You have written about the occupation of Japan by the United States after World War Two. Does this have any relevance to what might take place in a post-hostilities Iraq, should the United States carry out its threat to go to war against that country?

Next Wednesday, April 23, North Korea, the U.S., and China will meet in Beijing to discuss a possible resolution of a crisis caused by North Korea's determination to defend itself with nuclear weapons against threats of aggression from the Bush administration. North Korea made the first concession. On Saturday, April 12, Pyongyang dropped its demand that it meet the U.S. face-to-face, without any other participants in the talks, including the U.N. Security Council.

Recent events provide a stark reminder that we live in a global society where major events affect everyone, across borders, regions, and cultures. Yet, despite the intensification of global interconnections effected by worldwide flows of capital and culture, the meanings of September 11 continue to be constructed in sharply nationalist terms. This may be especially so for Americans who were the primary targets of the 2001 attacks, and who generally see them as attacks on the nation (as, indeed, they seem to have been intended). As John Dower has observed, one need only look at the outpouring of patriotic responses to September 11 in the United States, marked by flags, songs, ceremonies, and commentaries (as well as military actions) enunciating national pride and solidarity. (John Dower, in remarks made at a symposium marking the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor, observed that these responses reminded him of accounts of Japanese nationalism in the early stages of the Asia-Pacific War.) But the �new� American patriotism being produced in the post-9-11 era frequently invokes earlier forms of patriotism, especially in images of World War II, the �good war.� Here I reflect on the role of memories of the bombing of Pearl Harbor in (re)producing American patriotism in the 9-11 era, focusing particularly on cultural practices of remembrance.

Back to Back with Death

Kaneko Masaru: I read your book, I've Become Homeless. The general image of homeless people is that they've chosen that lifestyle themselves. Speaking from reality, that is totally wrong. Homeless people are in much more dire circumstances. That comes across well in your book.

With war with Iraq having started, I am uncomfortable discussing candidly another foreign policy crisis, but North Korea is a crisis which cannot wait to be addressed.

North Korea's startling confession last October that Pyongyang had a secret nuclear arms program recalled eerily the dangerous moment in 1994 when war between the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) nearly occurred. Former President Carter's talks with Kim Il Sung in June 1994 rescued us from a war that former Defense Secretary Perry said was imminent. President Carter was able to outline a way out of mutual hostility toward a more normal relationship between the United States and North Korea to end the crisis.

This article, and Geoffrey White's “War Memory and American Patriotism: Pearl Harbor and 9-11” originally appeared in Laura Hein and Daizaburo Yui, Crossed Memories: Perspectives on 9/11 and American Power, Center for Pacific and American Studies, The University of Tokyo, 2003. http://www.cpas.c.u.-tokyo.ac.jp/ The texts have been revised and condensed for Japan Focus.

America's 703 officially acknowledged foreign military enclaves (as of September 30, 2002), although structurally, legally, and conceptually different from colonies, are themselves something like microcolonies in that they are completely beyond the jurisdiction of the occupied nation.1 The United States virtually always negotiates a “status of forces agreement” (SOFA) with the ostensibly independent “host” nation, including countries whose legal systems are every bit (and perhaps more) sophisticated than our own.

For half a century, Japan has permitted ethnic minorities, notably Koreans, to run their own schools while refusing to recognize these schools graduates by denying their students the right to sit for entrance examinations at national universities. The controversy has centered above all on the rights of graduates of pro-North Korean schools. The issues came to a boil recently when the Ministry of Education extended this right to three international schools while continuing to require that graduates of ethnic schools take a preliminary examination to determine eligibility to sit for the regular examination. The issue has long been central to the movement for the rights of ethnic minorities in Japan. Eriko Arita is a staff writer for The Japan Times. This article appeared in The Japan Times on April 12, 2003.

This article draws on the Tokyo Tribunal on the Military Comfort Women to reexamine issues of violence against women in both wartime and peacetime. In highlighting the centrality of the issue of violence against women, Ito offers a feminist alternative to dominant peace discourse. The Tokyo Tribunal of December 2000, organized by Asian feminists, presented the testimony of scores of surviving military comfort women from a dozen Asian nations, as well as specialists on Japanese atrocities in the Pacific War. The citizens’ tribunal convicted Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese state of crimes against humanity in their treatment of more than 100,000 Asian comfort women who served as the sexual slaves of the Japanese military. Ito draws on the experience of the comfort women and World War II to advance a gendered concept of positive peace. This article appeared in Heiwa Kenkyû (Peace Research) Vol. 26 November 2001. Ito Ruri is a Professor at the Institute of Gender Studies, Ochanomizu University.