Asia Policy Events, Monday August 31, 2026

Asia Policy Point's weekly Asia Policy Calendar returns from summer recess. Thus, only Monday events will be posted here, on our blog, for the rest of the year. If you want to access the full calendar, please subscribe via this LINK.

TAKEAWAYS FROM THE 2026 INTERNATIONAL AIDS CONFERENCE. 8/31, 9:00-10:00am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Global Health Policy Center, CSIS. Speakers: J. Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President and Director, Global Health Policy Center, CSIS; Lloyd Mulenga, Professor of Infectious Diseases, University Teaching Hospital, Zambia; Doris Macharia, President, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation; Jirair Ratevosian, Research Scholar, Duke Global Health Institute; Omar Sued, HIV Treatment and Care Regional Advisor, Pan American Health Organization.

US-NORTH KOREA REMAINS RECOVERY COOPERATION: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE. 8/31, 2:00-3:00pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: National Committee on North Korea (NCNK). Speaker: Kelly McKeague, Director, Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.

Requiescat in Pace

 

Hiroshima, May 27, 2016

It is with profound sadness that I report the death on March 14 of Mr. Shigeaki MORI, 88, of Hiroshima, Japan. As many of you will remember President Barack Obama embraced Mr. Mori who was in the audience for the President's May 27, 2016 remarks at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. The Japanese government included Mr. Mori as a last minute guest to head off the White House's invitation of an American POW (Army Air Corps' Dan Crowley of Connecticut) to the event. 

Mr. Mori, a child victim of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, spent his adult life successfully identifying the 12 American airmen he witnessed become POWs and who also died in the bombing. See American POWs in Hiroshima. His quest was made into the award-winning documentary, Paper Lanterns. You can watch it for free here. Mr. Mori was a personal friend and we just exchanged New Year's cards.

our last correspondence December 2025

Asia History Events February 2023

KENNAN: A LIFE BETWEEN WORLDS. 2/6, 4:00-5:30pm (EST), ZOOM. Sponsor: Washington History Seminar, Wilson Center. Speaker: author, Frank Costigliola, University of Connecticut; Beverly Gage, Yale University; Barbara Keys, Durham University. 

 PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3x0u18J 

PERFORMATIVE RECOLLECTION AND PARALLAX MEMORY: PERPETRATOR AND VICTIM WAR MEMORY IN CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE VIDEO ART DESCRIPTION. 2/8, 5:00-7:00pm (GMT), HYBRID. Sponsor: SOAS Japan Research Centre. Speaker: Ayelet Zohar, Tel Aviv University. 

PRISONERS OF THE ASIA-PACIFIC WAR: HISTORY, MEMORY, AND FORGETTING. 2/7, JAPAN 4:00-7:30pm (JST), 2/8, 9:00am-5:00pm (JST); US EAST COAST 2/7, 2:00-5:30am (EST), 2/7 7:00-10:30pm (EST).  ZOOM. Sponsor: Kyoto University and JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science). This symposium brings together scholars researching the histories, memorialization and forgetting of prisoners and prison camps of the Asia Pacific War. Speakers include: Robert Cribb, Australian National University; Sarah Kovner, Columbia University; Anoma Pieris, Melbourne University; Taeko Sasamoto, POW Research Network, Japan. Organizer: Daniel Milne, Kyoto University.  [THIS CONFERENCE WILL NOT BE RECORDED]

THE 30 ANNIVERSARY OF WASHINGTON COALITION FOR COMFORT WOMEN ISSUES: CELEBRATING THE LEGACY OF COMFORT WOMEN. 2/7, 11:00am–1:00pm (EST). IN PERSON ONLY, 2168 Rayburn House Office Building (The Gold the Room). Speakers: Margaret Stetz, Professor of Humanities at the University of Delaware; Yangmo Ku, Associate Director of the

Peace and War Center at Norwich University; Bonnie Oh, Georgetown University Emeritus; Dennis Halpin, former staff member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Screening of a clip from the documentary: Cry Out: The 30 Years of Comfort Women Redress Movement, Written and Directed by Professor Jungsil Lee, George Washington University. 

THE GHOST AT THE FEAST: AMERICA AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE WORLD ORDER, 1900-1941. 2/8, Noon (EST), ONLINE. Sponsor: Alexander Hamilton Society. Speaker: Author Robert Kagan, Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings Institution. 
PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3WN9jUB

DISCUSSION WITH FAMILIES OF FORMER US POWS HELD BY IMPERIAL JAPAN. 

2/14, 5:00-6:00pm (JST), 3:00-4:00am (EST), 12:00-1:00am (PST). IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: Temple University Japan. SPEAKERS AND POW PROFILES. [THIS CONFERENCE MIGHT NOT BE RECORDED]

MILITARY HISTORY FOR THE MODERN STRATEGIST: AMERICA’S MAJOR WARS SINCE 1861. 2/15, 6:30-7:30pm (EST), IN-PERSON AND ONLINE. Sponsor: New-York Historical Society. Speakers: Author Michael E. O’Hanlon, Phil Knight Chair in Defense and Strategy at Brookings; Moderator: General David H. Petraeus (U.S. Army, Ret.), Commander of coalition forces during the Surges in both Iraq and Afghanistan and Former Director of the CIA. 
PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3XyOjRX

THE GENERAL VS. THE PRESIDENT: MACARTHUR AND TRUMAN AT THE BRINK OF NUCLEAR WAR. 2/16, Noon (EST), LIVE WEBCAST. Sponsor: Korea Society. Speaker: author, Dr. Henry W. Brands, Professor and Jack S. Blanton Sr. Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. 
PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3HGDSXr

IMPERIAL GATEWAY: COLONIAL TAIWAN AND JAPAN’S EXPANSION IN SOUTH CHINA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA, 1895-1945. 2/24, 4:30PM (EST), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: Sigur Center, GW. Speaker: author, Seiji Shirane, Assistant Professor of Japanese History, City College of New York. 
PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/400aHFW

Eighty Years Ago, on December 7th Japan Assaulted More than Pearl Harbor

On December 7, 1941, Japan expanded its war on the Asian mainland south and eastward into the Pacific.

by Mindy L. Kotler

National Interest, Dec 7, 2021

Eighty years ago today, December 7, 1941, critical airfields and ports across Southeast Asia and the Pacific were ablaze and in ruin. In just seven hours, Imperial Japan’s surprise attacks cripled British and American forces in the Far East, exposed the Dutch East Indies to invasion, and pushed Thailand into submission. The bombing of Pearl Harbor was but one of many that day. Casualties of the “Associated Powers,” likely exceeded those in Hawaii. One result of these unprovoked attacks was the creation of alliances that endure to this day.

