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.

A Comfort Women Legacy

These women in Indonesia were able to avoid being raped and taken to become Comfort Women because their matriarchal tribe understood what the invading Japanese wanted and what they were fearful of. Thus, as young girls they were painfully and extensively tattooed to give the impression that they were already taken, married. The Japanese did not question why such young girls were already married. So much history here.

War and Memory in Japan

Something Dreadful Happened in the Past: 

Generational Memory of War and Peace in Japan

Akiko Hashimoto (Visiting Professor of Sociology and Asian Studies at Portland State University, and Faculty Fellow of Yale University’s Center for Cultural Sociology) speaks to Temple University's Japan Campus,
Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS) on November 9, 2017.

click to order

She is author and editor of volumes on cultural sociology and comparative sociology, focused on social constructions of reality in varied cultural settings. Her special interests are cultural trauma, war memory, national identity, culture and power, popular culture and media, family and aging.

Japanese children are raised in an environment encoded with generational memory that encourages them to develop negative moral sentiments about the Asia-Pacific War. The “encouragement” comes in subtle and unsubtle ways, as young children develop gut instincts that “something dreadful happened in the past,” even if they don’t fully understand what or why. A growing number of cultural institutions and communities play a pivotal role in producing this generational memory as the wartime generation passes on. Drawing on the emotions of cultural trauma to forge a pacifist moral consciousness is a common technique of transmitting memory at such sites. Hashimoto’s talk will explore the broader cultural premise of the pacifist nation underlying the plural narratives of dark history that continue to cast a shadow on postwar Japan. The talk is based on Hashimoto’s The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory and Identity in Japan which has recently been published in a Japanese translation.

Monday in Washington March 13, 2017

Motion is not Movement...

CROSS-STRAIT RELATIONS AT A JUNCTURE: JAPANESE AND AMERICAN PERSPECTIVE. 3/13, 9:00-11:00am. Sponsor: Brookings. Speakers: Richard C. Bush, Michael H. Armacost Chair, Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies, Director, Center for East Asia Policy Studies, Senior Fellow, Foreign policy, John L. Thornton China Center; Chisako T. Masuo, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Kyushu University; Russell Hsiao, Executive Director, Global Taiwan Institute; Yasuhiro Matsuda, Professor of International Politics, University of Tokyo.

CUTTING FOREIGN AID? 3/13, 9:30-11:00am. Sponsor:  Center for Global Development. Speakers: Scott Morris, Senior Fellow, Director, US Development Policy Initiative, Center for Global Development; John Norris, Executive Director, Sustainable Security and Peacebuilding Initiative, Center for American Progress; Danielle Pletka, Senior Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, AEI; James M. Roberts, Research Fellow, Economic Freedom and Growth, Heritage; Moderator: Rajesh Mirchandani, Vice President, Communications and Policy Outreach, Center for Global Development.

NORTHERN IRELAND’S LESSONS FOR ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACE. 3/13, 1:00-5:00pm. Sponsor: Center for Middle East and Africa, US Institute of Peace (USIP). Speakers: Nancy Lindborg, President, USIP; Hon. George Mitchell, Former Senator (D-Maine); Carol Cunningham, Unheard Voices; Melanie Greenberg, Alliance for Peacebuilding; Brandon Hamber, Professor, International Conflict Research Institute, Ulster University; Adrian Johnston, International Fund for Ireland; Joel Braunold, Alliance for Middle East Peace; Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen, Father Josh Thomas, Kids4Peace; Sarah Yerkes, Brookings; Moderators: Amb. Anne Anderson, Embassy of Ireland; Rami Dajani, USIP.

REGIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON US POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST. 3/13, 3:00pm. Sponsor: Atlantic Council. Speakers: Kristin Diwan, Senior Fellow, Arab Gulf States Institute; H.A. Hellyer, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Rafik Hariri Center for Middle East, Atlantic Council; Haykel Ben Mahfoud, Nonresident Fellow, Rafik Hariri center for Middle East, Atlantic Council; Karim Mezran, Senior Fellow, Rafik Hariri Center for Middle East, Atlantic Council; Nicola Pedde, Director, Institute for Global Studies, Rome; Moderator: Mirette F. Mabrouk, Deputy Director, Director, Research and Programs, Rafik Hariri Center for Middle East, Atlantic Council.

SEVENTY YEARS OF THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE: STILL GOING STRONG? 3/13, 4:00pm. Sponsor: Institute of World Politics. Speaker: Elizabeth Spalding, Associate Professor of Government, Director, Washington Program, Claremont McKenna College.

