Reflections on Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during World War II

Nov 26, 2012, 3-5PM

Professor Fujitani will reflect on his reinterpretation of nationalism, racism and wartime mobilization during the Asia-Pacific war. He uses parallel case studies of Koreans recruited or drafted into the Japanese military and of Japanese Americans mobilized to serve in the US Army, to examine how the US and Japanese empires struggled to manage racialized populations while waging total war. He demonstrates that the United States and Japan became increasingly alike over the course of the war, perhaps most tellingly in their common attempts to disavow racism even as they reproduced it in new ways and forms.

Fujitani is the Dr. David Chu Professor and director in Asia Pacific Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan (1998), and co-editor of Perilous Memories: The Asia Pacific War(s) (2001). His most recent book Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during World War II (2011) will form the basis for this lecture.