Japan coordinated attacks on the U.S. territories of Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, Howland Island, and Midway and the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Japanese forces invaded and bombed Thailand’s airfields. In Shanghai, Japan took control of the International Settlement after blowing up the last two British and American gunboats on the Yangtze, the HMS Peterel and the USS Wake.  

The first attack, 70 minutes before Pearl Harbor, was on British-Indian forces at Kota Bharu, on the eastern side of Malaya. Hours before, a British flying boat was shot down by Japanese aircraft while monitoring the progress of the Japanese fleet. The British Royal Air Force crew and their Royal Australian Air Force observer became the first Allied casualties of the war. The ensuing defense of northeastern Malaya was fierce and savage with high casualties on both sides. 

Soon after, Bangkok was bombed and Japanese troops landed to its south and at various points along the Kra Peninsula on the southeastern coast of Thailand. Again, the invaders met with stiff resistance. Despite determined Thai forces, the fighting lasted only five hours. Prime Minister Plaek Phibunsongkhram agreed to a ceasefire and formed an alliance with Japan. The Kota Bharu landings were a prelude to the drive down the eastern side of the Malay peninsula, while the Japanese troops landed in Thailand advanced with Thai soldiers down the western side to seize Singapore and its naval base--the cornerstone of British power in the Indo-Pacific. Japanese planes bombed Singapore that day in warning.

Japan’s early morning attack on Pearl Harbor on Hawaii’s Oahu, was followed by the bombardments of the American airfields on Midway and Howland Island in the equatorial Pacific. Two of the four Hawaii settlers on Howland were killed. For his selfless defense of Midway, First Lieutenant George H. Cannon became the first U.S. Marine in World War II to receive the Medal of Honor.

Guam was shelled, bombed, and invaded. The American territory fell two days later. Of the nearly 500 American military personnel taken to Japan from Guam as prisoners of war, five were female nurses. Japanese troops occupied Batan Island above Northern Luzon in the Philippines before mounting a full-scale invasion. This approach on Aparri on the coast of Cagayan Valley, believed by American war planners as impractical, caught the defenders off-guard and unprepared. The success of the surprise assault was played out just this past fall when U.S., Filipino, and Japanese forces held their first joint amphibious exercises near this Northern Luzon town.

Six hours after the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese bombed Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport and pushed the defending British and Commonwealth troops to the defensive Gin Drinkers Line. The territory, however, was long regarded as indefensible. Nevertheless British, Indian, Canadian  units along with the Auxiliary Defence Units and Hong Kong Volunteer Defence Corps (HKVDC) held out for two weeks against a Japanese force twice its size.

The Japanese attacked Wake Island about the same time as they bombed Hong Kong. The Americans on Wake Island were composed of 400 Marines, a handful of soldiers and sailors, 45 Chamorro Pan Am employees,  and 1,146 unarmed civilian contractors building an airfield. They proceeded to do what had never been done before or after, hold off an Armada for nearly two weeks. They did not surrender until December 23rd.

The last Japanese actions on December 7th were the bombing of the Iba and Clark airfields in southern Luzon, the Philippines. As in Hawaii, the Japanese caught the American planes on the ground and the defense weak. The guns of neither the ageing artillery batteries nor tank battalions defending the fields could reach the high flying Japanese planes. Whereas the attack on Pearl Harbor damaged the Pacific Fleet, the attack on the Philippines and other U.S. territories destroyed the Far East Air Force. 

The first battle casualty of the Armored Force in World War II, Pvt. Robert Brooks of Kentucky’s Company D, 192nd Tank Battalion, took place on Clark Field. Back at Fort Knox, the home of the newly formed Armored Force, the Commanding General Jacob Devers responded to the news by ordering that the main parade ground at the base be named after the young tanker. This distinction was particularly significant as Brooks turned out to be African American.

On December 7, 1941, Japan expanded its war on the Asian mainland south and eastward into the Pacific. The primary objective was to knock out American and British opposition to its advance into Southeast Asia. The ultimate goal was occupation of the Indo-Pacific, control over  its valuable natural resources, and supremacy over the region's seas. As the sun set, Japan's success seemed possible.

Instead, the day’s debacles forged alliances with a resolve to fight fascist expansionism East and West. The “Associated Powers” (Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States) became the Allies and expanded to include India, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and free forces from Japan’s occupied territories. The shared bitter experience of Imperial Japan’s wanton brutality and deceits provided the emotional bond to this warfighting coalition. Ironically, these very alliances are what Japan today looks to in defending its homeland. 

UNESCO and Japan's rewriting of history

Baron Mitsui holding a dinner for newly released
senior POWs who were slave laborers
at his Miike Coal Mine

At UNESCO, Japan lays bare the difficulties of achieving shared values within the Quad.

By Mindy L. Kotler

Originally published in The Diplomat, July 23, 2021
This version is slightly revised for clarity

On July 22nd, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad, comprising the United States, India, Japan, and Australia, faced its first test. Unexpectedly, it came at the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. The focus was on Japan, not China, and the result reveals how fragile the idea of shared, universal values is for this multilateral coalition. As things stand, Japan is a willful outlier.

At the World Heritage Committee’s 44th virtual session, there was a review of several previously designated Japanese UNESCO World Industrial Heritage sites that were the scene of war crimes in World War II. Americans, Australians, and Indians were among the thousands of Allied prisoners of war (POWs) brought to Japan during the war. They became slave laborers in various private mines, chemical factories, and steel mills, and on docks critical to support Imperial Japan’s war effort.

These very mines, foundries, and wharves were selected by Japan to represent its “Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining.” The Japanese, however, left out any mention of this forced labor and abuse, which was the substance of the hundreds of war crimes trials throughout the postwar Pacific.

UNESCO approved the designations in 2015 but conditioned the designations on a promise to provide a “full history” of these sites. Yet, six years later, Japan has not fulfilled this promise. Japan’s forced colonial workers from Korea are given slight mention, although Japan refuses to admit they were unwilling or unhappy. The POWs, which included soldiers, civilians, and mariners from Ireland, Egypt, Norway, Argentina, Jamaica, Portugal, Italy, and Arabia are unmentioned in any official publications, whether at the particular sites or at the Tokyo Industrial Heritage Information Center, which was opened in March 2020.

