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Books > Humanities > History > Asian / Middle Eastern history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945
The indistinct status of the Zainichi has meant that, since the
late 1940s, two ethnic Korean associations, the Chongryun
(pro-North) and the Mindan (pro-South) have been vying for
political loyalty from the Zainichi, with both groups initially
opposing their assimilation in Japan. Unlike the Korean diasporas
living in Russia, China or the US, the Zainichi have become sharply
divided along political lines as a result. Myung Ja Kim examines
Japan's changing national policies towards the Zainichi in order to
understand why this group has not been fully integrated into Japan.
Through the prism of this ethnically Korean community, the book
reveals the dynamics of alliances and alignments in East Asia,
including the rise of China as an economic superpower, the security
threat posed by North Korea and the diminishing alliance between
Japan and the US. Taking a post-war historical perspective, the
research reveals why the Zainichi are vital to Japan's state policy
revisionist aims to increase its power internationally and how they
were used to increase the country's geopolitical leverage.With a
focus on International Relations, this book provides an important
analysis of the mechanisms that lie behind nation-building policy,
showing the conditions controlling a host state's treatment of
diasporic groups.
The American war in Vietnam was concluded in 1973 under the terms
of a truce that were effectively identical to what was offered to
the Nixon administration four years earlier. Those four years cost
America billions of dollars and over 35,000 war deaths and
casualties, and resulted in the deaths of over 300,000 Vietnamese.
And those years were the direct result of the supposed master plan
of the most important voice in the Nixon White House on American
foreign policy: Henry Kissinger. Using newly available archival
material from the Nixon Presidential Library and Kissinger's
personal papers, Robert K. Brigham shows how Kissinger's approach
to Vietnam was driven by personal political rivalries and strategic
confusion, while domestic politics played an outsized influence on
Kissinger's so-called strategy. There was no great master plan or
Bismarckian theory that supported how the US continued the war or
conducted peace negotiations. As a result, a distant tragedy was
perpetuated, forever changing both countries. Now, perhaps for the
first time, we can see the full scale of that tragedy and the
machinations that fed it.
'A fast-paced, thrilling account of British heroism, brave men
surrounded and fighting against overwhelming odds. This is the
real, sometimes shocking, and deeply personal story of modern
warfare and PTSD.' Andy McNab 'This hugely timely book reveals in
gripping detail the personal stories of its hidden victims - lest
we forget.' Damien Lewis Trapped in an isolated outpost on the edge
of the Helmand desert, a small force of British and Afghan soldiers
is holding out against hundreds of Taliban fighters. Under brutal
siege conditions, running low on food and ammunition, he
experiences the full horror of combat. As the casualties begin to
mount and the enemy closes in, Evans finds both his leadership and
his belief in the war severely tested. Returning home, he is
haunted by the memories of Afghanistan. He can't move on and his
life begins to spin out of control. Under the Bearskin was
previously published as Code Black.
Wars are not fought by politicians and generals--they are fought by
soldiers. Written by a combat veteran of the Vietnam War, Not a
Gentleman's War is about such soldiers--a gritty, against-the-grain
defense of the much-maligned junior officer. Conventional wisdom
holds that the junior officer in Vietnam was a no-talent, poorly
trained, unmotivated soldier typified by Lt. William Calley of My
Lai infamy. Drawing on oral histories, after-action reports,
diaries, letters, and other archival sources, Ron Milam debunks
this view, demonstrating that most of the lieutenants who served in
combat performed their duties well and effectively, serving with
great skill, dedication, and commitment to the men they led.
Milam's narrative provides a vivid, on-the-ground portrait of what
the platoon leader faced: training his men, keeping racial tensions
at bay, and preventing alcohol and drug abuse, all in a war without
fronts. Yet despite these obstacles, junior officers performed
admirably, as documented by field reports and evaluations of their
superior officers. More than 5,000 junior officers died in Vietnam;
all of them had volunteered to lead men in battle. Based on
meticulous and wide-ranging research, this book provides a
much-needed serious treatment of these men--the only such study in
print--shedding new light on the longest war in American history.
The Women's War is the gripping true story of a Danish female
soldier's tours to the Helmand Province in Afghanistan between 2007
and 2009. There she comes into contact with the Afghan women who
are fighting against oppression, domestic violence and the horror
regime of the Taliban, and together they initiate a covert
collaboration. The women receive the necessary aid to establish
dressmaking rooms, beauty salons, chicken farms and other projects
while being aware of the fact that the international military
forces are their only chance to get rid of the Taliban. The Women's
War emerged out of the friendships built by a soldier with Afghan
women who helped the international military forces in unexpected
ways. It is a book by a woman in the armed forces about what war
does to women, about the looming risk of taking chances in wartime
and about grief over fallen friends, but more importantly, it is
about how women in one instance found the will to not only survive
but to make something out of the terrible conditions that war
brings.
On March 16, 1968, American soldiers killed as many as five
hundred Vietnamese men, women, and children in a village near the
South China Sea. In "My Lai" William Thomas Allison explores and
evaluates the significance of this horrific event. How could such a
thing have happened? Who (or what) should be held accountable? How
do we remember this atrocity and try to apply its lessons, if
any?
My Lai has fixed the attention of Americans of various political
stripes for more than forty years. The breadth of writing on the
massacre, from news reports to scholarly accounts, highlights the
difficulty of establishing fact and motive in an incident during
which confusion, prejudice, and self-preservation overwhelmed the
troops.
Son of a Marine veteran of the Vietnam War--and aware that the
generation who lived through the incident is aging--Allison seeks
to ensure that our collective memory of this shameful episode does
not fade.
Well written and accessible, Allison's book provides a clear
narrative of this historic moment and offers suggestions for how to
come to terms with its aftermath.
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