The Unpredictability of the Past: Memories of the Asia-Pacific War in U.S.-East Asian Relations (review)

Tracking how people remember a particular event is a tricky business for a number of reasons. First, memories within a single mind expand, contract, disappear, and reappear as the time gap that separates the event from the memory widens. Memories also differ across multiple minds—no two people remember a particular event in exactly the same way. Finally, memories are often manipulated and distorted by those who create, edit, and even bury events for the purpose of developing a collective mind within a people. Capturing the ebbs and flows of memories is indeed a daunting task. The general task that contributors to The Unpredictability of the Past accepted, however, was to do just this. As editor Marc Gallicchio writes, they strove to analyze "the many ways in which memories were created, perceived, and revised [to understand how] contemporary events or concerns influenced and framed memories of the Asia-Pacific War" (p. 5).

Post-Cold War influences directed many of the volume's discussions. The chapters revisited a number of well-documented and researched topics, such as the controversial 1995 Enola Gay exhibition planned by the Smithsonian Museum, and also introduced new topics, such as the effect that 9-11 had on Pearl Harbor memories. Contributors are to be commended for incorporating in their research a diverse range of perspectives: the victor (United States), the vanquished (Japan), and the victimized (American blacks and Chinese war victims), as well as for viewing these perspectives through different genres: (the media, cinema, and education) and venues (monuments, museums, and exhibitions).

The Arizona memorial, fiftieth anniversary commemorations, a Hollywood blockbuster movie, and the September 11 terrorist attacks helped preserve, but also diversify, the memories of Pearl Harbor, as demonstrated in a number of the volume's chapters. Emily S. Rosenberg reflects that the active responses by the United States to the Pearl Harbor and September 11 attacks helped shape collective memory interpretations of the latter attacks and the subsequent "war on terrorism" into a "Pearl Harbor: Sequel," despite differences over how the two events were defined conceptually and geographically (p. 40). Daqing Yang sees further manipulation of this event in the "visible hand [that crafted] a memory product" in the filming of Pearl Harbor, a reflection of the director's aspiration that the movie enjoy success not only in the United States, but also in Japan (p. 305).

How nations wish to have their history remembered influences how they display it. Koreans and Chinese have long criticized Japan's attempts to justify its colonial and wartime histories in textbooks. Museums and exhibits offer similar opportunities to influence the nation's war narrative, as demonstrated by Xiaohua Ma. She summarizes the sentiments of one Japanese regarding Japan's wartime history displays as "all nations [having] a right to interpret their history in their own way" (p. 177). Like textbooks, the content of these displays often invites protest from abroad, but also controversy at home. Ma follows criticism by Japanese conservatives over the Peace Osaka exhibition's attempt to strike a balance by displaying the wartime suffering that Japanese inflicted upon Asians as well as that which Japanese endured at home (chapter five). Similarly, U.S. conservative circles halted plans developed by the Smithsonian Institution to display Hiroshima from both the ground and the air to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic bombing. Critics argued that this comprehensive display questioned the judgment of those who decided to use the weapon, and challenged the curators' patriotism (Waldo Heinrichs, chapter six). Counter perspectives of World War II history emerge as the viewer population diversifies. Comments left by Japanese visitors in the Arizona exhibit's guest book questioning the display's decision to isolate the Pearl Harbor narrative from that of the Asia-Pacific War (Yujin Yaguchi, chapter seven) echo criticism levied against...