On July 12, 2021, a UNESCO draft decision noted that Japan still had to improve its interpretive strategy. The reprimand of Japan’s unwillingness to tell the “full history” of these properties was approved July 22. The Committee believes measures are still necessary to “allow an understanding of a large number of Koreans and others” who were forced or slave laborers. 

Unfortunately, UNESCO identifies POWs only as “others. This euphemism affirms Japan’s effort to censor its war crimes and rewrite the history of World War II. UNESCO members Australia, the United Kingdom, India, Norway, and the Netherlands need to insist that “others” means their veterans.

To satisfy UNESCO’s directive to include “others,” it is implied that Japan must acknowledge that five of the UNESCO industrial heritage sites — Hagi, Kamaishi, Miike, Nagasaki, and Yawata — held 26 POW camps during the war and provided more than 13,000 POW slave laborers from over 16 countries to Japan’s industrial giants, including Mitsui, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, and Nippon Steel.

The Miike Coal Mine (Fukuoka #17) warrants particular attention. The mine, owned by the Mitsui conglomerate, was Japan’s largest. Nearly 2,000 Allied POWs suffered capricious brutality and starvation in deadly and primitive conditions. Hundreds died. American POWs were so desperate for a respite from the coal pits that they traded their meager rice bowls for someone to break their arms or legs.

Kamaishi’s industrial area (Sendai #4B and Sendai #5B) is also illustrative of missing war history. The site was the first to be bombed by U.S. Navy warships off Japan’s unguarded coastline. The iron works at this site, still owned by Nippon Steel, were among Japan’s largest. On July 14, 1945, more than 40 American, Dutch, New Zealand, and British POWs as well as hundreds of Japanese were killed in the bombardment.

Nippon Steel’s Yawata’s steel works (Fukuoka #3) was Japan’s most important armament manufacturer. The workforce was primarily composed of POWs who endured intense manual labor shoveling iron ore and tending the furnaces. Yawata was the primary target for the second atomic bomb. Cloud cover from aerial bombing on August 8, 1945, shifted the mission to Nagasaki, close to the Miike Coal Mine.

Japan’s unstated history of Allied slave labor at its UNESCO sites is part of a larger trend of the government’s rewriting history. The narratives presented at Japan’s industrial heritage sites also diminish the use of Korean forced labor and Chinese slave labor. This all dovetails with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s quest to retell Japan’s story in an uncritical, more glorious manner. So important was the UNESCO heritage designation to the former Abe administration that one cabinet adviser had the sole job of shepherding the application through UNESCO.

Highlighting the effort to annul history was last August’s 75th anniversary memorial address for the end of World War II. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, unlike his predecessors, did not mention, “learning from history” or having “remorse.” Instead, he said “we will never forget that the peace and prosperity we enjoy today was built atop the precious sacrifices of the war dead.”

This ahistorical take on Japan’s disastrous war is not a reassurance to UNESCO that Japan will correct the histories of its industrial heritage sites. Nor does it comfort the Quad allies that their shared history will not be recognized and reflected upon. Upholding historical facts is a value of democracy now being undermined by Japan as rapidly as in authoritarian China or Hungary. Japan’s defiance of UNESCO’s recommendations to explain the “full history” of its cultural properties shows how fragile the Quad’s so-called unifying principles are.

Mindy L. Kotler is director and founder of Asia Policy Point, a Washington think tank focused on Northeast Asia. She is also an adviser to the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society that represents the American POWs of Japan and their families.

Asia Monday Events, November 30, 2020

ROLE OF COMBINED JOINT TASK FORCE FOR OPERATION INHERENT RESOLVE (CJT-OIR) IN COUNTERING ISIS. 10:30-11:30am (EST), WEBINAR. Sponsor: Middle East Institute (MEI). Speaker: Major General Kevin Copsey, the Deputy Commander of Strategy for the Combined Joint Task Force for Operation Inherent Resolve (CJT-OIR).

HUMAN SECURITY AND AGENCY: REFRAMING PRODUCTIVE POWER IN AFGHANISTAN. 11:00-Noon (EST), WEBINAR. Sponsor: George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs. Speakers: Nilofar Sakhi, Professorial Lecturer of International Affairs at George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs, Director of Policy and Diplomacy at McColm & Company; Benjamin D. Hopkins, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs.

THE LEGITIMACY OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS. 12:30–2:00pm (EST), WEBINAR. Sponsor: Johns Hopkins, SAIS. Speakers: Jonas Tallberg, Stockholm University, Sweden; Nina Hall, Assistant Professor of International Relations, Johns Hopkins University.

THE ORIGIN AND FUTURE OF THE CHINA CHALLENGE: A CONVERSATION WITH PETER BERKOWITZ. 3:00-4:00pm (EST), WEBINAR. Sponsor: Hudson. Speakers: Peter Berkowitz, Director of Policy Planning at U.S. State Department; Tod Lindberg, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute.

WHAT REMAINS: BRINGING AMERICA’S MISSING HOME FROM THE VIETNAM WAR.  4:00-5:30pm (EDT), WEBINAR. Sponsor: History and Public Policy Program, Wilson Center. Speaker: author Sarah Wagner, Associate Professor of Anthropology, GWU. Moderator: Christian F. Ostermann, Director, History and Public Policy Program Wilson Center. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/2Tbh87T

ALLIED POWS IN COLONIAL KOREA. 6:00-7:30pm (GMT) 1:00PM (EST), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: University of Cambridge. Speaker: author Sarah Kovner, Senior Research Scholar, Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University, Fellow in International Security Studies, Yale University, Associate Professor of History, University of Florida. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3821nsN

Japanese Rightwing's Manipulation of the Western Press

Yoshito Hori

@YoshiHoriGLOBIS

Shingetsu News Agency Intrepid reporter Michael Penn has tracked down a source of the change to the Japan Times history language. We find it unlikely that former Sumitomo executive (his offices are in Sumitomo buildings) Yoshito Hori acted alone or with his own finances. His ties are deep within Japan's alt-right. There are no lone wolves or individual thinkers among them.

Yoshito Hori and the Rightwing Turn of the Japan Times

December 17, 2018, Shingetsu News Agency

by MICHAEL PENN

SNA (Tokyo) — The November 30 “Editor’s Note” in the Japan Times—which appeared to adopt the rightwing Abe administration’s historical revisionist views on Pacific War Comfort Women and forced laborers—came as a shock to many of its readers. As it turns out, it was also a major shock to many of the editors and journalists working in Japan Times own newsroom.

