Product Description
"Yuh has composed a complex, provocative, and compassionate portrayal of the experiences of Korean military brides from the 1950s through the 1990s. . . . Delving into how these women face isolation and aleination from both Korean and US societies because of their transnational status, Yuh's masterful history demonstrates that these women have resisted perceptions of both societies and forged communities based on their claiming Korean and US identities as Korean military brides. A wonderful resource... Highly recommended."
—Choice

"Ji-Yeon Yuh uses a wealth of sources, especially moving oral histories, to tell an important, at times heartbreaking, story of Korean military brides.She takes us beyond the stereotypes and reveals their roles within their families, communities, and Korean immigration to the U.S. Without ignoring their difficult lives, Yuh portrays these women's agency and dignity with skill and compassion."
—K. Scott Wong, Williams College

"By studying the lives and history of Korean "military brides," Ji-Yeon Yuh pays tribute to an important group that has not received the understanding, attention, and respect that it deserves. Full of compelling stories, Beyond the Shadow of the Camptowns is sure to inspire new ways of thinking about U.S. and especially immigration history, as well as Asian American and Asian history."
—Elaine Kim, University of California at Berkeley

"Impeccably researched and seamlessly executed."
—Bitch Magazine

"Where do marriage, diaspora, racism and the politics of global alliances converge? In the dreams and dailiness of the thousands of Korean women living in the United States today.Ji-Yeon Yuh's engaging and revealing book shows us that by listening attentively to the Korean women married to white and black American men, we can become a lot smarter about the realities of globalized living."
—Cynthia Enloe, author of Maneuvers: the International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives

"Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America, immigration historian Ji-Yeon Yuh explores how Korean women relate to American men in these cross-cultural relationships, and how the military link between the dominant U.S. and subservient Korea tends to complicate their marriages, already challenging for many other reasons, with a dose of international politics as well."
—Korean Quarterly

"Through compelling oral histories, she traces the lives of women form successive generations of brides."
—Chronicle of Higher Education

Since the beginning of the Korean War in 1950, nearly 100,000 Korean women have immigrated to the United States as the wives of American soldiers.Based on extensive oral interviews and archival research, Beyond the Shadow of the Camptowns tells the stories of these women, from their presumed association with U.S. military camptowns and prostitution to their struggles within the intercultural families they create in the United States.

Historian Ji-Yeon Yuh argues that military brides are a unique prism through which to view cultural and social contact between Korea and the U.S. After placing these women within the context of Korean-U.S. relations and the legacies of both Japanese and U.S. colonialism vis á vis military prostitution, Yuh goes on to explore their lives, their coping strategies with their new families, and their relationships with their Korean families and homeland.Topics range from the personal—the role of food in their lives—to the communalthe efforts of military wives to form support groups that enable them to affirm Korean identity that both American and Koreans would deny them.

Relayed with warmth and compassion, this is the first in-depth study of Korean military brides, and is a groundbreaking contribution to Asian American, women's, and "new" immigrant studies, while also providing a unique approach to military history.

Customer Reviews (4)

an interesting treatment of another aspect of conflict
Beginning with the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910, followed by its replacement by the United States in 1945, the military governments established a series of bases, and from around these bases grew camptowns, a section of businesses that offered everything from souvenirs to alcohol to prostitution.For her own extended metaphor, Yuh refers to the shadow, or influence, that is cast by these camptowns not only across the Korean landscape but also within the Korean people, most specifically the women who worked, often as indentured servants, within these camptowns and went on to marry soldiers.Yuh makes explicit her change in referring to these women as military brides over war brides.This does not obfuscate, however, the historical value of war brides as being equivalent to war booty and hence configured more as property, even as the remnants of this idea manifest in certain social attitudes (i.e., domestic subservience) that many of the American servicemen may have had toward their Korean wives.

The use of personal case studies set against the backdrop of US military policy in Korea and social attitudes both in the United States as well as Korea shows that these women lived in a perpetual state of dual existence, in many ways no longer being recognized as completely Korean and unable to be regarded as completely American.This concept of identity is made more complex as Yuh traces out some elements of the Japanese occupation of the Korean peninsula, particularly those aspects of the occupation that forced Korean children to adopt Japanese names and learn Japanese language (spoken and written) and history, thus distancing them from their own Korean heritage, a displacement that would be further complicated by those who married American soldiers.

Since the research on Korean military brides is finite, Yuh's study presents some intriguing insights on a segment of the population that is constantly negotiating the preservation of its ethnic heritage and identity while it adjusts its assimilation into American society.This is particularly important at a time when community and ethnic identity in America finds itself increasingly transformed by world events, such as recent developments with nuclear proliferation in North Korea.

Powerful and Well Written
As the author points out, there is very little work on international military wives, and Korean military wives in particular.By such a logic, this book is a welcome project indeed.