NEGOTIATING TRADE AUTHORITY: REMARKS FROM SEN. MIKE LEE (R-UT) ON THE DIVISION OF CONGRESSIONAL AND EXECUTIVE POWERS. 3/13, Reception, 5:15-6:30pm. Sponsor: AEI. Speakers: Mike Lee, Senator (R-UT); Claude Barfield, Resident Scholar, AEI; Gary Hufbauer, Reginald Jones Senior Fellow, PIIE; Scott Lincicome, Adjunct Scholar, CATO Institute.

AFTER WAR, GENDER EQUALITY NEEDS INVESTMENT TOO. 3/13, 10:00-11:30am. SPonsor: US Institute of Peace. Speakers: Carol Cohn, Director, Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights, University of Massachusetts, Boston; Thomas Scherer, Program Officer, Economics and Peacebuilding, US Institute of Peace; Janet Stotsky, Economist, Visiting Scholar, International Monetary Fund; Moderator: Carla Koppell, Vice President, Applied Conflict Transformation, US Institute of Peace.

TRUMP, GORSUCH, AND THE CONCENTRATION OF ECONOMIC POWER. 3/13, Noon-1:30pm. Sponsor: Center for American Progress. Speakers: Winnie Stachelberg, Executive Vice President for External Affairs, Center for American Progress; Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN); Todd A. Cox, Director of Policy, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.; Deepak Gupta, Founding Partner, Gupta Wessler; Jonathan Kanter, Partner, Antitrust Group, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, LLP; Lillian Salerno, Former USDA Deputy Undersecretary for Rural Development; Elizabeth Wydra, President, Constitutional Accountability Center; Moderator: Assistant Professor of Law, Brooklyn Law School.

THE END OF EUROPE: DICTATORS, DEMAGOGUES, AND THE COMING DARK AGE. 3/13, 2:00-3:05pm. Sponsor: Brookings. Speakers: Author James Kirchick, Fellow, Foreign Policy Initiative; Thomas Wright, Director, Project on International Order and Strategy, Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center on US and Europe; Constanze Stelzenmuller, Robert Bosch Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center on US and Europe; Leon Wieseltier, Isaiah Berline Senior Fellow in Culture and Policy, Foreign Policy, Governance Studies; Moderator: Robert Kagan, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Project on International Order and Strategy.

COAL PEAK OR PLATEAU? DIGGING INTO THE CLIMATE AND WATER IMPACTS OF CHINA’S DECARBONIZATION. 3/13, 2:00-4:00pm. Sponsor: China Environment Forum, Woodrow Wilson Center (WWC). Speakers: Barbara Finamore, Senior Attorney, Asia Director, National Resources Defense Council (NRDC); Zhou Xi Zhou, Senior Director, IHS Markit’s Power, Gas, Renewables, and Coal Group; Jennifer L. Turner, Director, China Environment Forum, Manager, Global Choke Point Initiative.

INDIA’S STATE ELECTION RESULTS. 3/13, 3:30-5:00pm. Sponsor: Brookings. Speakers: Sadanand Dhume, Resident Fellow, AEI; Irfan Nooruddin, Professor, Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University; Adam Ziegfeld, Assistant Professor, Political Science and International Affairs, GWU; Alyssa Ayres, Senior Fellow, India, Pakistan, and South Asia, Council on Foreign Relations; Moderator: Tanvi Madan, Director, India Project, Fellow, Foreign Policy, Project on International Order and Strategy.

Japan’s War Legacy

Dr. Tenney & PM Abe
April 29, 2015

The postwar generation may now be the majority in Japan, but they too must know the atrocities of war.

By LESTER TENNEY
Dr. Tenney served in the 192nd Tank Battalion of the U.S. Army and survived the Bataan Death March

Wall Street Journal, Sept. 1, 2015

Imperial Japan became history on Sept. 2, 1945. Gen. Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan’s unconditional surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, ending World War II. For me, nearly 600 miles south in a prisoner of war camp outside Nagasaki, unaware of these historic events, I simply remember the pure joy of liberation.

What was V-J Day like for POWs? For those of us in Fukuoka No. 17-B POW Camp, the war ended on Aug. 15, when our Mitsui company overseers, without explanation, stopped sending us down into their coal mine. We were returned to camp for an unusual midday meal of limitless rice and recognizable vegetables. We received our first full Red Cross boxes. And the camp guards said “hello” in English instead of striking us with their rifle butts for not bowing.

After lunch, the camp commander, flanked by trucks mounted with machine guns, gathered us on the camp’s parade ground. He curtly announced, “America and Japan now friends. War is over.”

