History, the hardest easy problem for Japan to resolve

How China Uses Wartime History Against Japan

By Daniel Sneider, lecturer in East Asian studies at Stanford University, non-resident distinguished fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America, and APP Member. 

First Published October 7, 2026 on Toyo Keizai Online.

Beyond all the pageantry, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping had a strategic goal for his Washington visit – to undermine the American relationship with Japan. Xi succeeded, perhaps beyond his expectations.

Japanese policy makers saw this coming. They arranged a brief meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly between Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae and Donald Trump ahead of Xi’s arrival.

The meeting was empty of content but seemed reassuring. But the next day, Trump welcomed Xi by fondly recalling “the greatness that we had together fighting in World War Two” without mentioning the postwar alliance with Japan.

Xi followed the next day at the official banquet, making clear who was their common enemy. “Over 80 years ago, the Chinese and American people stood shoulder to shoulder in the fight against Japanese militarist aggressors,” Xi said, deliberately obscuring the fact that wartime China was led by the Nationalists, not their Communist foes. The official statements issued by both governments echoed the language of their status as wartime allies.

“Clearly, Beijing would like to drive a wedge between Trump and Takaichi,” respected scholar Mike Mochizuki told Toyo Keizai, “but Takaichi clings to Donald while Donald does not return the favor by calling her Sanae.”

This Chinese use of the wartime past is part of a broader campaign to increase diplomatic pressure on Japan and the Takaichi administration over the Prime Minister’s remarks on a Taiwan contingency and to push the Chinese characterization of Japan’s defense buildup as a renewal of Japanese wartime “militarism”.

Trump, thrilled by his role as a host to Xi, either ignored the Chinese strategic intent, or simply failed to understand the trap he had stepped into.

“Trump’s failure to grasp that the United States had allied with a different China and fought a different Japan will only invite more Chinese coercion,” commented Mireya Solis, the senior Japan expert at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

The Chinese wedge strategy may not be entirely effective. The U.S.-Japan alliance remains anchored in security establishments whose bonds have “deepened enough to prevent a U.S.-Japan estrangement even under Trump,” notes Mochizuki, affiliated with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

But Japanese officials are clearly rattled. The Prime Minister’s office felt compelled to tell the Yomiuri Shimbun that during a short phone call between Takaichi and Trump after the Xi visit, the American president reassured her that he had not sided with the Chinese leader in his criticism of Japan and urged him to hold talks with the Japanese Premier. “I’d be surprised if Trump spoke in detail about Japan with Xi,” a recently retired senior State Department official told this writer.

China’s war on Takaichi

China’s criticism of Japan intensified in response to Takaichi’s victory in the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election last October. Even before her remarks on a possible use of Japanese military forces in a Taiwan crisis, the Chinese were warning about the dangers of her administration as a triumph of the ‘new conservatives’ who favor defense buildup and cultivate close ties to pro-independence forces in Taiwan.

Takaichi’s unapologetic views on the war were well known in Beijing. She made a splash in the Diet early in her career, in 1994, challenging then Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi for his bold statements acknowledging the war as an act of aggression. Later Murayama issued his statement on the 50th anniversary of the war apologizing for Japan’s “colonial rule and aggression.”

For Takaichi, this was unacceptable. “You can’t just apologize on my behalf without my consent,” she said in the Diet exchange, making it clear that she viewed the war as “legally justifiable.” In a later interview, she pledged to revise the Murayama statement, saying that Japan “fought wars for self-preservation and self-defense.”

When Takaichi met Xi on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Korea in late October, shortly after she took power, the Chinese leader pointedly challenged these views.

“We should widely promote the spirit of the Murayama Statement,” he reportedly told her, “which reflected on the history of aggression and apologized to victimized countries.”

In that sense, Takaichi herself has created the opportunity for China to use the wartime past to try to isolate and pressure Japan.

“Takaichi shares (former Prime Minister) Abe’s revisionist views of history but lacks Abe’s pragmatic and prudent judgement,” says Japan scholar Mochizuki. “So it is not surprising that China has linked Taiwan, Japanese imperialism, and Japan’s defense buildup together to criticize what they see as Japan’s neomilitarism.”

The Chinese use of the wartime past continued with the late September visit of former Foreign Minister Iwaya Takeshi. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi linked the moment to the anniversary of the Tokyo war crimes trials.

"If Japan does not learn lessons from history and challenges the postwar 'Peace Constitution,' tries to revive its history of aggression and resurrect war criminals, it will not even be able to face the world, let alone move toward the future, and it will have no future," Wang said.

Behind this war talk, the Wang Yi talks with Iwaya are an effort to reach out to forces within Japan that believe Takaichi’s anti-China stance, and her overreliance on the relationship with the unreliable Trump, are a mistake. Iwaya, along with former Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru, is among those clearly opposed to the Prime Minister’s policies toward China. Even more intriguing is the recent interview in Shincho by special advisor Imai Takaya calling on Takaichi to change her language on Taiwan and take a strategic view that does “not rely on the US for everything.”

The upcoming APEC summit meeting in China may provide a window to repair relations. But it will require Japan to act, a Japan that is increasingly isolated by China.

China’s use of the wartime past is nothing new

However the current maneuvers play out, it is important to recognize that the Chinese use of the wartime past is hardly new. In a comparative study of the formation of wartime historical memory that we conducted at Stanford University, our research detailed how the Chinese Communist Party shifted in the last few decades to construct a patriotic narrative to replace one that focused on the struggle against their Nationalist enemies.

In this patriotic narrative, the war serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it allows the current Chinese leadership to assume the role of a great power that helped found the United Nations and was part of a global “anti-fascist” struggle. And it emphasizes the struggle of a unified Chinese people against the Japanese invader, claiming to have been victors in that war.