Essentially, Yuh Ji-Yeon sets out to make sense of why Korean women set out to marry American [military] men along with the consequences of such decisions.What becomes apparent throughout this book is the gendered set of relations in both US-Korean and soldier-wife relations.While many Korean women may seek American husands (especially those tricked and coerced into camptown USA) in order to escape Korean societal restrictions and shape better lives for themselves, many American men seek Asian wives in order to fulfill the ultimate Orientalist fantasy of Asian women as meek, erotic, and subservient.Through numerous interviews, Yuh finds out that many of the hopes that Korean military wives bring with them to America become easily dashed as they experience racism and cultural colonization.These Korean wives (many of whom are societal outcasts) thus become marginalized, their identities stolen from them as they are neither accepted for their cultural value by either their own indigenous community and the new American community.While such wives try hard to acculturate themselves to the demands of American life, suffering and pain continues to follow them, and in some cases poverty despite the alllure and so-called attainability of the great American dream.Perhaps even more important, Yuh makes clear that not all Korean wives are former camptown girls.Such simplistic stereotypes carried by the American public is damaging in creating pejorative connotations of the "Korean wife."Furthermore, even those wives who are former camptown girls should not be condescended.Being a prostitute is not exactly a free choice in Korea.Moreover, why should camptown girls be discriminated and labeled whore when the American soldiers who frequent red-light districts are sometimes actively encouraged by their commanders and more often than not treated with minor slaps on the hand for engaging in prostitution.Sadly, US military policy discriminates against the supply rather than dealing with the demand in prostitution.So much for the high morals of the US military.

In this context, many Korean wives act out a latent form of resistance.Their husbands and in-laws may forbid them to speak Korean, to eat Korean food, to teach their children Korean culture, but in the privacy of their homes when husbands and children are out, these women cultivate friendships with other Korean wives, watch Korean movies, and make attempts to demand the respect that they undoubtedly deserve.In short, while Korean wives may be denied meaningful relationships with their husbands and children due to lack of support in learning the English language and subsequently sharing the Korean language, these women are basically trying to survive and separate themselves from their sad and sometimes lurid pasts.

"Beyond the Shadow of Camptown" is a book that anyone in the military, and especially any soldier thinking of taking an Asian wife or mail order bride should read.Conversely, this book should also be read by foreign women around US military bases worldwide, who are thinking that a green card is an entry into a better life.This book shows the complexities of immigration, and of negotiating two different contexts.Truly, this book is very powerful and more importantly supported by interviews and other forms of empirical evidence that even those in self-denial can't rebut.Last but not least, we must consider the stories of each Korean wife that has come to the US.Their stories deserve to be heard and remembered.

A moving and eye-opening account
This book fills a need by covering Korean women who married American military men and their experiences in life, the prejudices they've encountered from other Koreans and white Americans, and how they stake out a place of meaning for themselves through church activities with other Korean military wives.

The author describes the women's family and educational background as well as how they met their husbands.Although a few were sex workers in Korea, the majority were not.

It seems that it's not common for Korean military wives to have Korean girlfriends whose husbands are Korean as well.I found that surprising because I grew up in a Korean community of Jehovah's Witnesses where my mother, a Korean woman married to a Korean man, had (and still has) many girlfriends who were Korean military wives.

I would have appreciated a religious history of these women, whether they were always Christian or became such after meeting their husbands.

Confusing
After reading this book, which reads more like a piece of propaganda work, I'm not sure whether these poor women were actual brides or "comfort women" (no disrespect intended... I'm trying to be skeptical). ... Read more

Product Description
Judgment without Trial reveals that long before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government began making plans for the eventual internment and later incarceration of the Japanese American population. Tetsuden Kashima uses newly obtained records to trace this process back to the 1920s, when a nascent imprisonment organization was developed to prepare for a possible war with Japan, and follows it in detail through the war years.

Along with coverage of the well-known incarceration camps, the author discusses the less familiar and very different experiences of people of Japanese descent in the Justice and War Departments’ internment camps that held internees from the continental U.S. and from Alaska, Hawaii, and Latin America. Utilizing extracts from diaries, contemporary sources, official communications, and interviews, Kashima brings an array of personalities to life on the pages of his book -- those whose unbiased assessments of America’s Japanese ancestry population were discounted or ignored, those whose works and actions were based on misinformed fears and racial animosities, those who tried to remedy the inequities of the system, and, by no means least, the prisoners themselves.

Kashima’s interest in this episode began with his own unanswered questions about his father’s wartime experiences. From this very personal motivation, he has produced a panoramic and detailed picture--without rhetoric and emotionalism and supported at every step by documented fact--of a government that failed to protect a group of people for whom it had forcibly assumed total responsibility. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Kashima's judgment not justified
The final chapter of any book is that in which most authors wrap up their ideas. Kashima does it well in the last chapter of his book:

"During and after World War II, the U.S. government imprisoned nearly 120,000 Nikkei, the majority of whom were American citizens. They were detained in imprisonment centers without being charged with the commission of crimes, deprived of legal counsel and trials, and incarcerated, in most instances, for no stated justifiable reason or specified duration."