Inside accounts have been clear that the Editor’s Note policy change was driven by Executive Editor Hiroyasu Mizuno, with the consent of a handful of other senior editors. No one else—at least within the Japan Times newsroom—seems to have been in the loop.

The reaction to the Editor’s Note, briefly tacked on to the end of a news article, was enormous, generating international articles and provoking a revolt from some Japan Times staff members and readers.

It also gained the outspoken support of some far right Japanese commentators.

Among those who celebrated the change in the Japan Times editorial line was Yoshito Hori, managing partner, chairman, and CEO of Globis Capital Partners, as well as the founder of the Globis University Graduate School of Management.

Hori’s reaction on Twitter was almost immediate (as if he knew in advance about what was coming). He offered one tweet in Japanese and one in English. His English tweet read, “Japan [Times] has changed the term ‘Forced Labor’ to ‘Wartime laborers’. Brave and right step to avoid misunderstanding. I hope other newspaper will follow.” In the Japanese tweet he singled out the Financial Times as an example of an English-language newspaper that he hoped would follow the Japan Times’ lead.

When The Guardian quickly published an article with a critical tone toward the Japan Times editorial note, Hori was evidently annoyed and he renewed his defense of the paper: “The Guardian should stop using the terms ‘Sex Slaves’ and ‘Forced Labour’, as these words are misleading and mostly wrong. Foreign media should learn from Japan Times’ decision, which changes of terms depict the historical facts better.”

• While Yoshito Hori was hardly the only commentator who jumped to the defense of the rightwing turn of the Japan Times, he had three distinctions easily visible in the public record that set him apart: He is a long-time major advertiser in Japan Times through Globis University; 
• Japan Times had become an official media partner to his G1 Global Conference 2018 only the previous month; 
• and, most of all, Hiroyasu Mizuno, the Japan Times executive editor who had driven the policy change, had come the previous year from—you guessed it—the Globis Corporation, where he had served as Hori’s manager of global communications for almost six years.

What Hori was failing to mention in his tweets to his 115,000 followers was that he is not exactly an appreciative observer from the sidelines, but in fact the previous boss of the man who had engineered the controversial Editor’s Note.

We don’t know exactly what role Hori played in helping Mizuno to get the top job at the Japan Times in June 2017, but it is difficult to believe that the new owners of the Japan Times would have entrusted their newspaper to Mizuno without Hori’s advocacy. For Hori, it must have been quite a coup to get one of his proteges installed as the day-to-day chief of the nation’s leading English-language newspaper.

But it’s also in the public record what Yoshito Hori thinks of the English-language news media in Japan, and what goals he had for it, even before News2u Holdings took over the Japan Times from the Ogasawara family in June 2017.

Hori has spent several years promoting his rather megalomaniacal “100 Actions” program, whose purpose, he explained, is to fundamentally change Japan: “I’ve been gathering the best ideas from G1 Summit, the annual multi-day conference I run, to create a vision for Japan based on 100 necessary reforms,” he wrote earlier this year.

Among the “necessary reforms” Hori preaches are staples of Japanese rightwing thought such as revising the pacifist Constitution, increasing the use of nuclear power, the creation of a “state of emergency” power under which the rights of the people can be restricted, the abolition of prefectures, and an emphasis on the notion that the Japanese people have “responsibilities” to the state, and not simply rights to be protected.

While the entire document is quite an eye-opener in terms of the man’s messianic self-confidence, it is his section about the media that is most relevant to us in our current context.

Namely, one subheading of his “Action 89” calls for the need to “Cultivate a Healthy English-Language Media.” And what exactly is a “healthy” English-language media? In the English-language version of the 100 Actions document, Hori explains: “Japan’s English-language media is a gateway through which foreign nationals can access information about the country. It is unfortunate that the English-language media available in Japan is of poor quality. Since the English-language media is expected to play a leading role in disseminating information throughout the world, it is necessary to fundamentally improve its quality to ensure accurate information is shared so that Japan may be assessed fairly. It is also essential to build relationships with the foreign media. The Japanese English-language media should not only assert Japan’s position as a matter of public relations, as in the past, but should also lead the discussion in the media.”

This passage, published in English about nine months before Hori’s protege took over editorial control of the Japan Times, makes clear that he sees the role of the English-language media not as any kind of watchdog for the public interest or a venue for Japanese and resident foreigners to communicate honestly with one another, but rather as international PR outfits for the government “so that Japan may be assessed fairly.”

This is spelled out even more starkly and in more detail in the Japanese-language version of the document.

The Japan Times itself (then under the previous owners) was singled out for criticism by name: “The English-language media is naturally the portal through which foreigners come to know about Japan. It was very crude as journalists for the managers of the Mainichi Shinbun and the Japan Times to publish articles at variance with the facts, and they did enormous damage to Japan.”

Again, Yoshito Hori’s view is that the mission of the English-language media is only to distribute “correct” information about Japan, thus strengthening the nation’s positive image abroad. This is explicitly a call for journalists to become national propagandists. And it is the man who served as Hori’s own propagandist when he wrote these words—Hiroyasu Mizuno—who now runs editorial affairs for the Japan Times.

The evidence is strong, though not entirely conclusive, that Yoshito Hori is the immediate string-puller behind the rightward turn of Japan Times. Ultimately, however, it is clearly bigger than just one man. It is rather the rightwing political establishment in general that has now got its hooks into what some had regarded as the “last bastion” for independent English-language journalism in Japan. 

In that sense, Hori himself is not much more than a willing puppet.

It has been a clear pattern of the Abe years that many institutions that previously exercised a degree of independent power have been brought in line with the regime’s rightwing policies. Most of the time this has been done through some form of cooptation. It would appear that the Japan Times’ number came up last summer when the Ogasawara family sold the newspaper that they had held for decades. What is occurring now under the new owners was probably planned long ago.

When Mizuno became sufficiently panicked about the strong reaction to the Editor’s Note and wrote a full-page explanation on December 7, Yoshito Hori made no comments on his Twitter feed. He did, however, retweet an article published by the rightwing Japan Institute for National Fundamentals (#561 - We Support Japan Times’ Wise Decision by Hironobu Ishikawa, 2018.12.12)

The author of the piece that Hori recommended to his followers wrote: “Although the Japan Times is the country’s oldest English-language newspaper, founded in 1897, during the time of the previous owners it took an anti-Japanese editorial stance and thus was rightly called the ‘Anti-Japan Times.’ 