There is no accurate way to describe how it feels to be a slave one moment—starved and abused, forced to work long hours in a treacherous mine, beaten daily for not working fast enough or not bowing low enough—and a free man the next.

After more than two years underground in the dark, narrow seams of a coal mine, it was glorious to be in the sun. American planes soon appeared overhead and with them came parachutes carrying 55-gallon drums of food, clothing, medicines and magazines. One parachute failed to open, its cargo of fruit salad spilling out onto the camp yard. We happily and immediately dined on the scattered remains.

Baron Mitsui, a 1915 Dartmouth graduate who owned our coal mine and many others, hosted a series of dinners for senior Allied commanding officers of our POW camp. The baron had often visited his captive village and was aware of the grim conditions. Over the meals, he reportedly asked the officers for their tolerance and thanked them for their efforts. Photos from the dinner series show a wary indulgence in the eyes of the American, Australian, British and Dutch guests.

Fast forward to last month, when Prime Minister Shinzo Abe used the same word—tolerance—in his statement on the 70th anniversary of the war’s end. “How much emotional struggle must have existed and what great efforts must have been necessary . . . for the former POWs who experienced unbearable sufferings caused by the Japanese military in order for them to be so tolerant nevertheless?” Mr. Abe marveled.

While I welcome any step, however modest, the Japanese make in addressing war crimes committed against POWs, this word stops me short. It makes a war crime a matter of inconvenience. I can tolerate someone cutting me off in traffic. But being a POW was not a matter of tolerance. It was a matter of life or death—mostly death.

The denial of water and food on the Bataan Death March didn’t simply inconvenience us; it killed thousands of soldiers. My fellow prisoners and I didn’t tolerate nor have we forgotten the beatings and torture, the starvation and broken bones, or the filth and stench of dying men. What tolerance did I have watching my buddy tortured so viciously that he had to have both legs amputated?

And what of today? Our wait for Japan’s apology, offered officially in February 2009, wasn’t tolerance. It was patience. Patience for justice.

Still, Mr. Abe’s awkward statement on Aug. 15 suggests that our patience may not be in vain. His mention of POWs is the only reference in the statement that clearly matches a noun of wrongdoing to a verb of responsibility. He correctly points out that “unbearable suffering” was “caused” by Imperial Japan’s military. Acknowledging the perpetrator of a crime and the crime itself is the first step toward reconciliation.

For me, the war is hard to forget. But as Mr. Abe points out, the postwar generations are now the majority in Japan. Japanese today aren’t responsible for what happened more than 70 years ago. But they also cannot forget or distort the past.

Japan owes me, the descendants of its victims and its own citizens the truth. As Mr. Abe said, “We Japanese, across generations, must squarely face the history of the past. We have the responsibility to inherit the past, in all humbleness, and pass it on to the future.”

Imperial Japan tormented, enslaved and defiled many people. This is a grave legacy to pass on and to teach future generations. But it is vital to keep memories like mine alive. It’s one thing to remember great deeds done by great men, like Gen. MacArthur in Tokyo Bay. But World War II’s history is composed of the suffering of many individuals in different circumstances. This, too, should not be forgotten, or else the lessons of the war will be incomplete.

Get your petition on for a message to the Abe Government

The Abe government believes that only the Koreans and the Chinese are annoyed with his administrations perceptions of history and responsibility. This is not true. Below are a number of petitions initiated in the West and signed by more than citizens of Asian ancestry.


PEARL HARBOR, WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should make it clear if he wants to address a Joint Session of Congress.
Tell Speaker John Boehner that we should not allow Prime Minister Abe to address a joint session of Congress unless that
(1) he acknowledges the war criminals convicted in the Tokyo Tribunal as war criminals under all laws;
(2) he promises not to visit the controversial Yasukuni Shrine; and
(3) he publicly refutes all anti-American distortions of the history.
Coordinator: KACE (Korean American Civic Empowerment)
SIGN HERE


SAY NO TO ‘REVISIONIST HISTORY’ that glorifies Japan’s WWII aggression and war crimes! STOP Prime Minister Abe from miseducating Japan’s children #TruthTodayPeaceTomorrow
Coordinator: Eclipse Rising [Korean-Japanese-American, Zainichi, group]
SIGN HERE


TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR WAR CRIMES  of Sexual Slavery and Human Trafficking: Remember the "Comfort Women"
Coordinator: Coalition Against Trafficking in Women International (CATW)
SIGN HERE


STOP THE BAN ON ANGELINA JOLIE'S MOVIE UNBROKEN, in Japan, petition to the Japan’s Ambassador to the United States.
Coordinator: The Indo Project
SIGN HERE

Monday in Washington September 16, 2013

9/17 - CONSTITUTION DAY, NB: The U.S. Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787, by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and ratified by conventions in eleven States. It went into effect on March 4, 1789.