“There is a growing sense in China that its suffering and its contribution to the overall victory in World War II haven’t been sufficiently appreciated,” historian Rana Mitter, the author of several important books on the war and Chinese memory, told The Wire China in a 2020 interview. “World War II has enabled the state to say, look, this is when China was able to stand up for itself and fight back against invasion.”

In recent years, “history is used by China, including war history and the history of the United Nations, to make the case for Chinese global leadership since 1945,” Harvard Kennedy School historian Mitter told a recent seminar in Europe. The message is that in the current turbulence of the world order, China can play the role it played in 1945 in creating that order.

Beyond the claim to global leadership, the Chinese have not hesitated to use the wartime memories to target Japan.

Last September, the Chinese hosted a huge commemoration of the 80th anniversary, featuring a military parade attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Xi chose this moment to again emphasize the war against Japan and the creation of a “national united front against Japanese aggression established at the initiative of the Communist Party of China.”

Paired with the celebration, the Chinese film industry premiered two slickly produced blockbuster films, both of which were aimed not only at the Chinese audience but also distributed globally, including on streaming services like Netflix. “Dead to Rights” was yet another account of the Nanjing Massacre, done relatively artfully. But “731,” an account of the infamous secretive Japanese biological and chemical warfare unit that performed ghastly experiments on Chinese and foreign prisoners, was directly aimed at Japan. The depiction of Japanese as evil barbarians, and the failure of the United States to prosecute these war crimes, was garishly depicted.

This clash surfaced at the United Nations in what seems like an obscure issue – the existence of a clause in the UN charter which refers to “enemy states,” namely Japan and Germany, allowing the Allied powers from World War II to take action against those former Axis powers without prior Security Council approval. It was designed as a temporary safeguard against the resurgence of militarism but is widely recognized as obsolete and without effect. The General Assembly voted twice to remove the clause but it requires an amendment of the Charter that China and Russia can block.

Prime Minister Takaichi called on the UN to remove this clause. After her address to the General Assembly, China’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Sun Lei, defended its existence, pointing to “proof that Japan’s re-militarization has become a real threat to regional and global peace and stability.”

These history wars are decades long, and they shift in response to the needs of foreign policy, in both Beijing and Tokyo. China has played the history card, again, and it remains to be seen how Japan will respond. For Japan, the U.S. under Trump is increasingly an unreliable actor. But however this plays out, the past will never really be forgotten.

Japan's Diplomacy Overshadowed

Takaichi Obscured by the Trump-Xi Summit

By Takuya Nishimura, Senior Fellow, Asia Policy Point
Former editorial writer for the Hokkaido Shimbun
You can find his blog, J Update here.
September 28, 2026

A week ago, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi hoped to display Japan as the leader of the Asia-Pacific region – backed by the unshaken support of the United States. She outlined her position during a 30-hour visit between September 21 and 23 to the United Nations in New York. She needs to rebuild her diplomacy, which has not been going very well since her comment on the Taiwan contingency last November. However, her effort was overshadowed by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the U.S. and his meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House.
 
The official purpose of Takaichi’s trip to the U.S. was to give her first speech at the annual General Debate of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). In her address, Takaichi emphasized Japan’s commitment to the rule of law. “Since the end of the Second World War, Japan, as a peace-loving nation, has attached great importance to the rule of law in the settlement of any disputes,” she said. In this case, “rule of law” is a veiled reference to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
 
At home, Takaichi has received considerable backlash to her indecisive response to U.S. sanctions on Tomoko Akane, the Japanese president of the ICC. Takaichi needs to reverse the downward trend in the approval rating for her cabinet. By pledging unwavering support for the ICC, Takaichi distanced herself from Trump, who called the ICC “the out of control institution” in his speech to the UNGA.
 
Diplomacy based on democratic values is a crucial element for Takaichi to distinguish Japan from China. She promotes the concept of a “Free and Open” Indo-Pacific (FOIP) that was initiated by her political mentor, former prime minister Shinzo Abe. When Abe proposed this doctrine in 2016, China was extending its power throughout the world under the brand name “One Belt One Road.” The brand covered China’s advance to the South China Sea, which was found unlawful by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016, a month before Abe proposed the FOIP. Abe hoped to use the FOIP to counter China’s territorial aims.
 
Former premier Fumio Kishida revised the FOIP in 2023 to apply it to Russian aggression in Ukraine. Kishida reiterated that Ukraine today would be East Asia tomorrow. Takaichi has now updated the FOIP again to explain Japan’s effort to secure an international supply chain, which was impacted by the effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and by China’s weaponization of rare earths exports. Thus, the FOIP is a diplomatic tool for Japan to use to counter China’s growing influence in the world.
 
Takaichi also quoted from the FOIP in her meeting with Trump at the U.N. Headquarters just before her UNGP speech on September 22. “I appreciate Donald’s strong commitment to the Japan-U.S. alliance,” she said at the meeting. Takaichi tried to remind Trump of the fact that Japan should be the closest partner for the U.S. in Asia, hoping to deter Trump from making any excessive concessions on Taiwan in his meeting with Xi two days later.
 
However, rather than fostering the Japan-U.S. relationship, the meeting highlighted differences between Japan and the U.S. Takaichi told Trump that Japan had been and would in the future support the ICC, knowing that Trump was calling on countries to withdraw from it. Trump expressed concern about the depreciation of the Japanese yen. Takaichi did not refer to any discussion of Taiwan in her press conference after the meeting.
 
To her regret, the meeting between Trump and Xi on September 24 and 25 must not have been what Takaichi had hoped it would be. Xi urged Trump to oppose the independence of Taiwan, and Trump did not say how he had responded. Trump also did not say whether the U.S. would resume exporting weapons to Taiwan. “He understands very much how I feel,” Trump said after the meeting.
 