Last June it was bought by the online media company News 2u (with Minako Kambara as representative director). Since then, under the editorship of Hiroyasu Mizuno and others, it is adopting a new line. For the foreign journalists in Japan, who are mostly unable to read Japanese and so must use this English-language paper as their information source, the Editor’s Note was unmistakably a huge shock.”

Fury as Japanese paper redefines 'comfort women'

The Japan Times' decision to revise its description of women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II has triggered anger and condemnation. Julian Ryall reports.

Deutsche Welle

by Julian Ryall, December 5, 2018

Japan's oldest English-language newspaper, The Japan Times, has provoked anger and accusations of historical revisionism after announcing that it will no longer use the term "comfort women" to describe women forced to serve in front-line brothels for the Japanese military during World War II.

The paper also said that it was dropping the phrase "forced laborers" for the hundreds of thousands put to work in often appalling conditions during the conflict.

Read more: 'Comfort women' - The wounds of their lives

On November 30, The Japan Times said in an editor's note attached to a story that the terms "comfort women" and "forced labor" were "potentially misleading."

Claiming that the "conditions [the laborers] worked under" and how they were recruited "varied," the paper said it will from now on refer to them as "wartime laborers."

The definition of "comfort women" has previously been understood to refer to women who were forced to provide sex to Japanese troops before and during World War II, but that is being altered, the paper added.

Rewriting history
"Because the experiences of comfort women in different areas throughout the course of the war varied widely, from today we will refer to 'comfort women' as 'women who worked in wartime brothels, including those who did so against their will, to provide sex to Japanese soldiers.'"

The announcement appeared in the paper at the bottom of a story about the ruling by the South Korean Supreme Court on November 29 that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries should pay compensation to a group of Koreans who had been forced to work in the company's munitions factories and dockyards during the war.

Mindy Kotler, director of Asia Policy Point and an advocate for the rights of former Allied prisoners of war, many of whom were also forced to work in Japanese factories, described the paper's change in editorial policy as "a dramatic capitulation" to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "PR efforts to rewrite history" and fit his own political agenda.

"This is nothing less than astonishing and outrageous," she said. "This is not a change of wording; it is a change of definition. It is the manipulation of language to bury history."

Read more: Is the Japan-South Korea 'comfort women' deal falling apart?

Kotler charges that a "central theme" of the Abe administration has been to deny Japan's war crimes "as mere manifestations of victor's justice" and his administration has set up committees to undermine the 1993 statement by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono apologizing to the comfort women, as well as the outcomes of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals.

"The goal is to build an idealized wartime regime," Kotler said. "Ignored is the fact that Japanese fascism had bad personal, national and international consequences."

The Japanese government is likely to try to apply the same term to Allied prisoners of war (POWs) who were put to work, Kotler said, adding, "Mostly it whitewashes the horrors and abuses inflicted upon those who did not willingly work for Japanese industries."

Change in ownership
The change in editorial policy at The Japan Times — founded in 1897 — comes 17 months after it was sold to a Tokyo-based public relations company called News2U Holdings for an undisclosed amount. In a statement issued at the time, the new owner said it would maintain the paper's editorial independence.

But some people believe that the Japan Times is already taking a new editorial line by adopting a position which is closer to the Abe administration, which has been determined to deny Japan's war crimes 'as mere manifestations of victor's justice'.

"The reason this new policy at the newspaper is in error is because when it comes to sex slavery, they try to conflate voluntary prostitution with the women and girls who were abducted and forced to work in these brothels," said a former employee of The Japan Times who wished to remain anonymous.

"It may be that there were some women who were working voluntarily, but the rest of the world is talking about those who were not volunteers," the source said, adding: "To me, this is a disingenuous attempt to whitewash history and, for me, the only people who don't know about Japanese history are the Japanese themselves."

The Japan Times was contacted for a comment for this article but did not reply.

Critics say the Abe administration has been determined to deny Japan's war crimes 'as mere manifestations of victor's justice'

Kotler believes that Tokyo will continue to use diplomatic pressure and money to promote its version of history, such as the removal of a "comfort woman" statue that stood close to the site of the Bayview Hotel in Manila, scene of an alleged mass rape and murders by the Japanese military in the closing days of the war.

"This is not a mere editorial policy of an independent newspaper," she said. "The only response should be loud condemnation. The New York Times should sever its ties with The Japan Times."

Remembering Wartime Slave Labor

Nazi slavery recalled at UNESCO-listed Völklinger Ironworks

Deutsche Welle
October 31, 2018

Grenades, aircraft parts and military equipment created in one of Nazi Germany’s largest steel and ironworks were the product of forced laborers. An installation by French artist Christian Boltanski remembers them. Voices whisper their names from all corners of the vast former iron foundry: women, men and children from 20 countries who were transported from across Nazi-occupied Europe and forced to work under inhumane conditions — and ultimately die — at the Völklinger Ironworks.

The French artist Christian Boltanski, in his installations "Forced Laborers" and "Memories," which are on display from November 1 at the site, reminds us of the 12,396 people taken from countries from Albania to Belgium, Bulgaria to France, from Denmark, Serbia, the Ukraine and nearly everywhere in between, to work as slaves as part of the Nazi arms build-up.

The installation employs the actual spoken recollections of former ironworkers, which are emitted from the numbered lockers that form the focal point for the work. Here long-suppressed memories come to life.

Christian Boltanski

➽  CLICK HERE FOR A PDF OF THE EXHIBITION CATALOG. It lists all the names of the forced laborers. This is the English version.

Worked to death

Set in the 19th century German industrial landmark, the installation also features a pile of anonymous black trousers and jackets on the floor surrounded by stacked archive boxes. The light is sparse. Here the visitor understands why, during World War II, forced laborers who were transported to Völklingen near the French border were deprived of their ID cards and made to wear a special badge. A circular forbid staff in the plant from being friendly with the prisoners: "The enemy remains the enemy," it read.

Hermann Röchling was then the head of the iron foundry and a fervent admirer of Adolf Hitler. He was a member of the senior staff of the Nazi department for the "war economy," and thus responsible for the entire armaments industry and the widespread use of imported slave labor. The deaths of 261 forced laborers, including 60 children and infants, occurred under his watch. Some of them did not see their first birthday.

