[9/26/2025] World War II at 80: War Generations, Society, and Memory in the Asia Pacific

As eighty years have passed since World War II came to an end in the Asia Pacific, the implications of the passing of the war generations for the war memories became more urgent. How did war generations fit into the domestic politics of memory in the postwar period? How did war generations fit into the transnational politics of memory in the postwar period? What will be the shapes of war memories without the presence of the war generations?

1:00 Welcome

1:10 Keynote Speech

2:25 Coffee Break

2:30 Panel One

3:40 Coffee Break

3:50 Panel Two

5:00 Plenary Discussion

5:30 End

“The Passing Past: Generations and the Future of War Memory,” Carol Gluck, George Samson Professor Emerita of History, Columbia University

“Two Faces of Memory: Japan-China Perspectives on the War Orphans Left Behind in China,” Irene Hyangseon Ahn, Assistant Professor of Justice, Law, & Criminology, American University

“The Loss Boys: Displaced and Disabled Japanese Veterans of the Second World War,” Lee K. Pennington is an Associate Professor of History, U.S. Naval Academy

“Japanese Mediascapes and Historical Memories of the Asia-Pacific War,” Erik Ropers, Director, Asian Studies Program and International Studies Program

“China’s ‘Date Debate’-How Manchurian Scholars Rewrote World War II,” Emily Matson, Professorial Lecturer, the George Washington University

Moderators: Mike Mochizuki, Japan-U.S. Relations Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, the George Washington University, and Daqing Yang, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs, the George Washington University

About the Keynote Speaker

Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor of History. She specializes in modern Japan, from the late nineteenth century to the present; international relations; World War II, and history-writing and public memory in Asia and the West. She received her B.A. from Wellesley (1962) and her Ph.D. from Columbia (1977).  She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society; former President of the Association for Asian Studies; currently co-chair of the Trustees Emeriti of Asia Society and member of the Board of Directors of Japan Society. She is a founding member and now chair of Columbia’s Committee on Global Thought.

About the Speakers

Dr. Irene Hyangseon Ahn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Justice, Law, & Criminology at American University. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 2024, and was formerly a Predoctoral Fellow at Academia Sinica from 2022 to 2023. Her research focuses on the experiences of marginalized individuals and groups affected by state violence. She is particularly interested in Law and Society, Legal Mobilizations, Global Justice, and Transitional Justice in East Asia and beyond. Trained in comparative-historical and ethnographic methods, she seeks to understand how communities aggrieved by state violence engage with state authorities to address past injustices through a sociological lens.

Lee K. Pennington is an Associate Professor of History at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. He received his Ph.D. in History from Columbia University.

About the Moderators

Professor Mike Mochizuki holds the Japan-U.S. Relations Chair in Memory of Gaston Sigur at the Elliott School of International Affairs in George Washington University. He co-directs the “Memory and Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific” project of the Sigur Center. Professor Mochizuki was Associate Dean for Academic Programs at the Elliott School from 2010 to 2014 and Director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies from 2001 to 2005. Previously he was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He was also Co-Director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Policy at RAND and has taught at the University of Southern California and Yale University. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University. His recent books include Memory, Identity, and Commemorations of World War II: Anniversary Politics in Asia Pacific (co-editor and co-author, 2018); Energy Security in Asia and Eurasia (co-editor and co-author, 2017); Nuclear Debates in Asia: The Role of Geopolitics and Domestic Processes (co-editor and author, 2016); and The Okinawa Question: Futenma, the US-Japan Alliance, and Regional Security (co-editor and author, 2013). He has published articles in such journals as The American Interest, Asia Pacific Review, Foreign Affairs, International Security, Japan Quarterly, Journal of Strategic Studies, Nonproliferation Review, Survival, and Washington Quarterly. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled Allies and Rivals: the U.S.-Japan Alliance and the Rise of China.

A historian of modern Japan, Daqing Yang has research interests in the following three areas: the technological construction of the Japanese empire; the history and memory of World War II; and Japan’s relationship with Asia in the postwar period. In 2004, Dr. Yang was appointed a Historical Consultant to The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group at the U.S. National Archives. He has served as the Edwin O. Reischauer Visiting Professor of Japanese Studies at Harvard University, and also taught at University of Tokyo, Waseda University (Japan) and Yonsei University (Korea). The founding co-director of the Memory and Reconciliation in the Asia Pacific program based at the Sigur Center for Asian Studies, he is currently working on historians and reconciliation in postwar Europe and East Asia as well as energy resources in the Japanese empire. Dr. Yang is the author of Technology of Empire: Telecommunications and Japanese Expansion, 1883-1945, and has co-edited several books.