Kashima utilizes a rebuttal often used in many books of this nature: "No evidence exists that any Issei or Nisei resident of the United States... ever committed an act of espionage or sabotage." They contend then that the Nikkei's "only crime was the accident of nationality or parentage." They do err, unfortunately, in their declaration of innocence for all Nikkei, on this major point -- the issue for the Nisei was not crime, conviction, or even accusation. The need, then, for courts or hearings becomes a moot point; there were a number of high profile court cases, however, but none proved any government action unconstitutional. The main issue for the Issei, however, was entirely different, made so by a belligerent act by Imperial Japan -- the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor -- when the Japanese residents in the US suddenly became America's enemies. That status made action imperative -- in fact, the public demanded that something be done with the Japanese on the West Coast.

It is most unfortunate that Kashima, though studying quite fastidiously the trees, has failed to correctly comprehend the forest. The major detraction from this commendable research is his insistance on imprisonment and incarceration of the Nikkei. This sad dirge in the minor key is commonly sung by those who believe the US Government did them wrong during WWII. Though their bitterness may be real, their accusations are, however, without basis.

Thousands of Issei and Nisei were never in any assembly or relocation centers, and thousands upon thousands more spent very little time there, having moved out to jobs or colleges elsewhere in the United States. Thousands of others enjoyed their time in the centers, and indeed, preferred life there than on the outside. Furthermore, any Nikkei had easy access to legal counsel, at any time.

The majority of the evacuated Nikkei were cared for by the US Government in many special ways. For former center inhabitants to ignore this fact, and to demean US leadership, is to bite the hand that fed them. Kashima lumps the entire WWII experience of the Nikkei in assembly and relocation centers, as well as in detention and isolation camps, and calls it "imprisonment" and "incarceration" in "concentration camps."

Perhaps one of the keys to understanding Kashima's lack of factual data to backup these final observations of his may be found in the caption for the illustration on the jacket cover of the book: "Guard Tower, water color and ink painting by Kenjiro Nomura, Minidoka Relocation Center, Idaho, 1942-43." The "guard towers" drawn in the illustration were in actuality water towers -- one such photo from Aug. 1942 has the caption, "One of the several water towers which serves the Minidoka War Relocation Authority center." Granted, there were guard towers at the relocation centers; insistence they were there to control or even terrorize the occupants of the centers is a hysterical conclusion, however.

As for the barbed wire fence with 45-degree top brackets (inward slant specifically for stopping escapees) in the illustration, there is no photo proof of such a fence. Even if such a high-security type of fencing actually existed at Minidoka, what would have been the need of it? The evacuees were free to leave the center to work out in the expansive fields surrounding Minidoka, to take walks along the canal, to go swimming at the pool (skating in the winter), etc.

Another excerpt: "After the signing of EO 9066, all families on the West Coast and in the territory of Alaska, and others in Hawaii and Latin America, were either interned or incarcerated." Unbeknownst to Kashima, he has effectively destroyed his credibility in this sweeping statement. I find myself again blinking my eyes in amazement as I re-read those words. Granted, he means Nikkei families, but "all"? Somehow his research has degraded into generalizations and blanket statements.

One more excerpt: "Japanese Americans have conducted their lives for decades under the social cloud of the incarceration and, unable to banish it, have lived with the stigma." Kashima then has a quote by Congressman Matsui, which also betrays similar bitterness about the evacuation and lack of discernment regarding the so-called "stigma," due to the trauma of having their "faith in the government and the strength of the U.S. Constitution... shaken during World War II" because "their government... had refused to protect them from outside prejudices," and worse, wanted to deport them.

And there you have the crux of this book: The American populace is to blame for injustices against their fellow Americans and for creating a stigma they endure to this day. Americans must be aware of this so that it will never happen again.

Interesting. I've heard that "never again" phrase somewhere before. Ah yes, it was stated twice, in the beginning of the film, and at the end, a 1944 film entitled "Betrayal from the East," which is a dramatized version of a real event, showing the danger of espionage and sabotage from among the Nikkei on the West Coast. Fortunately, THAT has not happened again.

Kashima once again had an opportunity to redeem the injustices done in "Personal Justice Denied." He followed the mainstream once again, sadly, though with a new twist -- that of "predetermined" racism and internment.

Personal justice has once again been denied -- the personal justice for individuals such as DeWitt, McCloy, Bendetsen, and even Franklin D. Roosevelt. Where is any sense of justice for them? Not to be found in writings of this caliber.