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Read more: South Korea court orders Japan's Nippon Steel to compensate forced laborers

      NB: A number of the Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Steel sites in Japan have become, like the Völklinger Ironworks, UNESCO World Industrial Heritage Sites. These sites used Korean forced labor as well as Chinese (there was a policy of abduction toward the end of the war) slave labor and Allied and American POW slave labor. There is NO acknowledgment of this. 

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Boltanski, a conceptual artist, painter, sculptor and filmmaker who is a regular at the Documenta art exhibition in Kassel and in 2011 designed the French pavilion of the 54th Biennale in Venice, creates an emotive outlet to understand this dark chapter in the history of the steel plant.

A history of slavery

The Völklinger Ironworks was once the largest manufacturer of iron girders in Germany following its foundation in 1873. It was already producing war equipment during World War I, including 90 percent of the crude steel used to build German army helmets. Forced laborers from Belgium and Italy — in addition to prisoners-of-war from France and Russia — were also employed in the steel factory at the time. Around 10 percent of these slave workers died on site; these victims are also remembered in Boltanski's installation.

"Industrial culture in all European countries was no innocent culture," said general manager and managing director of the Völklinger Hütte, Meinrad Maria Grewenig, at the opening of the installation.

The postwar period was less controversial, with the ironworks booming in the 1960s and employing some 17,000 people before a worldwide steel crisis hit the in the mid-1970s. By 1986, the chimneys in Völklingen had stopped smoking.

In 1994, UNESCO declared the Völklinger Ironworks a World Heritage Site, the first industrial monument to be placed on the prestigious list. But while the site is the only surviving factory from the heyday of iron and steel production in 19th century Germany, the Völklinger Ironworks has a more sinister heritage upon which Christian Boltanski is again shining light.

The Christian Boltanski installation will be on display at the Völklinger Ironworks from November 1 through August 31, 2019.

When Abe meets Trump

Abe meets with President Trump on Thursday, June 7.

It is unlikely to go well, unless Abe brings a very publicity-worthy concession to Trump. Just as Japan is missing from the print edition of the latest CIA World Factbook, it is also missing from the President’s playbook.

Prime Minister Abe made a grave mistake of trying to form a personal relationship with the new American president. Whereas Trump liked the good press of their golf outings and of confronting a North Korean missile launch in a public dining room, he was likely disappointed not to see more drama develop. Trump has had to settle for the “drama” of a tense relationship with Japan.

Trump still dismisses Japan as free-riding off the US military and economy. Japan’s contribution to the North Korea discussions has been to issue reminders about Japanese abductees held in North Korea and to urge broader definitions of WMD that include more than nuclear weapons are further dismissed are unhelpful, if not obstructionist to any peace deal with Pyongyang.

Unlike the South Koreans' President Moon, Abe has offered neither impressive trade concessions nor the vocal solidarity of a good ally. Trump is unlikely moved by stories of 12 probably dead Japanese abductees. This gives him no dramatic footage of his meeting them on the tarmac. The casino legislation introduced and passed soon after Abe’s November 2016 meeting with Trump probably did not impress either. Any ribbon cutting is years down the road and operations would be hindered by peculiar restrictions.

Abe cannot expect help from Trump’s new favorites, China and South Korea. The Prime Minister’s campaign to re-adjust Pacific War history glorifying Imperial Japan has alienated and annoyed all of the island nation’s neighbors. None have an incentive to trust his foreign policy judgment. Abe’s security vision, first of an “Arc of Democracy” and now of a “security diamond” excludes both China and South Korea.

To right the relationship with the White House, Abe needs a magic moment. He needs dramatic signing ceremonies with a smiling Trump, happy Trump constituents, and photos that linger. Surely there is an industrial and agricultural market to open; a US military exercise to join; and a POW reconciliation program to enhance (MOFA just scuttled it). Trump is weary of hearing what Japan can’t do or even will do; he wants to know what Japan will do now. Trump relishes the moment.

If a desperate Abe brings nothing dramatic to the table, the only thing memorable about his trip will be that the Korean-American community exhibited a Comfort Women memorial in the Capitol Building on the day of his visit.

Remembering American POWs killed at Hiroshima

May 28th, 2018. MEMORIAL DAY POW PLAQUE UNVEILING IN LOWELL, MA HONORING AMERICAN POWS OF JAPAN. Centralville Veterans dedicate a new plaque honoring the 12 Americans killed in and from the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945. The new memorial joins the nine others in the park, which collectively display the names of over 3,000 service members. Special guests will be Mr. and Mrs. Shigeaki Mori from Japan, the subject of the documentary film, Paper Lanterns, that recounts Mr. Mori’s 35-year quest to identify the American POW aviators who perished and to notify their families. Mr. Mori was the Hiroshima survivor that President Barack Obama hugged at his speech in Hiroshima. The families and friends of two of the POWs he identified--Normand Brissette, U.S. Navy and Ralph Neal, USAAC--will be at the ceremony. The event will begin at 9:00AM. Location: Centralville Memorial Park, 700 Aiken Street, Lowell, MA 01850, at the intersection of Aiken and Ennell Streets, at the foot of Aiken Bridge, MAP  
PRESS RELEASE

PAPER LANTERNS: FILM SCREENING. 5/24, 7:00–9:00pm, San Francisco, CA. Sponsor: Asian Art Museum. Speakers: The film’s subject, Mr. Shigeaki Mori, a Japanese historian and atomic bomb survivor, who spent 35 years finding the families of 12 American POWs who perished during the Hiroshima bombing. Location: Asian Art Museum, Samsung Hall, 200 Larkin Street.

PAPER LANTERNS: FILM SCREENING. 5/25, 6:00–7:30pm, Mountain View, CA. Sponsor: Community School of Music and Arts. Speakers: The film’s subject, Mr. Shigeaki Mori, a Japanese historian and atomic bomb survivor, who spent 35 years finding the families of 12 American POWs who perished during the Hiroshima bombing. Location: Community School of Music and Arts, 230 San Antonio Circle.

PAPER LANTERNS: FILM SCREENING. 5/30, 7:30–9:15pm, Boston, MA. Sponsor: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Speakers: The film’s subject, Mr. Shigeaki Mori, a Japanese historian and atomic bomb survivor, who spent 35 years finding the families of 12 American POWs who perished during the Hiroshima bombing. Location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Harry and Mildred Remis Auditorium (Auditorium 161), Avenue of the Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue.