On regulation of artificial intelligence, on which both countries compete, Trump and Xi agreed to establish a body for bilateral dialogue. Both leaders hoped to minimize the difference between them. Fundamentally, however, both leaders were responding to domestic concerns. Trump must show that he can manage the China relationship to attract voters in the mid-term elections in November. For his part, Xi must show at the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2027 that China is a great power equivalent to the U.S. Trump and Xi confirmed that they will have two meetings later this year, at APEC in China and at the G20 in the U.S..
 
Trump’s and Xi’s exchange of their views of World War II history – not necessarily those of trained historians – must have been a nightmare for Takaichi. In the welcoming ceremony, Trump noted the long-running close relationship between both nations – a contentious one that began only 50 years ago – and called them “allies in World War II,” a war that had ended 30 years earlier.” Xi replied at the state dinner that both nations “stood shoulder to shoulder in the fight against Japanese militarist aggressors.” The White House fact sheet on Xi’s visit also explicitly noted the wartime alliance.
 
Takaichi did not respond directly to their characterizations of history, stressing instead the firmness of the Japan-U.S. alliance even after the history of brutal warfare. In her speech to the UNGA Takaichi’s only historical reference was to call for the rescission of the “enemy states clauses” (Article 107 and parts of Articles 53 and 77) from the UN Charter, which apply to the Axis powers defeated in WWII, including Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Finland, as well as Japan.
 
Takaichi and her rightwing supporters hope that time has obscured Japan’s war history of atrocities and criminality. They believe that the Abe administration’s active revision and questioning of historical facts has caused painful memories to fade. Today, they believe, Japan should be only remembered as the war’s loser – devastated by relentless bombing and two atomic bombs.
 
However, Xi took the opportunity to emphasize that China and the U.S. were allies against an invading Japan, creating a bond “forged in blood and fire.” Trump agreed. Japan’s lingering war history and insufficient apologies resonate with Americans as they do with the Chinese. The past year’s identification of American POW remains from the war found in Tokyo, Taiwan, and the Philippines* and the POW’s hometown burials have revived memories of Japanese viciousness.
 
The negotiations between the two major powers -- over Taiwan’s status, the development of AI, and the interpretation of history – presumably will take place, regardless of Japan’s concerns. Takaichi once described her diplomacy as “flourishing on the world’s center stage,” tracking the aim of former premier Abe. The Trump-Xi meeting, however, and whatever its long-term outcome, revealed that Japan is marginalized by practice and history in the U.S.-China power game.

*Remains of American POWs of Japan who died in Takao (Kaohsiung), Taiwan; Subic Bay, the Philippines; Cabanatuan, the Philippines; and Tokyo, Japan who were buried in mass graves as unknowns after the war in the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines and the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii have been identified recently by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Hundreds of hometown burials with full military honors have taken place across the U.S. reviving memories of the War.

Asia Policy Events, Week of August 9, 2026

Asia Policy Point is on summer recess, like the U.S. Congress. We will, however, post some events weekly for our readers and members. If you want to receive these directly to your mailbox, you have to become a "member" of APP. An individual, nonshareable membership is only $105/year and includes our occasional papers of on Japanese politics and access to our office while visiting Washington. SIGN UP HERE.

WEEK OF AUGUST 9, 2026

8/9 - 1945. Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki.
8/11 - Mountain Day, National Holiday, Japan

8/12 - Demise of Prophet Muhammad and Martyrdom of Imam Hassan, National Holiday, Iran

8/14 - International Memorial Day for Comfort Women. On August 14, 1991, when South Korean Kim Hak-sun became the first to give a public testimony about her experience as a comfort woman victim.
8/14 - Taiwan's annual 10-day Han Kuang military exercise ends.

8/15 - 1945. Imperial Japan accepts the Potsdam Declaration and ceases combat operations. Shūsen-kinenbi (Memorial Day for the End of the War in Japan). National Memorial Service for the War Dead at the Nippon Budokan hall in Tokyo with the Emperor and prime minister. Rightwing parliamentarians visit the Yasukuni Shrine. Possible visit to the war memorializing Yasukuni Shrine by Prime Minister Takaichi. She visited last year, but was not PM.

8/15 - Independence Day, National Holiday, South/North Korea. Day off 8/17.

8/15 – Annual Far Eastern Prisoners of War (FEPOW) Day in Taiwan hosted by Taiwan POW Camps Memorial Society.

BEYOND THE STRAIT: THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL ENERGY SECURITY. 8/11, 10:00-11:00am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Arab Gulf States Institute (AGSI). Speakers: Carole Nakhle, CEO, Crystol Energy, Secretary General, Arab Energy Club; Robin Mills, Non-Resident Fellow, AGSI, CEO, Qamar Energy; Adnan Shihab-Eldin, Senior Visiting Research Fellow, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies; Moderator: Kate Dourian, Non-Resident Fellow, AGSI, Contributing Editor, MEES, Fellow, Energy Institute.

AN UPHILL CLIMB: PUSHING FOR AN INCLUSIVE POLITICAL DIALOGUE IN AFGHANISTAN. 8/12, 10:00-11:00am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Speakers: Ambassador Nasir A. Andisha, Ambassador and Permanent Representative, Afghanistan to the UN in Geneva; Palwasha Hassan, Executive Director, Mina's List; Ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne, Former Deputy U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico and Argentina; Richard Bennett, UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan; Annie Pforzheimer, Adjunct Senior Fellow, Indo-Pacific Security Program, CNAS.

