This work is an account of the China edition of the U.S. Army's daily newspaper, The Stars and Stripes, which was geared toward service personnel in the China Theater of Operations at the end of World War II and published for nearly a year. The book addresses Japanese repatriations, war-crime trials, the Chinese civil war and the rise of Communism as covered by the paper, and the paper's role in strengthening U.S. troop morale.
A narrative account of the Doolittle Raids of World War II traces the daring Raiders attack on mainland Japan, the fate of the crews who survived the mission, and the international war crimes trials that defined Japanese-American relations and changed legal history.
Biotechnology crop production area increased from 1.7 million hectares to 148 million hectares worldwide between 1996 to 2010. While genetically modified food is a contentious issue, the debates are usually limited to health and environmental concerns, ignoring the broader questions of social control that arise when food production methods become corporate-owned intellectual property. Drawing on legal documents and dozens of interviews with farmers and other stakeholders, Corporate Crops covers four case studies based around litigation between biotechnology corporations and farmers. Pechlaner investigates the extent to which the proprietary aspects of biotechnologies--from patents on seeds to a plethora of new rules and contractual obligations associated with the technologies--are reorganizing crop production. The lawsuits include patent infringement litigation launched by Monsanto against a Saskatchewan canola farmer who, in turn, claimed his crops had been involuntarily contaminated by the company's GM technology; a class action application by two Saskatchewan organic canola farmers launched against Monsanto and Aventis (later Bayer) for the loss of their organic market due to contamination with GMOs; and two cases in Mississippi in which Monsanto sued farmers for saving seeds containing its patented GM technology. Pechlaner argues that well-funded corporate lawyers have a decided advantage over independent farmers in the courts and in creating new forms of power and control in agricultural production. Corporate Crops demonstrates the effects of this intersection between the courts and the fields where profits, not just a food supply, are reaped.
A study of U.S.-Chinese relations involving the U.S. Army, this work focuses at the personnel level on the Army's service in China. While studies have been published of the U.S. Marines' and U.S. Navy's involvement in China, little attention has been given the Army's missions in this theater. Operations in China were a key part of the history and traditions of the 9th, 14th, 15th and 31st Regiments, whose coats of arms still feature dragons as symbols of their service there. Many who served in the 15th in China went on to impressive careers as general officers, prompting one soldier to ask "what other infantry regiment of those days can boast of such an alumni list?" Also covered is the 31st Regiments' involvement in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the prelude of the coming of World War II in Asia.
This comprehensive treatment of post–World War II Allied war crimes trials in the Far East is a significant contribution to a neglected subject. While the Nuremberg and, to a lesser degree, Tokyo tribunals have received considerable attention, this is the first full-length assessment of the entire Far East operation, which involved some 5,700 accused and 2,200 trials. After discussing the Tokyo trial, Piccigallo systematically examines the operations of each Allied nation, documenting procedure and machinery as well as the details of actual trials (including hitherto unpublished photographs) and ending with a statistical summary of cases. This study allows a completely new assessment of the Far East proceedings: with a few exceptions, the trials were carefully and fairly conducted, the efforts of defense counsel and the elaborate review procedures being especially noteworthy. Piccigallo’s approach to this emotion-filled subject is straightforward and evenhanded throughout. He concludes with a discussion of the broader implications of such war crimes trials, a matter of interest to the general reader as well as to specialists in history, law, and international affairs.
It is 1938 when the Kolbers, affluent Viennese Jews, flee their country for Shanghai after its annexation by the Nazis. Eva and her daughter take the Trans-Siberian Railroad through war zones where they must confront border guards and Japanese imprisonment. Meanwhile, her husband, Josef, and their twin sons travel by ocean liner, hiding valuables in crates. Similarly in China, the politically powerful Gan Chen family finds their lives upended by Japanese invaders. Forced to abandon their estate, the family seeks refuge in Shanghai. While the families adapt to their new lifestyles during the war, their children meet. Walter Kolber is a handsome violinist; Chao Chen is a gifted pianist. After a forbidden romance blossoms, Chao Chen discovers she is pregnant. Without familial blessings, the lovers marry in December 1946 and head with their newborn to a refugee camp in Austria. As Chao Chen grapples with language and cultural barriers, the family is met with turmoil and tragedy. Now only time will tell if they will survive their troubles to start a new life in the United States. A remarkable true story, Thrown upon the World tells the tale of two families brought together during World War II in Shanghai and the twist of fate that split them apart.
Colonel John Hart Caughey, a US Army war plans officer stationed in the Chinese Nationalist capital of Chungking, was an eyewitness to the battle for China in the final months of the war (1944–45) and beyond, when he rose to become head of the Theater Planning Section. In frequent letters to his wife as well as in several diaries, he chronicled the US military’s role in wartime China, especially his life as an American planner (when he was subject to military censorship). Previous accounts of the China Theater have largely neglected the role of the War Department planners stationed in Chungking, many of whom were Caughey’s colleagues and friends. He also penned colorful descriptions of life in wartime China, which vividly remind the reader how far China has come in a mere seventy-odd years. In addition, his letters and diaries deepen our understanding of several of the American leaders in this Asian war, including China Theater commander Albert C. Wedemeyer; Fourteenth Air Force chief Claire L. Chennault (former commander of the “Flying Tigers”); US ambassador to wartime China, Patrick J. Hurley; famed Time-Life reporter Theodore White; OSS director William (“Wild Bill”) Donovan; Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Commander of the Southeast Asia Command; and Jonathan Wainwright, who was in command when the American forces in the Philippines surrendered in 1942, and who stayed for a few days at Caughey’s Chungking residence on his way home after several years as a Japanese POW in Manchuria. In his writings, Caughey also revealed a more appealing side of Wedemeyer, whose extreme political opinions in the postwar era probably cost him the post of US Army chief of staff. By making Caughey a member of his planning staff, Wedemeyer made possible an extraordinary experience for the young colonel during the war. Caughey also rubbed shoulders with Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and traveled to the battlefields in Southeast China with the commander in chief of the Nationalist Army, He Yingqin, along with a number of other Chinese and American soldiers. Following the Japanese surrender, Caughey chronicled the resumption of the power struggle between the Chinese Nationalists and the Chinese Communists, largely postponed during the conflict. Shortly after the war, he had a brief encounter with the number two Communist leader, Zhou Enlai, whom he was to get to know much better during the Marshall Mission to China.