Why modern Japan’s founding moment still divides a nation

Omuta Mine's POW Slave Labor Camp
Mitsui's Miike Mine
UNESCO World Industrial Heritage Site

The Meiji restoration initiated not just modernisation, but also militarism

by Banyan, The Economist, January 11, 2018.

THE story of Japan’s modernisation began 150 years ago this month, when a band of young samurai and their allies overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate and with it seven centuries of feudal rule. Under the shoguns (military rulers), merchant and cultural life—centred upon bustling Edo—had been far from stagnant, as the stunning woodblock prints of Hokusai and Hiroshige attest. But Japan had for more than two centuries been closed and inward-looking. Its stratified society was absurdly rigid.

Above all, the warrior class was ill-equipped to deal with the growing threat posed by the gunboats of America and other Western countries, which had been sailing into Edo Bay and forcing the shoguns to sign treaties opening the country to foreign trade. The contest was unequal. The West had ironclad vessels and the latest guns. The samurai had ceremonial armour with face masks designed to show off impressive false moustaches.

The leaders launched their coup with the slogan “Revere the emperor, expel the barbarians”. For the first part, they called on tradition. They put the imperial line, hitherto mere props in Kyoto, back at the centre of the polity. They brought the 12-year-old emperor, Mutsuhito, up to Edo (now renamed Tokyo, or Eastern Capital), affirmed his unbroken descent from the sun goddess and claimed to rule on his behalf. Mutsuhito died in 1912; posthumously he was given the title of Emperor Meiji. Hence the name for the coup: the Meiji restoration.

As for the second part, far from expelling the barbarians, the new leaders embraced them. In April 1868 a famous “Charter Oath” decreed that “knowledge shall be sought throughout the world” to strengthen imperial rule. Fifty high officials set off on a 22-month world tour to take in everything they could about American and European government, industry, trade, education and warfare. Back in Japan they launched a frenzy of industrial development, administrative reform and military modernisation not even matched by China’s more recent headlong growth. The Meiji restoration was actually a revolution.

For Shinzo Abe, Japan’s current prime minister, the restoration resonates. Mr Abe comes from Yamaguchi, known in feudal times as Choshu. Leaders from Choshu were at the head of the revolution. Mr Abe once told this columnist he identified with them because they did “not simply look inward, but looked…to the world’s wider horizons”. The Choshu men, he explained, saw the threat from Western imperialism. Japan’s harsh choice was either to be the meat served at a Western banquet or a guest at the table. By modernising, Japan became the only big country in Asia to safeguard its independence. It joined the Western high table.

Mr Abe sees lessons in all this, and since he came to office in 2012 he has appeared to be in a tearing hurry to implement them. At home Japan is imperilled by a weak economy, a risk-averse establishment and an ageing, shrinking population. Overseas, China threatens Japan not just in economic terms but, as it grows more assertive, militarily too. A revived economy (with more opportunities for women at work), a vigorous diplomacy and, notwithstanding the constraints of a pacifist post-war constitution, a stronger defence are to him the right responses. (They also help confront the threat posed by a nuclear North Korea.)

The government has gone all-out to promote the 150th anniversary, starting with a push in 2015 to acquire UNESCO “world heritage” status for various spots important in the ensuing industrial revolution. One striking site is Hashima, an island off the coast near Nagasaki that sits above a former coal mine, operated by the Mitsubishi conglomerate, that ran under the sea bed. It was once the most densely populated spot on Earth, housing miners and the families. (Today its post-apocalyptic ruins are best known as the lair of James Bond’s nemesis in “Skyfall”.)

The government website celebrating the Meiji restoration idealises the period as one of grass-roots change and human rights as much as innovation. Yet for ethnic groups whose territory was annexed and culture stifled, such as the Ainu in the north and Okinawans in the south, it was not much fun. The rank-and-file in the new conscript army were brutalised. Workers in the mines and mills led harsh lives. And women, points out Tomomi Yamaguchi of Montana State University, were kept down. They could not vote, divorce or own property. Most Japanese women find little appeal in the nostalgic push by Mr Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party to return to the Meiji era’s “family values”.

Don’t mention the war

There is another problem. The Meiji restoration sowed the seeds of Japan’s 20th-century aggression. The first war dead whose souls were honoured at Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine, later controversial for honouring war criminals, were those who died fighting for the restoration (though even the losing side was supposedly fighting for the emperor). The authoritarian constitution of 1890, borrowed from that of Bismarck’s Germany, fostered emperor-worship and glorification of the armed forces—powerful features of Japan’s war machine.

By the time of Japan’s defeat in 1945 thousands of Koreans and Chinese had been forced to work the mines in Hashima, among many other sites. [Editor: this was a policy designed by PM Abe's grandfather Kishi.] Mr Abe’s government, after much resistance, promised UNESCO it would reflect this history. Yet on Hashima neither the guides nor the pamphlets and signs refer to it. Members of Mr Abe’s government, and at times the prime minister himself, seem to deny the existence of forced labour at all. [Editor: There was also extensive Allied POW slave labor at most of the UNESCO World Industrial Heritage sites of which there is no mention.]

You can see the conundrum without sympathising with it. Those, like Mr Abe, who are less than frank in acknowledging Japan’s wartime past, are worried about pulling on a thread. No clear event, no Reichstag fire, marked the moment when the country lurched into militarism. If aspects of what the Meiji restoration wrought come into question, what is there left to be proud about? The quest to find a modern identity for Japan continues.

Monday in Washington, November 14, 2016

POLICY CHALLENGES FOR THE NEW US PRESIDENT. 11/14, 8:30am, Breakfast. Sponsor: Economists for Peace and Security. Speakers: Richard Kaufman, Bethesda Research Institute; Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research; Matias Vernengo, Bucknell University, Carl Conetta, Project on Defense Alternatives; Bill Goodfellow, Center for International Policy; Sherle Schwenninger, New America; Josh Bivens, Economic Policy Institute; Nancy Altman, Social Security Works; Pavlina Tcherneva, Levy Economics Institute; Stephanie Kelton, University of Missouri, Kansas City; James K. Galbraith, Economists for Peace & Security; Jeremy Richardson, Union of Concerned Scientists; David Colt, Efficient Resource Management; Eban Goodstein, Bard Center for Environmental Policy.

US CORPORATE TAX REFORM AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM. 11/14, 9:00am-Noon. Sponsor: American Enterprise Institute (AEI); International Monetary Fund (IMF). Speakers: Vitor Gaspar, IMF; Kevin A. Hassett, AEI; Edward Kleinbard, University of Southern California; Thornton Matheson, IMF; Eric Toder, Urban Institute; Barbara Angus, House Committee on Ways and Means; Robert Stack, US Treasury; Michael Devereaux, Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation; Michael Keen, IMF.