ISRAEL AND THE U.S. IN A CHANGING LANDSCAPE: IS THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP FAILING? 8/13, 10:00-10:45am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Carnegie. Speakers: Aaron David Miller, Senior Fellow, American Statecraft Program; Yael Lempert, Vice President for Outreach, Middle East Institute; Daniel C. Kurtzer, Lecturer and S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Middle East Policy Studies, Princeton University; Shibley Telhami, Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, University of Maryland, College Park. 

SIX MONTHS AFTER EPIC FURY: THE STATE OF THE CONFLICT IN THE GULF. 8/13, 10:00-11:00am (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: Hudson. Speakers: Behnam Ben Taleblu, Iran Program Senior Director and Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies; Michael Doran, Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East; Ludovic Hood, Senior Fellow, Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East; Zineb Riboua, Research Fellow, Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East. 

AN OVERVIEW OF PUBLIC INTERNATIONAL LAW. 8/13, 1:00pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Law Library, Library of Congress. Speakers: Law Library Staff. 

VISUAL ART REPRESENTATIONS OF WORLD WAR II IN THE PHILIPPINES: DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES OF A SHARED TRAGEDY. 8/15, 4:00-6:00pm (PHT), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: Ayala Museum, Manila, Philippines. Speaker: Jose T. Ricardo PhD, country's foremost scholar on the Second World War in the Philippines and the Asia-Pacific, specializes in military and diplomatic history, focus on the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. 

APP'S BOOKS OF THE WEEK of June 28, 2026

 📚Books of the Week📖

Red Arrow Across the Pacific: 

The Thirty-Second Infantry Division during World War II

By Mark D. Van Ells, Professor of History, Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York

PURCHASE BOOK 11/12/2024

The story of the renowned Thirty-Second "Red Arrow" Infantry Division: qNational Guard unit—which originated in Wisconsin and Michigan but soon evolved to include soldiers from California to New England—became one of the first US military units deployed overseas in World War II, eventually logging more combat hours than any other US Army division. Offers a cultural history of the Red Arrow's wartime experience, from its mobilization in 1940, to its deployment across New Guinea, Australia, and the Philippines, to its postwar occupation of Japan. Drawing from letters, memoirs, and interviews, Van Ells lets the soldiers speak for themselves, describing in their own words the terror of combat, their impressions of foreign lands, the struggle to maintain their own humanity, and the many ways the war profoundly changed them.

1942: Crux of War

By Jonathan Parshall, Lecturer, 

US Naval War College

PURCHASE BOOK 6/18/2026

By the end of 1942 there had been a sea-change in the conduct of WWII. Within just one 40-day timespan, the British had triumphed over Rommel at Alamein; British and American forces landed in North Africa to confront the Axis position there; the Americans won two naval battles at Guadalcanal, sealing the fate of that campaign and with it Japanese expansionism; the Red Army launched a massive counter-offensive at Stalingrad that would condemn six Axis armies-and hundreds of thousands of German, Italian, Romanian and Hungarian soldiers-to eventual destruction. The Allies had somehow gained the upper hand, forcing the Axis powers into a defensive crouch from which they would not rebound. The war, in short, had turned.

Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail

By Mark Leonard, Co-founder and Director,

European Council on Foreign Relations

PURCHASE BOOK 6/23/2026

Trump is blowing up political order. Xi Jinping is scrambling the economy. And Putin is redrawing the map of Europe. At a time when every crisis bleeds into the next – from pandemics and wars to climate shocks and AI revolutions – the old rules of global order are collapsing. Leonard reveals how geopolitics is being rewritten in an age of 'Un-Order', where no one agrees on the rules, and even the concept of order itself is up for debate. Drawing on years of conversations with leaders and thinkers from Beijing to Washington, Leonard argues that we are witnessing a new divide in international politics.

*Books purchased through the links here support Asia Policy Point*

Books selected on the APP website are not a sign of endorsement. 

They are simply new and interesting.

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 Policy Events, Monday September 29, 2025

UNDERSTANDING THE THAILAND-CAMBODIA CONFLICT: HOW BORDER DISPUTES DRIVE DOMESTIC POLITICAL CRISES AND VICE VERSA. 9/29, 10:00-11:30am (SGT), 9/28, 10:00-11:30pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Yusof Ishak Institute (ISEAS). Speakers: Dr. Puangthong R. Pawakapan, Professor, Department of International Relations, Faculty of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University; Supalak Ganjanakhundee, Advisor, Military Affairs Committee, Thailand’s House of Representatives. 

WORLD WAR II AT 80: THE UNENDING QUEST FOR REDRESS. 9/29, 6:30pm (JST), 5:30am (EDT), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: Yokosuka Council on Asia Pacific Studies. Speaker: Timothy Webster, Lawyer, Professor, Translator. 5

BOOK TALK: THE NATIONAL INTEREST: POLITICS AFTER GLOBALIZATION. 9/29, 11:00am-Noon (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Quincy Institute. Speakers: author Philip Cunliffe, Associate Professor of International Relations, Department of Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London; Dr. Zachary Paikin, Deputy Director, Better Order Project, Research Fellow, Grand Strategy Program, Quincy Institute.  PURCHASE BOOK

WHAT ROBERT F. KENNEDY’S LIBERAL PATRIOTISM COULD TEACH POLITICAL LEADERS TODAY. 9/29, 11:00am-12:30pm (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Progressive Policy Institute (PPI). Speakers: Robert Doar, President, AEI; Richard D. Kahlenberg, Director, American Identity Project, PPI; Will Marshall, President, PPI; Ritchie Torres, US House of Representatives (D-NY).

BREAKING TRADITION: PRESIDENT TRUMP’S APPROACH TO POLICY DECISIONS AND IMPLEMENTATION. 9/29, 12:30pm (EDT), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: Japan Society. Speaker: Wilbur L. Ross, Jr., Former U.S. Secretary of Commerce; Former Board Chair, Japan Society. Members only.

