America's Wars in Asia ─ A Cultural Approach to History and Memory

This book brings a fresh perspective to three wars the United States fought in Asia between 1941 and 1975 - the Pacific War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War - by focusing on the human dimension of war as experienced by those, on all sides, who fought, lived through, and later remembered them. The complex relationship between history and memory is brought to bear on analyses of cultural artifacts and productions including novels, films, short stories, and poems that derive from or evoke war. Even though the cultural approach concerns itself with the local and the particular rather than with the abstract and universal, it is inherently comparative. Moreover, it also relocates each war in the historical and cultural experiences of Asian countries themselves rather than seeing the war as merely a conflict between the United States and Asian nations. This volume is meant to encourage readers, especially in a teaching environment, to develop an understanding of the experience of war in Asia that is variegated, fragmented, and complex, like the wars themselves.