Japanese Americans as scapegoats
The book Judgment Without Trial primarily focuses on the process by which U.S. authorities impounded people of Japanese descent (both alien and first generation American) from the West Coast, Hawaii and Latin America.Additionally, the author asserts that racial prejudice and political expedience were the primary motivations behind the government's plans to indefinitely hold these foreign nationals and their children under duress without charge, evidence, or due process.This secondary assertion aside, the book primarily focuses on how this process was conceived, organized, and implemented by the Justice Department, the War Relocation Authority, and the army.

Tetsuden Kashima argues that our present-day characterization of this mass imprisonment as a wartime "mistake" ignores the fact that the imprisonment of Japanese, both foreign nationals and American citizens, was conceived by high-level officials decades before the United States entered the war.The federal government's decision and plans were therefore not made in haste, or because of "hysteria" following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.Kashima further asserts that the federal Japanese imprisonment organization went far beyond the establishment of a few assembly and relocation centers.Government public relations pronouncements to the contrary, he claims the organization created by the Roosevelt administration was large, complex, and oppressive.

The book is organized around a series of themes.One concerns the problem of organizational disputes among the agencies.Another addresses the problem of control of the prisoner population.A third theme examines the way in which the imprisonment organization dealt with the unanticipated needs that arose in regard to the prisoners.Yet another theme concerns the actual control methods used in the centers.

The first three chapters chronologically present the evolution and deployment of the internment process.Chapters four and five deal with the U.S. government's treatment the Japanese living in Hawaii and Latin American.The last five chapters concern life in the camps themselves, and the physical and psychological hardships inflicted upon the internees.The book concludes with sixty eight pages of notes and charts, along with a bibliography section containing over two hundred entries.

The book appears to be thoroughly researched.Kashima's sources include personal correspondence, diaries, interviews, books, magazine articles, official government reports, along with court briefs, transcripts, and records.

Judgment Without Trial succeeds in making its case that the U.S. government began planning for the internment of the Japanese American population long before the first bomb fell onto Pearl Harbor.Also, Kashima's description of the creation and implementation of the program is illuminating.However, the book falls short in presenting objective proof of deliberate U.S. government's abused of Japanese foreign nationals and their American-born children.His evidence for the assertion that animosity toward Japanese-Americans affected the general tenor of the treatment they received is mostly anecdotal, and ignores the very real threat to our West Coast by Japan.Our commercial shipping was under constant threat by Japanese submarines following the destruction of our Pacific fleet - those same submarines actually fired missiles at our undefended coast. Also, evidence obtained from decoded Japanese diplomatic communications (the so-called "MAGIC" files) revealing the threat of a Japanese espionage networks on the West Coast is never mentioned By Kashima.

Sheds new light on reasons for internment
This book is a comprehensive look at some of the major reasons for the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans during WW2. Many people think that racial hatred of Japanese started with the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, but actually this was only the culmination of years of anti Japanese feelings , especially on the west coast. Most of the first generation Japanese were farmers, and they made what was once thought to be barren wasteland into some of the most productive land in the US. However, the 1920 Land Act prohibited all Japanese nationals from owning any land, and first generation Japanese werePROHIBITED from becoming US citizens, laws influenced by racist white farmers to prevent any more Japanese from owning farm land. The ever resourceful Issei (first generation Japanese) bypassed this by putting their land in their childrens (by law, American citizens) names. In 1924, the Congress and President Coolidge passed the Anti-Asian exclusion act, which prohibited any more immigration by Japanese (and other Asians) (for an excellent reference, see Roger Daniels "The Politics of Prejudice" for an authoritative look at the laws used to discriminate against Japaneseduring the early 20th century). In addition, Newspaper publishers like William Randolph Hearst were making large efforts to inflame anti Japanese sentiment in their newspapers.
When Pearl Harbor occured, mass hysteria ensued. Many Japanese owned businesses were burned and lootedand homes of Japanese families were vandalized and attacked. It was Feb. 1942 whenExecutive Order 9066 effectively gave all persons of Japanese ancestry, some times as little as 72 hours, time to pack their belongings, settle their affairs, and report for "relocation" (a euphemism if there ever was one).
One last fact that a previous reviewer conveniently doesn't mention- The US Army's 442nd and 100th all Nisei(second generation) combat units, comprising nearly 10,000 men,were the most decorated units for their size in the history of the United States.While their families were locked up or prevented from returning to their lawful homes, "these brave men fought prejudice and won" - spoken by Pres. Harry Truman in 1945 in a ceremony honoring the 442nd and 100th battalions.Its on archival news reels, for any doubters out there.
A previous reviewer says that the WW2 internment of Japanese Americans was NOT due to racial hatred and prejudice- this book and a look at history and the congressional record for the aforementioned anti-Japanese legislation would prove him dead WRONG.