SHIFTING DYNAMICS IN THE MIDDLE EAST: PYONGYANG'S OBSERVATIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES. 9/29, 2:00pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: National Committee on North Korea. Speakers: Yaakov Katz, Israeli-American author and journalist, co-founder of MEAD; Siegfried Hecker, former director, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University.

INTERNATIONAL LAW FOR WHOM? 9/29, 3:00-4:00pm (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: U.S.–Asia Law Institute. Speaker: Jean-Marc Coicaud, Distinguished Professor of Law and Global Affairs, Rutgers University, author The Law and Politics of International Legitimacy. PURCHASE BOOK

THE IDEAS THAT BUILT AMERICA—AND WHERE THEY STAND TODAY. 9/29, 5:00-6:30pm (EDT), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: R Street Institute. Speakers: Sabrina Schaeffer, Vice President, R Street Institute; Lindsay M. Chervinsky, PhD, Presidential Historian/Executive Director, George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. 

BEYOND TARIFFS: WHAT NEXT FOR THE GLOBAL TRADE REALIGNMENT? 9/29, 5:00-7:30pm (EDT), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: Association of Women in International Trade (WIIT); George Washington University (GWU). Speakers: Christine McDaniel, Senior Economist, Macroeconomics, Trade & Investment Global Practice, World Bank Group; Daniel Ciarcia, Account Manager/Carbon Consultant, EcoEngineers; Bennett Caplan, President, Abridge; Jenny A. Kai, Senior Manager, Government and Public Affairs, Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA). 

Asia Policy Events, Monday, September 8, 2025

ARE YOUTHS MOVING TO THE RIGHT? INSIGHTS FROM SURVEYS IN INDONESIA AND THAILAND. 9/8, 10:00-11:30am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. Speakers: Voradon Lerdrat, Researcher and Director of Research and Policy Partnerships, 101 Public Policy Think Tank, Thailand; Dr Iim Halimatusa’diyah, Visiting Senior Fellow at the Regional Social and Cultural Studies Programme, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. 

, 

AMERICA'S PROPULSION ADVANTAGE AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT: INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE. 9/8, 10:30am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Speakers: Steve Russell, Vice President & General Manager, Edison Works at GE Aerospace; Lt Gen David A. Deptula USAF (Ret.), Dean, Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. 

THE ENDURING LEGACIES OF WORLD WAR II IN EAST ASIA: REFLECTIONS 80 YEARS LATER. 9/8, Noon-1:15pm (EDT), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsors: Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Korea Institute - Harvard University, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations - Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University Asia Center, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies. Speakers: Thomas Berger, Professor of International Relations, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University; Mark Caprio, Professor Emeritus, Rikkyo University, Tokyo; Kim Koo Visiting Professor of Korean Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University; Rana Mitter, ST Lee Chair in US-Asia Relations, Harvard Kennedy School; Christina Davis, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics, Department of Government and Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University. 

TRUMP VS. HISTORY. 9/8, 4:00-5:00pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: New Republic. Speakers: David Blight, Sterling Professor, American History, Yale University; James Grossman, Executive Director, American Historical Association; Leslie M. Harris, Professor of History and Black Studies, Northwestern University; Amna Khalid, Professor of History, Carleton College. 

RIGHT-WING HISTORICAL MYTHS: A CHALLENGE FOR SOCIETY, ACADEMIA AND POLITICS. 9/8, 7:00-9:00pm (AEST), 1:00-3:00pm (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: Heinrich Böll Foundation. Speakers: Frank Bösch, Historian and Director, Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam; Constanze Itzel, Director, House of European History, Brussels; Katja Meier, Member, Saxon State Parliament; Former Saxon State Minister of Justice and for Democracy, Europe and Equality, Alliance 90/The Greens; Volker Weiß, Historian and Journalist; Moderator: Christine Watty, Editorial Director and Presenter, Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Berlin.

BOOK TALK: NEW BOOKS ON JAPAN: EXHIBITIONIST JAPAN: THE SPECTACLE OF MODERN DEVELOPMENT. 9/8, 8:00-9:30pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Modern Japan History Association. Speakers: author Angus Lockyer, Lecturer, Rhode Island School of Design; Jordan Sand, Professor of History, Georgetown University; Moderator: Joseph Seeley, Associate Professor of History, University of Virginia.  PURCHASE BOOK 

Monday Asia Policy Events, May 12, 2025

CONVERSATION WITH FORMER USTRS. 5/12, 10:00-11:30am (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Michael Froman, Former USTR (2013-2017); Ronald Kirk, Former USTR (2009-2013); Susan Schwab, Former USTR (2006-2009); Robert Portman, Former USTR (2005-2006); Charlene Barshefsky, Former USTR (1997-2001); Mickey Kantor, Former USTR (1993-1996); Carla A. Hills, Former USTR (1989-1993); William Alan Reinsch, Senior Advisor and Scholl Chair Emeritus. 

PUSHING BACK AND MOVING FORWARD: A CONVERSATION WITH SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN. 5/12, 10:30-11:30am (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsors: Center for American Progress. Speaker: Chris Van Hollen, Senator, Democratic Party, Maryland.  

SHIFTING TRADE DYNAMICS: TRUMP’S TRADE POLICY & ITS IMPACT. 5/12, 12:30pm (EDT), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: Japan Society. Speaker: Michael Beeman, Former Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Japan, Korea, and APEC. Membership.

