The Vietnam Women's Movement for the Right to Live: a non-communist opposition movement to the American war in Vietnam

This article examines the political and diplomatic struggles in urban South Vietnam from the perspective of women in the Vietnamese Women’s Movement for the Right to Live (WRL) during the Vietnam War. This movement was a timely response to the American war of aggression, which had destroyed the fabric of South Vietnamese society and drastically diminished women’s position within it by 1970. Under the leadership of Mrs. Ngô Bá Thành, the WRL fought for peace and women’s liberation through political action and shrewd diplomacy. Unlike female guerrilla fighters, the WRL maintained political autonomy and neutrality throughout the conflict. As a result, it was violently repressed by the Saigon government and quickly disbanded after the communist victory in 1975. Nevertheless, studying these politically sophisticated women’s anti-war efforts is crucial to understanding the symbiotic yet destructive relationship between Third World women and American imperialism during the twentieth century. It also helps dismantle essentialist assumptions about Asian women as inherently submissive and politically naïve. The WRL is a sterling example of Vietnamese women’s ingenuity in their dual struggle for national liberation and gender equality.     

Fighting the Korean War in pacifist Japan: Korean and Japanese leftist solidarity and American Cold War containment

Where does “pacifist” Japan fit within the history of the Korean War? Was Japan simply the beneficiary of the wartime boom – a case best exemplified by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru’s characterization of the Korean War as “a gift of the gods”? When North Korean troops crossed the thirty-eighth parallel and launched a full-scale attack against South Korea, the U.S. occupation in Japan quickly transformed the pacifist nation into the indispensable rear base of United Nations military intervention in the Korean War. The Japanese Communist Party and leftist groups organized by zainichi Koreans (Korean residents in Japan) launched an antiwar movement to stop Japan from producing and sending arms to UN forces in Korea. The U.S. occupation responded with determined efforts to contain every antiwar voice emerging from the streets of the pacifist country. By examining the political dynamics of zainichi Korean and Japanese leftist solidarity and U.S. countermeasures, this article shows how the Korean War was fought in pacifist Japan. It also illuminates how the practice of Cold War containment was mutually linked on the ground between occupied Japan and South Korea.     

日本企业加速对越南投资及越、中、泰投资环境的比较

迄今为止,日本企业对亚洲直接投资的头两个国家是中国和泰国.但是,近年日本企业不断加大对越南的投资力度.越南将成为继中国和泰国之后,日本企业在亚洲直接投资的最热对象国.本文结合中国、泰国的投资环境,探讨日本企业选择越南投资的原因,对其目前存在的问题进行对比研究,并展望其未来发展趋势.     

Forgotten brigade of the forgotten war: Turkey's participation in the Korean War

This study is an attempt to shed light on the issue of Cretan Muslim emigration from Crete to the Ottoman Empire in order to analyse the multiple connections among the Ottoman state, immigrants and different localities in the Eastern Mediterranean in the late nineteenth century. Following the Cretan revolts of 1896 and 1897, the establishment of autonomous government on the island of Crete and the withdrawal of Ottoman armies from the island, Cretan Muslims began to emigrate from Crete to various places in the Ottoman Empire. Specifically, this article aims to deal with the migration of Cretan Muslims and to focus mainly on the year 1899, during which large numbers of Muslims were forced to leave their homes. The article suggests that Cretan Muslim emigration provides a good case for understanding the attitudes and policies of the Ottoman state towards migration, and the relationship between the state and immigrants, as well as for analysing the broader connections between Crete and the other localities of the Eastern Mediterranean. The working hypothesis is that in order to understand certain socio-political and demographic changes and transformations experienced within the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century, it is important to study the issue of Cretan Muslim immigration to Ottoman Anatolia. This presents an opportunity to investigate certain questions with regard to the dynamics of migration and also to discuss certain facts associated with migration within the late imperial context.     