More activist Japanese-American reparations nonsense!
These folks just won't stop. Kashima is a reparations demagogue who like his activist reparations colleagues is bent on re-writing the history of Japanese-American espionage before Pearl Harbor. MAGIC intelligence was the reason for the evacuation. If you want an accurate portrayal of the history, read "MAGIC" by retired National Security Agency Executuve David Lowman. The declassified documents will be enough to convince fair minded readers.

Until Japanese-Americans fess up to the darker chapters oftheir own history and quit attempting to portray themselves as victims and the U.S. government as racists this issue will always be controversial. Version of events of Kashima's ilk will always be taken with a grain of salt by the majority of Americans.

Did you know:

1. It is not true that Japanese-Americans were "interned". Only Japanese nationals (enemy aliens) arrested and given individual hearings were interned. Such persons were held for deportation in Department of Justice camps. Those evacuated were not interned. They were first given an opportunity to voluntarily move to areas outside the military zones. Those unable or unwilling to do so were sent to Relocation Centers operated by the War Relocation Authority.

2. During the war, more than 33,000 evacuees voluntarily left the relocation centers to accept outside employment in areas outside of the military zones. An additional 4,300 left to attend colleges in the East.

3. Approximately two-thirds of the ADULTS among those evacuated were Japanese nationals--enemy aliens subject to detention under long-standing law. The vast majority of evacuated Japanese-Americans (U.S. citizens) were children at the time. Their average age was only 15 years.In addition, between 50 and 75 percent of Japanese-Americans over age 17 were also citizens of Japan (dual citizens) under Japanese law. Thousands had been educated in Japan, some having returned to the U.S. holding reserve rank in the Japanese armed forces.

4. In a recent study made by the National Park Service for the Manzanar memorial site, it was revealed that during the war over 26% of Japanese Americans over military age said they would refuse to swear an unqualified oath of allegiance to the United States.

5. According to War Relocation Authority records, 13,000 applications renouncing their U.S. citizenship and requesting expatriation to Japan were filed by or on behalf of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Over 5,000 such applications had been processed by the end of the war.

6. The evacuation was not motivated by racism, as so often claimed today, but by information obtained by the U.S. from pre-war decoded Japanese diplomatic messages (MAGIC) and other intelligence revealing the existence of espionage and the potential for sabotage involving then-unidentified resident Japanese aliens and Japanese-Americans living within the West Coast Japanese community.Many of these messages and associated intelligence documents have since been declassified and are available in a number of historical publications.

Don't fall for what Kashima and his activist buddies are feeding the public....

Diaries, contemporary sources, and official communications
Judgment Without Trial is a college-level survey of Japanese American imprisonment during World War II and reveals that even before Pearl Harbor, the US government was making plans for the eventual internment of the Japanese American population. Newly discovered records traces this back to the 1920s and plans to prepare for a possible war with Japan. This plus new information on experiences of people of Japanese descent in the Justice and War Departments' camps for internees from Alaska, Hawaii and Latin America makes for an important, different guide which blends diaries, contemporary sources, and official communications in a revealing history. ... Read more

Product Description
When bombs rained down on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese American college students were among the many young men enrolled in ROTC and immediately called upon to defend the Hawaiian islands against invasion. In a few weeks, however, the military government questioned their loyalty and disarmed them.

In No Sword to Bury, Franklin Odo places the largely untold story of the wartime experience of these young men in the context of the community created by their immigrant families and its relationship to the larger, white-dominated society. At the heart of the book are vivid oral histories that recall their service on the home front in the Varsity Victory Volunteers, a non-military group dedicated to public works, as well as in the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Illuminating a critical moment in ethnic identity formation among this first generation of Americans of Japanese descent (the nisei), Odo shows how the war-time service and the post-war success of these men contributed to the simplistic view of Japanese Americans as a model minority in Hawai`i. ... Read more

Product Description
November 20, 1968

Now I’ll have more time. I’m finally out of the shit. The docs say I got hit a week ago, but I don't remember…

It all happened so fast. We were on patrol just north of here (Hue) and I remember counting down, thinking that I’d be out soon and that maybe the worst was over. All I had to do was keep low, stay calm, keep writing, keep counting down. Maybe the lieutenant will cut me a break, pull me out of the bush. That thought kept me going…

I woke up in a hospital bed. A nice young doc said, "You’re lucky, Corporal Divina, you’re going home. Nasty, yeah, some muscle damage, but no vital organs. A frag just missed your heart…"

Doc was wrong. I don’t have a heart, not now, anyway. "The others?" I asked.

He was a nice doc and he looked at me, like maybe that’s something I shouldn’t have said. "You’re lucky," he said and turned away.

