To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other American and British possessions on December 7/8 1941, some of the leading historians of the World War II era will convene at the Center for Military, War, and Society Studies (MWSS) on December 2nd and 3rd to discuss the attacks and the ways they affected the Pacific War, imperialism and colonialism in Asia and the Pacific, and the political cultures, societies, and life experiences of people throughout the interconnected Pacific world.
On December 2nd, Ronald H. Spector, Professor of History and International Affairs at the Elliot School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, will open the conference with a public lecture, "The Asia Pacific War: Forgotten, Remembered and Imagined," at 7 PM at the Mallot Room in the University of Kansas Memorial Union. Professor Spector, a renowned speaker, is the author of many major books including Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan; In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the Battle for Postwar Asia; and At War at Sea: Sailors and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century. He has won numerous awards, including the Distinguished Book Award of the Society of Military History and the Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt Prize for Naval History.
On December 3rd, 14 historians from the United States, Europe, Asia and the Pacific will hold an all-day academic workshop to discuss the Japanese attacks of December 7/8 1941 from a Pacific history perspective. Scholars will include Rana Mitter of Oxford University, Ethan Mark of Leiden University, Kate Darian-Smith of University of Melbourne, Jeremy Yellen of Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a host of other leading American and international historians. For more information on participants and the day’s schedule of events see the program on this site.
At the workshop, we will examine both elite and non-elite responses to Japan’s December attacks. We are particularly interested in examining how Japan’s actions resonated in the colonized reaches of the Pacific world and how people there struggled, at least in the short term, to find opportunities in the sudden change in power relations created by Japan’s stunning military successes.
By bringing together scholars of the Pacific world we hope to create a lively conversation about the significance of the December 7/8 attacks and help instill a transnational sensibility to a global war usually studied through a national framework. Thus we will look both at national and transnational responses.
The Saturday workshop will be an academic event focused on scholarly presentations and historiographical conversations. The public is welcome, but graduate students and faculty in all related disciplines are particularly invited to attend.