Syngman rhee: The pawn as rook the struggle to end the Korean war

Abstract

A quarter century ago, in 1951–53, while trying to end the Korean war, the Truman and Eisenhower administrations struggled to keep Syngman Rhee, the president of the Republic of Korea [ROK] , from undermining the negotiations, wrecking the armistice, endangering the United Nations forces, and extending the war. Often it was unclear whether or not he would abide by the armistice and whether or not he would leave the ROK troops under the UN Command, or imperil the UN forces by withdrawing his own. General Mark Clark, the American and United Nations commander in the last year of war, aptly summarized the problems, “I found myself engaged in a two-front diplomatic battle ... with the ... Communists and with ... Rhee [, and] the biggest trouble came from Rhee.” As Rhee's price for acceding to the armistice of July 27, 1953, he secured from the Eisenhower administration generous economic aid, continued military assistance, and a mutual defense treaty, which has endured to the present. Before the armistice, however, military and political leaders in both administrations seriously considered toppling Rhee and installing a more tractable government.     

THE REISCHAUER MEMO: Mr. Moto,Hirohito, and Japanese American Soldiers

This article offers a critical reading of a recently discovered memorandum authored by Edwin O. Reischauer in September 1942. Already at this early date in the war, Reischauer proposed retention of the Japanese emperor as head of a postwar “puppet regime” that would serve U.S. interests in East Asia. He also argued that Japanese Americans had until then been a “sheer liability” and that the United States could turn them into an “asset” by enlisting them in the U.S. military. He reasoned that Japanese American soldiers would be useful for propaganda purposes – that is, to demonstrate to the world and particularly the “yellow and brown peoples” that the United States was not a racist nation. The article interrogates the racial thinking behind such utilitarian proposals for the Japanese emperor and Japanese Americans and considers the memorandum within the broader context of the wartime foundations of the postwar U.S.-Japan relationship, the characteristics of postwar Japanese studies, the decision to mobilize Japanese Americans as soldiers, and the shifting place of Japanese Americans in the management of U.S. race relations during and after the war.     

Expanding the Story of Japanese American Internment

Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. 322 pp. Eric L. Muller, Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001; paper, 2003. 229 pp. Since the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the story of the Japanese Americans interned during World War II has spawned a cottage industry of popular histories, museum exhibits, public memorials, biographies, novels, memoirs, children's fiction and non-fiction, documentary and feature films, and, of course, scholarly studies. The Redress legislation, which required the U.S. government to pay $20,000 in reparations to each living survivor of America's concentration camps, ushered in a new era of legitimacy and popularity to the internment story. An Internet check on “Books in Print” lists 101 titles with the keywords “Japanese American internment.” Professional historians sit at the intellectual helm of this internment boom, and, accordingly, the amount of their output too has expanded. While the production of monographs and dissertations has increased in the recent past, more interesting to observe are the changing ways in which scholars have approached the internment. Since the 1940s, historical researchers focused on the most obvious architects of the decision to remove 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast; three decades later the innocent victims of this wartime policy took center stage. Now the spotlight of innovation shines on those who have long been considered minor players in the internment drama. Two recent and highly notable monographs, Greg Robinson's By Order of the President and Eric L. Muller's Free To Die for Their Country, epitomize this historiographical trend. In focusing on the shadows of the internment story, these books compel a reconsideration of some of the basic elements to the internment narrative.     

Statement of the Government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on Nixon's crazy war escalation and order to mine North Vietnamese Harbours

Before the creation of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in 1988, the Burma Navy was small, ill-equipped and crippled by its dependence on foreign logistics. As a consequence, it was confined to patrolling Burma's inland waterways and coastal fringes. Also, the navy held only a token position in the military regime which, under various guises, had run the country since the 1962 coup. Yet the navy has always been, and remains, an important factor in Burma's internal security. The dramatic growth of the Burma Navy under the SLORC suggests that the new generation of military leaders in Rangoon shares this view. The regime also seems to envisage a greatly expanded external defence role for this arm of the armed forces. Since 1988 the fleet has almost doubled, with the addition of at least 20 new warships from China. More are on order. If the SLORC's ambitious naval modernisation program is successful, then in a few years Burma could have a blue water capability for the first time in its history.     

2012年越南政治、经济与外交综述

2012年是越南经济面临困难和挑战的一年。控制通胀和力保经济增长是越南经济工作的重点内容,但在成功控制通胀的同时,经济却出现了下滑,且面临着企业经营困难、银行坏账增多、商品库存压力加大等诸多问题。相比之下,外交工作有序展开并不断拓展,经济外交成为重点。政治、社会领域则继续保持相对稳定的局面。