After being wounded in Vietnam, nineteen-year-old Rico Divina is sent home to a string of low-paying jobs and shabby apartments while trying to cope with the demons inside him. As an "Indipino" (half Yakima, half Filipino), Rico has come up against obstacles all his life—those of race, culture, nationality, and now the experience of war—that have left him without hope. In time he embarks on a course that is self-destructive and increasingly violent. People and situations present themselves, offering him the chance to turn his life around, but Rico, whether from lack of faith or pride, rejects them. The only thing that sustains him is writing his own story with a happy ending—something he has long suspected he will never have. ... Read more

Product Description
This work covers Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) detachments at historically African American colleges and universities throughout the United States from the inception of the Student Army Training Corps to the advanced programs currently in place. The armistices following World War I allowed for ROTC programs to be set up, World War II saw a push for recruits, and American participation in Vietnam made use of black soldiers more than ever. Despite African American participation in the military in war and peace, it took nearly 60 years for black collegiate education institutions (around 1973) to fulfill their need for Army, Navy and Air Force ROTC programs producing commissioned officers.

The book discusses the beginnings of the ROTC programs at African American colleges with the Student Army Training Corps and the establishment, expansion and reorganization of the programs that followed. The acquisition of Air Force and Navy ROTC programs are discussed and all the revisions to the various programs thereafter, including opening them up to women. ... Read more

Product Description
Henry Ossian Flipper was one of the 19th-century West's most remarkable individuals and the first African American graduate of West Point. Although Flipper's record of accomplishment was significant, he was court-martialed and dismissed from the service in 1882. This is Flipper's own account of his career, along with a biographical essay by Quintard Taylor Jr. ... Read more

Product Description
Equality or Discrimination? strives to close the gap in existing literature and address the often-neglected field of research on the discrimination of African Americans in the U.S. Armed Forces during the Vietnam War. Despite the awakened interest of academics, authors, artists, and experts from a multitude of fields and the vast selection of literature on the Vietnam War and its veterans, African Americans have received little attention until now. Based on initial findings, Dr. Kimbrough analyzes key issues including whether or not African Americans experienced racial discrimination while serving. The study also focuses on whether the Vietnam War was indeed the first fully integrated conflict in which the U.S. attempted to engage in militarily without racial division.The findings contradict the traditional image of equality in the U.S. Armed Forces and provide the basis for the dissertation. Proving that soldiers in the Vietnam War were NOT treated equally, Dr. Kimbrough argues that African Americans experienced various forms of discrimination during a tumultuous time in U.S. history in which the opposite treatment of its soldiers was required. ... Read more

Product Description
Produced since 1985 by the Mershon Center of the Ohio State University, the American Defense Annual is a comprehensive, nonpartisan review and analysis of the major issues and trends in American national security policy.Now published by Brassey's, this edition focuses on the requirements of U.S. defense policy in a new era, highlighting defense and strategic issues for an uncertain future. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A mediocre academic study
This is an academic book on the comparison and contrast of various authors in the body of Asian literature written in English, including an "update" to include Vietnam era authors. Probably like her PhD thesis (1957- , MA SJSU, PhD UC-Santa Cruz, Asst Prof Engl CalST-Stanislaus).

As opposed to the description in her Preface on her student's essays, she doesn't really include analysis and prose of Vietnamese-Amer authors. This is disappointing considering the title of her book. However at age 52, she could be an Editor for a future project to create an anthology and reader of Vietnamese fiction and memoir on non-fictional short story authors.

On p. xiii, she does say she wants to learn the Vietnamese language to improve her translating ability.
... Read more

Product Description
Combining heartfelt stories with first-rate scholarship, "Lost and Found" reveals the complexities of a people reclaiming their own history. For decades, victims of the United States' mass incarceration of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II were kept from understanding their experience by governmental coverups, euphemisms, and societal silence. Indeed the world as a whole knew little or nothing about this shamefully un-American event. The Japanese American National Museum mounted a critically acclaimed exhibition, 'America's Concentration Camp: Remembering the Japanese American Experience', with the twin goals of educating the general public and engaging former inmates in coming to grips with and telling their own history.Author/curator Karen L. Ishizuka, a third generation Japanese American, deftly blends official history with community memory to frame the historical moment of recovery within its cultural legacy.Detailing the interactive strategy that invited visitors to become part of this groundbreaking exhibition, Ishizuka narrates the processes of revelation and reclamation that unfolded as former internees and visitors alike confronted the experience of the camps. She also ponders how the dual act of recovering - and recovering from - history necessitates private and public mediation between remembering and forgetting, speaking out and remaining silent. By embedding personal words and images within a framework of public narrative, "Lost and Found" works toward reclaiming a painful past and provides new insights with richness and depth. ... Read more

Product Description
"To Bear Any Burden is necessary to understand the most significant aspect of the Indochina wars: the human one."- Tran Van Dinh, author of Blue Dragon White Tiger: A Tet Story

"At least this reader would like to spend hours if not days talking to each of the people within these pages."- Jack Reynolds, Network Correspondent, NBC

The 48 American and Asian veterans, refugees, and officials who speak in this book come from widely divergent backgrounds. In their narratives we hear them reliving crucial moments in the preparation, execution, and aftermath of war. It is a riveting, eyewitness account of the war and also reclaims from this tragic continuum larger patterns of courage and dedication. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

First rate war stories on Vietnam
This book reviews the aftermath of the Vietnam-U.S. war in a down to earth tone and it's impact on the people who's involvement in the war are explained in detail.Personally i like this book because of its content which voiced out the real opinion of the one involved in the war no matter whether they're the allies or enemies.It's a great book to those who wants to know more about the Vietnam war and its aftermath.