TWO-WAY STREET–25 YEARS OF US-CHINA DIRECT INVESTMENT. 11/14, 10:00am - Noon. Sponsor: Sigur Center for Asian Studies, Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University (GWU). Speakers: Thilo Hanemann, Author, Director, Rhodium Group; Daniel H. Rosen, Author, Founding Partner, Rhodium Group; Stephen A. Orlins, President, National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

21ST CENTURY TECH TALENT AND THE AMERICAN ECONOMIC EDGE. 11/14, 10:00am-12:15pm, Breakfast. Sponsor: Scholl Chair in International Business, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS); Smeal College of Business, Penn State University. Speakers: Charles Whiteman, Dean, Smeal College of Business, Penn State University; Fariborz Ghadar, Senior Adviser, CSIS, William A. Schreyer Professor of Global Management, Policies and Planning, Penn State University; Jim Boland, Chairman, Jobs Ohio, Vice Chairman Emeritus, Ernst & Young; Laura Kohler, Senior VP, Human Resources and Stewardship, The Kohler Co.; David Cranmer, Deputy Director, Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership, NIST; Scott Miller, Senior Adviser and Scholl Chair in International Business, CSIS; Laura Dawson, Director of the Canada Institute, Wilson Center; Camille Mirshokrai, Managing Director, Accenture PLC; Alex Nowrahsteh, Immigration Policy Analyst, Cato Institute.

AMERICA’S NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHITECTURE: REBUILDING THE FOUNDATION. 11/14, 10:00am-12:15pm. Sponsor: Aspen Strategy Group. Speakers: Zoë Baird, CEO, President, Markle Foundation; Nicholas Burns, Goodman Family Professor of Diplomacy and International Relations, Harvard University; Michèle Flournoy, Co-Founder, Center for A New American Security; Steve Hadley, Former National Security Advisor for President George W. Bush; Jane Holl Lute, Under Secretary General, United Nations; Joseph Nye, University Distinguished Service Professor, Harvard University.

THE WAY FORWARD FOR TRADE. 11/14, 11:00am-12:30pm. Sponsor: Cato Institute. Speakers: Ambassador Mickey Kantor, Partner, Mayer Brown, Former U.S. Trade Representative (1993–1996); Ambassador Susan Schwab, Professor, University of Maryland School of Public Policy, Former U.S. Trade Representative (2006–2009). Moderator: Daniel Pearson, Senior Fellow, Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, Cato Institute.

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THE ART OF PEACE: ENGAGING A COMPLEX WORLD. 11/14, Noon-1:00pm. Sponsor: Heritage Foundation. Speakers: Author Juliana Geran Pilon, Senior Fellow, Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization; Colonel Michael R. Eastman, Executive Officer to the Commanding Officer of the Army Cyber Command; Helle C. Dale, Senior Fellow for Public Diplomacy, Heritage Foundation.

NEW AVENUES TO GOVERN CROSS-BORDER INFORMATION FLOWS. 11/14, Noon-2:00pm. Sponsor: Institute for International Economic Policy, Elliot School of International Affairs, George Washington University (GWU). Speakers: Sam Dupont, Director for Digital Trade, USTR; Michael Joseph Ferrantino, World Bank; Carl Schonander, Senior Director International Policy, SIIA; Deborah James, Director, International Programs, Center for Economic and Policy Research. Moderator: Susan Aaronson, Research Professor, Cross-disciplinary Fellow, GWU.

FREEDOM ON THE NET 2016. 11/14, 12:30-1:30pm, Lunch. Sponsor: Freedom House. Speakers: Sanja Kelly, Director, Freedom on the Net, Freedom House; Darya Luganskaya, Moscow-based Tech Journalist; 'Gbenga Sesan. Executive Director, Paradigm Initiative Nigeria; Sally Shipman Wentworth, Vice President of Global Policy, Internet Society. Moderator: Daniel Calingaert, Acting President, Freedom House.

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BORDERLESS WARS: A LIVE GRAY ZONE PATH GAME. 11/14, 1:00-2:30pm. Sponsor: Atlantic Council. Speakers: Author Antonia Chayes, Professor of Practice of International Politics and Law, Fletcher School, Tufts University; Scott DePasquale, Senior Fellow, Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, Atlantic Council; Brian Michelson, US Army Senior Fellow, Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, Atlantic Council. Moderator: Ali Watkins, National Security Correspondent, BuzzFeed.

INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION: WHAT PLACE IN U.S. DIPLOMACY. 11/14, 2:00-4:00pm. Sponsor: U.S. Institute for Peace. Speakers: William B. Taylor, Executive Vice President, U.S. Institute of Peace; Jill Welch, Deputy Executive Director, Public Policy, NAFSA; Amb. Richard LeBaron, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council; Waidehi Gokhale, Chief Executive Officer, Soliya; Maria J. Stephan, Senior Policy Fellow, USIP; Daniel L. Buccino, Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Clinical Supervisor, Student Coordinator, Clinical Director, Mood Disorders Clinic, Bayview, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Hopkins Civility Initiative, Johns Hopkins University; Jeff Helsing, Associate Vice President, Applied Conflict Transformation, U. S. Institute of Peace.

A CONVERSATION WITH UN DEPUTY SECRETARY GENERAL JAN ELIASSON. 11/14, 5:00-6:00pm. Sponsor: Carnegie. Speakers: Jan Eliasson; Deputy Secretary General, United Nations; William J. Burns, President, Carnegie.

ENERGY AND CLIMATE POLICY PROPOSALS FOR THE NEXT ADMINISTRATION. 11/14, 5:00-7:00pm. Sponsor: SAIS, Johns Hopkins. Speakers: David Goldwyn, President, Goldwyn Global Strategies; Robert McNally, President, Rapidan Group; Roberton C. Williams III, Senior Fellow and Director, Academic Programs, Resources for the Future and Professor, University of Maryland, College Park; Ben Longstreth, Senior Attorney, Climate and Clean Air Program, Natural Resources Defense Council.

PRISONERS OF WAR. 11/14, 6:45-8:45pm. Sponsor: Smithsonian Connections. Speaker: Judge Evan J. Wallach, an expert on war crimes and the law of war, Circuit Judge at the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, fee.