THE INDIA-PAKISTAN CONFLICT. 5/12, 1:00-2:00pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Columbia University Institute of Global Politics. Speakers: Shamila Chaudhary, fmr. National Security Council Director, Pakistan and Afghanistan; Jon Finer, fmr. Assistant to the President, Principal Deputy National Security Advisor, IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow, Columbia SIPA; Rajan Menon, Emeritus Anne and Bernard Spitzer Chair in Political Science, City College of New York, Adjunct Senior Research Scholar, Columbia SIPA; Mike Pompeo, 70th Secretary of State; IGP Carnegie Distinguished Fellow, Columbia SIPA; Rumela Sen, Lecturer and Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies Affiliated Faculty Member, Columbia SIPA, South Asia Institute Affiliated Faculty Member, Columbia University.

STRATEGIC TRENDS 2025: A TRANS-ATLANTIC LOOK AHEAD. 5/12, 2:30–3:30pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: CSIS Intelligence, National Security, and Technology Program; CSIS Defense and Security Program. Speakers: Emily Harding, Vice President, CSIS Defense and Security Department; Daniel Möckli, Head of Think Tank, Center for Security Studies (ETH Zürich); Gorana Grgić, Senior Researcher, Swiss and Euro-Atlantic Security Team, CSS; Névine Schepers, Team Head and Senior Researcher, Swiss and Euro-Atlantic Security Team, CSS; Myriam Dunn Cavelty, Deputy for Research and Teaching, CSS. 

TRUMP AND THE COURTS: WILL OUR GUARDRAILS HOLD? 5/12, 3:00–3:45pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Speakers: Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Jack Goldsmith, Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; Aaron David Miller, Senior Fellow, American Statecraft Program. 

REVOKING THE CITIZENSHIP OF JEWS IN VICHY FRANCE. 5/12, 7:00pm (EDT), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Speaker: Dr. Claire Zalc, Research Director, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France), Professor, École des Hautes études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, France). 

BOOK TALK: THE TIME OF LAUGHTER: COMEDY AND THE MEDIA CULTURES OF JAPAN. 5/12, 9:00pm (EDT) 5/13, 10:00am (JST), HYBRID. Sponsor: Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies (YCAPS). Speaker: author Dr. David Humphrey, Associate Professor, Japanese, Global Studies, Michigan State University. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3RAF4jt

Asia Policy Monday Events, March 17, 2025

NAVIGATING THE ARCTIC–A GEOSTRATEGIC FRONTIER FOR THE U.S., JAPAN, AND PARTNERS. 3/17, 10:00-11:30am (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: Stimson. Speakers: Dr. Gaëlle Rivard Piché, Strategic Analyst with Defence Research and Development Canada; Captain Takahiro Ishihara, Ret. Captain of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force; Rear Admiral Lars Saunes, Ret. Rear Admiral, Norway, Professor, Distinguished International Fellow at the US Navy War College. 

DEMOCRATIC BACKSLIDING DAMAGES FAVORABLE U.S. IMAGE AMONG GLOBAL PUBLIC: IMPLICATIONS FOR ASIA. 3/17, Noon–1:30pm (EDT). IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto. Speaker: Yusaku Horiuchi, Professor of Government and Mitsui Professor of Japanese Studies, Dartmouth College. 

KOREAN PENINSULA UPDATE WITH THE NK NEWS TEAM. 3/17, Noon (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: Korea Society. Speakers: Chad O'Carroll, Chief Executive Officer, Korea Risk Group; Jeongmin Kim, Lead Correspondent, NK News, Editorial Director, Korea Pro; Colin Zwirko, Senior Analytic Correspondent, NK News; Shrey as Reddy, Lead Correspondent, NK News. 

REWRITING THE NARRATIVE ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS. 3/17, 12:30-2:00pm (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: Nuclear Threat Initiative (NIT). Speakers: Joan Rohlfing, President and Chief Operating Officer, NTI; Dr. Emma Belcher, President, Ploughshares; Ravi Garla, Strategic Communications Consultant, NTI.

BOOK TALK: RAIN OF RUIN: TOKYO, HIROSHIMA, AND THE SURRENDER OF JAPAN. 3/17, 3:00-4:30pm (EDT). VIRTUAL. Sponsor: History and Public Policy Program, Wilson Center; American Historical Association. Speakers: Richard Overy, Professor of History, University of Exeter, author of Rain of Ruin: Tokyo, Hiroshima, and the Surrender of Japan. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/40VNKVA

BOOK TALK: BEING KOREAN, BECOMING JAPANESE?: NATIONHOOD, CITIZENSHIP, AND RESISTANCE IN JAPAN. 3/17, 4:00-5:30pm (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: University of Michigan Center for Japanese Studies. Speaker: author Hwaji Shin, Professor of Sociology, University of San Francisco, fmr. Toyota Visiting Professor, University of Michigan. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/4izPL1b 

Asia Policy Monday Events, February 10, 2025

2025 WASHINGTON INTERNATIONAL TRADE CONFERENCE. 2/10-11, 9:00am-1:00pm (EST). HYBRID. Sponsor: Washington International Trade Association. Fee

MARRIAGE EQUALITY IN JAPAN: LGBT COUPLES ON THE VERGE OF FULL(ER) EQUALITY? 2/10, 6:30-8:00pm (JST); 4:30-6:00am (EST). HYBRID. Sponsor: ICAS, Temple University Japan. Speakers: Makiko Terahara, Director, Marriage For All Japan; Robert Dujarric, Co-director, ICAS, Temple University, Japan Campus. 

THE U.S.-INDIA PARTNERSHIP UNDER TRUMP 2.0. 2/10, 3:00-6:00pm (EST), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: Observer Research Foundation America. Speakers: Lindsey Ford, former Senior Director for South Asia, National Security Council; Sameer Lalwani, Senior Expert on South Asia, U.S. Institute of Peace; Walter Russell Mead, Distinguished Fellow, The Hudson Institute; Amy Hariani, Senior Advisor, U.S.-India Business Council; Richard Rossow, Senior Advisor and Chair on India and Emerging Asia Economics, Center for Strategic & International Studies; Anand Shah, Partner, The Asia Group. 