Great and significant book
This book is worth reading for anyone interested in the history of the Vietnam War.
It is a collection of forty-eight short recollections from a wide variety of Americans and Vietnamese involved in the war, or the country, from the late 50's to the 80's.It also touches on Cambodia and Laos.Each recollection is from one-half to six pages long, and may cover one short event, or several years' experience in the country.
The book deceptively starts out slowly, and it is only with continued reading that one discovers that within this chosen group of recollections are many of the great truths of politics and military conflict in South Vietnam.
The essays cover the fatal flaws inherent within South Vietnam, which include the long history of being a colony of France, without France taking any steps to prepare the country for independence, such as training civil servants or encouraging the rule of law through local rulers.Once independent, South Vietnam was fragmented on religious lines.The civil leaders were corrupt, engaged in nepotism, and did not relate well to the peasants.South Vietnamese military leaders were promoted not on merit, but by family ties and the size of the bribes they paid to the government.For political reasons, the military zone around Saigon was intentionally unorganized and inefficient.
The geography of South Vietnam -- having all its territory within easy reach of Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam -- made it a very difficult land to defend from an enemy with safe sanctuary so close to crucial areas.This book does not mention the oppressive acts of the South Vietnamese government, which helped alienate its citizens.The book seems to understand, if not almost excuse, wrongful acts by US soldiers.
The US tactics also contributed to defeat:rules of engagement tied the military's hands in senseless ways (a SAM base couldn't be attacked under construction, but pilots had to wait until it was operational);rotating inexperienced officers through Vietnam to "punch their combat ticket" was more important than retaining experienced officers and advisors who often "got it" just before being rotated out;the battle for "hearts and minds" was often ignored;and years were wasted on ineffective strategy, until home protests compelled withdrawal.
And, yes, North Vietnam really was an oppressive regime which used terror and lies to achieve its goals.
Any discussion of Vietnam brings up many "what if's?"What if South Vietnam had a more appealing and legitimate government?What if US politicians hadn't used such ineffective strategy and tactics?Is there ANY scenario which would have resulted in a long-term stable and secure South Vietnam?
If you're at all interested in the field, this is a book well worth searching out.

Superb! Riveting!
Al Santoli's book, To Bear Any Burden, is a narrative of stories told by 47 Americans, Vietnamese (both North and South), and Cambodians regarding their experiences before the US involvement, during the US war, and the war's aftermath (after the departure of US troops). Each tale (from two to 10 pages in length) is riveting in itself. The book moves in relative chronilogical order beginning in 1954 and concludes with the present (circa 1985). Each tale is successfully interwoven with the next story such that there is a cohesiveness and a logical flow to the story telling timeline.

Some of the stories are quite stunning:from the description of US soldiers being called baby-killers and spat on after they returned to the US [difficult to comprehend in this patriotic post 9/11 world] to the horror stories of the Communist regimes in Cambodia and in North/South Vietnam after the fall of Saigon [after reading theses stories, one should question why the US would want to establish ties to Vietnam].

This "straight from the hip" narrative is recommended to anyone wishing to learn more about the scenes from a participant's point of view.

Extrodinary, The second time through.
Moving and extreme reality

A "must-read" classic of America's involvement in SE Asia
I first read To Bear Any Burden when it was originally released in 1985. This has been a 'must-read' classic of American involvement in Southeast Asia since it was published. For it, Santoli interviewed, in depth, 47individuals representative of that involvement from 1945 into the1980s--Americans, Viet-Namese (communists and anti-communists), Cambodiansand Laotians. The book is so artfully compiled as to flow like a singlenarration; yet the 'cast of characters' are separate in time, space,culture and social rank--an entire spectrum from ambassadors to villagers,soldiers to politicians, in one volume. No ones education about theViet-Nam War is complete unless they've read this book. ... Read more

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This book is the first full portrait of a single assembly center - located at the Western Washington fairgrounds at Puyallup, outside Seattle - that held Japanese Americans for four months prior to their transfer to a relocation center during World War II. Gathering archival evidence and eyewitness accounts, Louis Fiset reconstructs the events leading up to the incarceration as they unfolded on a local level. The book explores the daily lives of the more than seven thousand inmates at 'Camp Harmony,' detailing how they worked, played, ate, and occasionally fought with each other and with their captors. Fiset also includes details on how Army surveyors selected the center's site, oversaw its construction, and managed the transfer of inmates to the more permanent Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho. ... Read more

