opening” of Japan in the 1850s and 1860s. Subsequent chapters explore American attitudes toward Japan during the Gilded Age, the early 1900s, the 1920s, the 1930s, and the Pacific War. The second part of the book, organized round the theme of the postwar Japanese-American partnership, covers the Occupation, the 1960s, the troubled 1970s and1980s, and the post-Cold War decades down to the Obama presidency. The conclusion offers some predictions about how Americans are likely to view Japan in the future.


The Opening of Japan, 1853–1855

The Opening of Japan, 1853–1855

Author: William McOmie

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 9004213627

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This study provides a picture of the competition and cooperation, distrust and open hostility of the US, Britain, Holland and Russia involved in their joint enterprise in Japan. It documents the plans and outcomes of each of the four powers’ negotiations with Japan. At the same time it provides a fascinating commentary on the way business was done by the Japanese with each country and its representatives.