BOOK TALK: BOOK AND DAGGER: HOW SCHOLARS AND LIBRARIANS BECAME THE UNLIKELY SPIES OF WORLD WAR II. 2/10, 4:00pm–5:30pm (EST). VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Wilson Center. Speaker: author Elyse Graham, Historian, Professor, Stony Brook University. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3WOADod

The Lessons of August 15, 1945

On August 15, 78 years ago, Japan's Emperor Hirohito broadcast to his subjects "that our empire accepts the provisions of their [the Allies] Joint Declaration [of the Powers, Potsdam Declaration]." The fighting was to stop. Whether he believed this was a surrender or not, is still subject to debate. What the Japanese people heard that day was a recording of his statement made the night before. The Emperor's voice maintained its divine distance from his subjects as he explained "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest." He concluded by asking the nation "to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable."

Memories have faded and most Americans are surprised to learn that Japan was an enemy during WWII. One result of this fugue is that governments East and West find little opposition to their rewriting of WWII history and its aftermath. Generally, this has not been for the better and always for personal political gain. Worse, Washington counts many of these countries as allies and remains silent.

These revisionist histories have undermined the values that have shaped the postwar "liberal democratic order."  Authoritarian regimes now erode individual freedoms, human rights, and humanitarian cooperation. Glorifying strongmen, dismissing war atrocities, identifying perpetrators now as victims, and co-opting the victor's history as one's own is upending the legacy and lessons of WWII. A new "glorious history" is being promulgated in Poland, Hungary, China, Japan and other places. Unashamedly, the Polish government claims that Poles were uninvolved with the persecution of Jews and a Japanese diplomat praises the "Bushido Spirit" of the famed Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team to their sons.

Thus, it is welcome that this fall there are a number of seminars and conferences examining the immediate postwar period. 

In Japan, the revisionist, denialist history has become normalized by two decades of conservative nationalist governments. Western Alliance Managers consequently do not recognize that nationalist populism has consumed the body politic and they have concluded incorrectly that Japan is "stable" and "unscathed from the populist wave" around the world. Little attention is given to how Japan's official war apology has been diminished, voting districts are unconstitutional, or to Japan's well-funded history disinformation campaign. 

Prime Minister Kishida's address at the Seventy-Eighth National Memorial Ceremony for the War Dead yesterday repeated his predecessor Abe's 2015 statement that makes no mention of apology or remorse to Japan's victims. He, like Abe and Suga before him, promises only: "We will not forget, even for a moment, that the peace and prosperity that Japan enjoys today was built atop the precious lives and the history of suffering of the war dead." Ceremony photos and documents. Kishida marks 78th anniversary of World War II end without mentioning Japan's wartime aggression, Associated Press, Aug. 15, 2023.

As a new book by a Brookings scholar supports this celebratory view of contemporary Japan, The author sees the Japanese government as having reinvented itself to encourage more political engagement with the world and a greater military presence in the region. This is a new self-confidence that will award Tokyo with credibility and global leadership. To be sure, I have not read the book (then again neither have the folks who recommend it on the dust jacket). I have, however, heard this argument repeatedly over the decades that Japan has changed and it is in our image. Someone once observed that Western efforts to "fix" Japan always result in the tutor being broken-hearted.
See: Japan’s Quiet Leadership Reshaping the Indo-Pacific by Mireya Solis, (release August 24, 2023).

Or watch the book talk: Japan's Quiet Leadership: Reshaping the Pacific, Wednesday, September 6, 89:30-10:30am EDT, Washington, DC, Hybrid. Sponsor: Brookings Institution. Speakers: Mireya Solís, Director - Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Philip Knight Chair in Japan Studies; Kurt W. Tong, Managing Partner - The Asia Group (grandson of Philippine internee Rev Walter Curtis Tong); Yuichi Hosoya, Director of Research, API & Professor, Keio University; Demetri Sevastopulo, U.S.-China Correspondent, Financial Times.

But not everyone forgets: Memorial service for POWs in Yokohama passed down to next generation, August 12, 2023, Mainichi Shimbun

Here are a number of talks and conferences this fall that examine Japan's Pacific War and its aftermath. I hope you can attend in person or virtually. 

A. Friday September 8

MJHA Distinguished Annual Lecture

Tessa Morris-Suzuki on Writing War: History in Occupied Japan and its Echoes for Today

Hosted by The Modern Japan History Association

Speaker: Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Professor Emerita of Japanese History, Australian National University https://researchprofiles.anu.edu.au/en/persons/tessa-morris-suzuki . 

Date/time and registration information:

Online, free.
Saturday, September 9, 2023 | 9:00-10:30 AM Australian Eastern Standard Time
Friday, September 8, 2023 | 7:00-8:30 PM (EST)
https://mjha.org/Distinguished-Annual-Lecture 

As the world edges into a new Cold War, rising political tensions in East Asia are reflected in growing conflict over memories of history, and particularly of the history of the Asia-Pacific War. Increasing nationalism in all the countries of the region finds expression in rewritings of that history. In Japan, a central feature of recent waves of historical revisionism has been a focus on the shaping of historiography in the post war occupation period. The period from August 1945 to May 1952 was the era when historians first struggled to give meaning to the disastrous events of the war which had ravaged East Asia during the previous decade or more. The diverse ways in which they did this has had an enduring effect on the way in which the war is remembered to the present day. In the context of contemporary controversies over history, it is important to return to that occupation era and to reassess the possibilities and limitations of the way in which the history of the war was written by those who had just experienced it in their own lives.

