United States and Asia at War: A Cultural Approach: A Cultural Approach

by West,Philip

• ISBN13: 9780765602367
• ISBN10: 0765602369
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-12-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This book brings a fresh perspective to three wars the United States fought in Asia between 1941 and 1975 - the Pacific War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War - by focusing on the human dimension of war as experienced by those, on all sides, who fought, lived through, and later remembered them. The complex relationship between history and memory is brought to bear on analyses of cultural artifacts and productions including novels, films, short stories, and poems that derive from or evoke war. Even though the cultural approach concerns itself with the local and the particular rather than with the abstract and universal, it is inherently comparative. Moreover, it also relocates each war in the historical and cultural experiences of Asian countries themselves rather than seeing the war as merely a conflict between the United States and Asian nations. This volume is meant to encourage readers, especially in a teaching environment, to develop an understanding of the experience of war in Asia that is variegated, fragmented, and complex, like the wars themselves.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction: Sounding the Human Dimensions of War	3	(14)
Philip West
Steven I. Levine
Jackie Hiltz
PART I. MEMORIALIZING	17	(34)
1. Remembering Beginnings and Endings: The Fiftieth Anniversary at Pearl Harbor and the Enola Gay Controversy at the National Air and Space Museum	17	(10)
Edward T. Linenthal
2. The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory	27	(24)
John W. Dower
PART II. ANALYZING LITERATURE AND FILMS	51	(94)
3. Japanese Films about the Pacific War	51	(14)
Tadao Sato
4. Our Forgotten War: The Korean War in Korean and American Popular Culture	65	(19)
David R. McCann
5. Fragmentation in American and Vietnamese War Fiction	84	(16)
Leslie Kennedy Adams
6. American and Vietnamese Poetry of Witness: Bridge over Troubled Waters	100	(24)
James Soular
7. Moral Judgment in War and Crimes against Humanity	124	(21)
Van Jay Symons
PART III. REMEMBERING	145	(60)
8. My Pacific War Revisited	145	(16)
Merrel Clubb
9. A Double Exposure of the War	161	(11)
Ahn Junghyo
10. Through American Eyes: Combat Experiences and Memories of Korea and Vietnam	172	(11)
Colonel Harry Summers, Jr.
11. The Korean War at the Dinner Table	183	(9)
Pingchao Zhu
12. Myth of the Heroic Soldier and Images of the Enemy	192	(13)
James Z. Gao
PART IV. COMPARATIVE AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES	205	(58)
13. The Age of the World Target	205	(16)
Rey Chow
14. Controversies Surrounding the Asia-Pacific War: The Tokyo War Crimes Trial	221	(12)
Kentaro Awaya
15. Tutoring Democracy: Michigan State University and the Politics of Reform in South Vietnam	233	(12)
John Ernst
16. American Wars Within World History	245	(9)
G.L. Penrose
17. The Indian Wars and the Vietnam War	254	(9)
David Trask
Selected Bibliography and Filmography	263	(10)
Contributors	273	(4)
Index	277