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Japanese American Internment
Scholarly exposition from the outside administrative perspective as to the organization and workings of one of the assembly centers to which Japanese Americans were evacuated prior to more permanent camps during WWII.Availability of official governmental records comprises the basis of the report.As such, it is enlightening as to how official thinking evolved to remove all persons of Japanese ancestry from the west coast.It does not capture the human tragedies that resulted - the fear, sorrow, individual and family disorganization that were some of the consequences of that wholesale incarceration. ... Read more

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Historians often refer to the Korean War as "the forgotten war," but Edwards argues that in many respects it is a conflict that has been deliberately ignored for the past fifty years. This broad look at the war examines how Americans have attempted to remember and commemorate the confrontation which played such a major role in America's Cold War experience. As a United Nations effort or Police Action, the hazy identification of the war has in part contributed to a lack of public understanding of what happened in Korea. This book considers the American response to the "loss" in Korea, and how this response played out as a failure to remember. ... Read more

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As Japan’s pre–Pearl Harbor ambassador to the United States, Admiral Nomura Kichisaburo (1877–1964) played a significant role in a tense and turbulent period in Japanese-U.S. relations. Scholars tend to view his actions and missteps as ambassador as representing the failure of diplomacy to avert the outbreak of hostilities between the two paramount Pacific powers.

This extensively researched biography casts new light on the life and career of this important figure. Connecting his experiences as a naval officer to his service as foreign minister and ambassador, and later as “father” of Japan’s Maritime Self Defense Forces and proponent of the U.S.-Japanese alliance, this study reassesses Nomura’s contributions as a hard-nosed realist whose grasp of the underlying realities of Japanese-U.S. relations went largely unappreciated by the Japanese political and military establishment.

In highlighting the complexities and conundrums of Nomura’s position, as well as the role of the Imperial Navy in the formulation of Japan’s foreign policy, Peter Mauch draws upon rarely accessed materials from naval and diplomatic archives in Japan as well as various collections of personal papers, including Nomura’s, which Mauch discovered in 2005 and which are now housed in the National Diet Library.

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Buhite offers a trenchant evaluation of Douglas MacArthur's career in east Asia and his role in some of the most important military and diplomatic issues of the twentieth century. Concise and highly readable, this biography of one of the most influential and controversial agents of American foreign and military policy considers diplomatic fact in light of psychological insight. A must read for those interested in diplomatic and military history. ... Read more

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Designed as a small, easily read text for undergraduates, this book deals with the black soldier, from the use of slaves in the military units of the Spanish Conquistadores and the English and Dutch colonists in the seventeenth century, to the induction of General Colin Powell as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the fall of 1989. The work focuses on a number of themes including the irony of the black soldier fighting for the American concepts of freedom and liberty on the field of battle and not free himself from the racial abuses of the American social system. Intended as a supplemental reading, this book is ideal for military history courses, black history courses, or even United States survey courses. ... Read more

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This book is a revised edition of the 1993 African American Generals and Flag Officers: Biographies of Over 120 Blacks in the United States Military. It offers detailed, career-oriented summaries for men and women who often overcame societal obstacles to become ranking officers in the U.S. military. Included now are members of all branches of the armed services (Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps), as well as the National Guard and Reserves. ... Read more

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In the aftermath of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the systematic exile and incarceration of thousands of Japanese Americans, the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council was born. Created to facilitate the movement of Japanese American college students from concentration camps to colleges away from the West Coast, this privately organized and funded agency helped more than 4,000 incarcerated students pursue higher education at more than 600 schools during WWII. Austin argues that the resettled students transformed the attempts at assimilation to create their own meanings and suit their own purposes, and succeeded in reintegrating themselves into the wider American society without sacrificing their connections to community and their Japanese cultural heritage. ... Read more

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5 Stars...Buy (& Read!) This Book
This book was very well written, very accurate, and an overall excellent study into the subject.One of the few I recommend to friends.Author is sharp as a tack. ... Read more

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US Army, Technical Manual, TM 5-4310-276-14-HR, COMPRESSOR, RECIPROCATING, AIR: HANDTRUCK MOUNTED, GASOLINE ENG DRIVEN, 5 CFM, 175 PSI, (KELLOGG AMERICAN MODEL G-311-PC), (NSN 4310-00-843-8885), military manauals, special forces
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The military have had a key role to play in Indonesia's recent history and may well have a decisive role to play in her future. This book examines the role of the military in the downfall of Suharto and their ongoing influence on the succeeding governments of B.J. Habibie and Abdurrahman Wahid. The author also explores such key features as human rights, reconciliation, civic-military discourse and ongoing security dilemmas. The book is unique in providing the best overview of the role of the military in the world's fourth most populous nation. ... Read more