B. Saturday September 16
Annual Symposium
Occupation: The Legacy of the Asiatic Pacific War 

Hosted by The Admiral Nimitz Foundation.  
Speakers: Richard B. Frank, internationally recognized leading authority on the Asia-Pacific War; Dr. Xiaobing Li, professor of the Department of History and Geography and the Don Betz Endowed Chair in International Studies at the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO); Ricardo Trota Jose, professor of history at the University of the Philippines, Diliman; Mindy L. Kotler is founder and director of Asia Policy Point. Special guest, Marie Vallejo, author of Dauntless, a book about the First and Second Filipino Regiments.

Date/time and registration information:
In person and online. Fee.

Saturday, September 16, 2023, 9:00am-5:00pm (CDT)
https://www.pacificwarmuseum.org/event/2023-admiral-nimitz-symposium

The Admiral Nimitz Foundation is excited to welcome you back to this year’s Annual Symposium. The focus this year will be on Japan's occupation of Asia. Titled, “Occupation: The Legacy of the Asiatic Pacific War,” the symposium will explore the nuanced ramifications of the Japanese occupation.

C. Saturday September 23

6th Annual Conference on WWII in the Philippines

War Crimes - From WWII Until Today

Hosted by: Bataan Legacy Historical Society in partnership with the University of San Francisco's Philippine Studies Program, Memorare Manila 1945 and USF Kasamahan

Speakers: James Zarsadiaz, Director, Philippine Studies Program, University of San Francisco; Prof. Mark Hull, Professor of War Crimes, U.S. Army Command & General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth; Philippine Consul General in San Francisco Neil F. Ferrer; Father Paul Fitzgerald, S.J., President, University of San Francisco; Benjamin Hall, Fox News State Department Correspondent, Eyewitness to War Crimes Today (Via Zoom); Jose Custodio, Fellow, Consortium of Indo Pacific Researchers; Christopher Capozzola, Professor of History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Richard Frank, Pacific War historian, author, Tower of Skulls; Marie Vallejo, author of Dauntless, a book about the First and Second Filipino Regiments; Kate LaFerriere, daughter of Frank Innis, former civilian POW in Los Banos; Cynthia Bonta, survivor of the Los Baños massacre, mother of California Attorney General Rob Bonta; and Richard Foye, author of Foye And The Filipinos Bailout, Escape, And Rescue Of A Navy Fighter Pilot In World War Two Luzon, is the son of Ensign William Foye, an F6F Hellcat Pilot and a member of the Air Group Twenty assigned to the USS Enterprise (CV6).

Date/time and registration information:

In person, Facebook Live, Taped, fee
Saturday, September 23, 2023 | 10:00am - 4:00pm (PDT)

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/war-crimes-from-wwii-until-today-tickets-636013321967

The conference aims to present the war crimes the invading Japanese perpetrated upon soldiers and civilians in the Philippines. A compelling discussion on war crimes in the Philippines and its effects on subsequent generations as well as similarities in today's world.

D. Thursday December 7 to Saturday December 9
16th International Conference on World War II
Finding Hope In A World Destroyed: WWII Liberations & Legacies

Hosted by National WWII Museum, New Orleans.

Speakers: [there are no affiliations listed on the website and your editor simply did not have the energy to track everyone down]: Jason Dawsey  ; Francine Hirsch  ; Robert Hutchinson  ; Günter Bischof  ; John Curatola, Military Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy; Rana Mitter, University of Oxford; Yuma Totani, University of Hawaii; Yoshikuni Igarashi, Vanderbilt University; William Hitchcock  ;Blanche Wiesen Cook  ;Jeremi Suri  ;Lizabeth Cohen   ; Krewasky Salter, Pritzker Military Museum & Library; Marcus Cox  : Kara Dixon Vuic  ; David Davis  ;Jeremy Black   ; Robert Citino, National WWII Museum; Richard B. Frank, Pacific War historian, author, Tower of Skulls;  Craig Symonds, Distinguished Visiting Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History for the academic years 2017–2020 at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island; Trent Hone, a Vice President with ICF and an award-winning naval historian, author of Learning War: The Evolution of Fighting Doctrine in the U.S. Navy, 1898–1945; Allan R. Millett   ;Keith Lowe   ;Ronald Spector, professor emeritus, George Washington University; John McManus  : Conrad Crane  ; Steph Hinnershitz  ; Catherine Musemeche  ;Dave Gutierrez  ; Jim McNaughton  ; Gordon H. “Nick” Mueller, PhD,   ;William Hitchcock  ;Jeremi Suri  ;Major General Peter Gravett  ;Cameron McCoy  ;Robert Edsel  ;Alexandra Richie  ;Wendy Lower  ; Paul Hilliard  ; Kirk Saduski   ;Donald L. Miller  ; John Orloff

Panel of particular interest (December 7):
Aftermath in Asia
Chair: John Curatola, Military Historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy
“The War That Never Really Ended: WWII’s Long Legacy”: Rana Mitter, University of Oxford
“Justice in Asia and the Pacific Region, 1945-1952: Allied War Crimes Prosecutions”: Yuma Totani, University of Hawaii
“Japan’s Decade After Defeat: Occupation and Democratization”: Yoshikuni Igarashi, Vanderbilt University

Date/time and registration information:

In person only in New Orleans, LA, fee
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/programs/16th-international-conference-world-war-ii

The International Conference on World War II is the premier adult educational event bringing together the best and brightest scholars, authors, historians, and witnesses to history from around the globe to discuss key battles, personalities, strategies, issues, and controversies of the war that changed the world. The agenda, speakers, and times are not yet set.