AIR AND SPACE CONFERENCE AND TECHNOLOGY EXPOSITION. 9/16-18, National Harbor, MD. Sponsor: Air Force Association. Speakers: Eric Fanning, Acting Air Force Secretary; Carlo Margrassi, Lt. Gen., Italian Air Force; Michael Hayden, Former Director of National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency; Charles Wald, Former Deputy Commander of US European Command; Doug Fraser, Former Commander of US Southern Command; Loren Reno, Former Deputy Chief of Staff; David Deptula, Former Deputy Chief of Staff; Lani Kass, Former Special Assistant to the Air Force Chief of Staff.

PROSPECTS FOR GENDER EQUALITY IN IRAN UNDER PRESIDENT ROUHANI. 9/16, 9:00-11:00am. Sponsor: Global Gender Program, George Washington University. Speakers: Fatemah Keshavarz, Director, Roshan Institute, University of Maryland; Maryam Abolfazli, Middle East North Africa Director, Eurasia Foundation; Sussan Tahmasebi, Co-founder, International Civil Society Action Network.

MAKING MACROPRUDENTIAL POLICY WORK - LOWERING THE FREQUENCY AND SIZE OF FINANCIAL BUBBLES. 9/16, 9:30-11:30am. Sponsor: Brookings. Speakers: Jose Vinals, Financial Counselor and Director, Monetary and Capital Markets Department, IMF; Erlend Nier, Senior Financial Sector Expert, Monetary and Capital Markets Department, IMF; Charles Taylor, Deputy Comptroller for Capital and Regulatory Policy, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency; Douglas Elliot, Fellow in Economics, Brookings; Donald Kohn, Senior Fellow in Economics, Brookings.

B-2: THE SPIRIT OF INNOVATION. 9/16, 11:30am-12:45pm, National Harbor, MD. Sponsor: Northrop Grumman. Speakers: Author, Rebecca Grant, IRIS Independent Research; Dave Mazur, Vice President and B-2 Program Manager, Northrop Grumman.

AMERICAN EPIC: READING THE CONSTITUTION. 9/16, Noon-1:00pm. Sponsor: National Archives. Speaker: Author, Garrett Epps, Professor, University of Baltimore.

CONSTITUTION DAY LECTURE WITH JUSTICE SCALIA. 9/16, 1:00-2:00pm, Washington, DC. Sponsor: George Washington University. Speaker: Antonin Scalia, Supreme Court Justice.

UNTHINKABLE: IRAN, THE BOMB, AND AMERICAN STRATEGY. 9/16, 2:30-4:00pm. Sponsor: Brookings. Speakers: Author, Kenneth Pollack, Senior Fellow Brookings; Moderator: Robin Wright, Distinguished Fellow, United States Institute of Peace.

FAST ACTION CLIMATE MITIGATION: A FOCUS ON SHORT-LIVED CLIMATE POLLUTANTS. 9/16, 3:00-4:30pm. Sponsor: Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Speakers: Achim Steiner, Executive Director, UN Environment Program; Jesse Young, Legislative Assistant, Office of Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT); Lumay Wang, Legislative Assistant, Office of Rep. Scott Peters (D-CA); David Turk, Counselor to the US Special Envoy for Climate Change, US State Department; Mack McFarland, Global Environment Manager, DuPont Fluorochemicals; Durwood Zaelke, President, Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development.

AID TO FRAGILE STATES: GERMANY'S APPROACH TODEVELOPMENT. 9/16, 4:00-5:30pm. Sponsor: American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (AICGS). Speaker: German State Secretary of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development Hans-Jurgen Beerfeltz. 

THE DISCREET CHARM OF LEGITIMACY: THE UN, CRISIS MANAGEMENT AND REFORM. 9/16, 5:30-7:00pm. Sponsor: International Law and Organizations, SAIS, Johns Hopkins. Speaker: David Türk, former President of Slovenia,  former Slovenian ambassador to the United Nations and UN Security Council member.

THE ROAD TO WAR: OBAMA, CONGRESS AND THE SYRIAN COLLISION. 9/16, 6:30-8:00pm,  fee. Sponsor: National Press Club. Speakers: Marvin Kalb, Professor, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; Sam Litzinger, CBS News Radio Correspondent; The Road to War: Presidential Commitments Honored and Betrayed by Mr. Kalb will be available for sale.