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Sixty years after the end of World War II, the political and social fallout from the War is alive and divisive, as scholars in this volume show. One example is how former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine prevented China, Japan and South Korea from sitting down together to talk about Northeast Asian integration, and wider Asian integration. Another example is the question of comfort women. Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's statement - that there is no evidence that Japan's government or army forced women to work in military brothels during the War - appeared to go back on a 1993 apology for the comfort women. How such issues of history are dealt with by countries of this region has an effect on contemporary relations among the major powers contending for leadership in East Asia.
List of contents
Preliminary pages; PART I: OVERVIEW; 1. Opening Remarks by Wang Gungwu; 2. A Long View on the Great Asian War by Tim Harper; PART II: SOUTHEAST ASIA; 3. Legacies of World War II in Indochina by David P Chandler; 4. Transient and Enduring Legacies of World War II: The Case of Indonesia by Richard Leirissa; 5. The 'Black-out' Syndrome and the Ghosts of World War II: The War as a 'Divisive Issue' in Malaysia by Cheah Boon Kheng; 6. The Legacies of World War II for Myanmar by Robert H Taylor; 7. World War II: Transient and Enduring Legacies for the Philippines by Reynaldo Ileto; 8. Singapore's Missing War by Asad-ul Iqbal Latif; 9. World War II and Thailand after Sixty Years: Legacies and Latent Side Effects by Thitinan Pongsudhirak; PART III: NORTHEAST ASIA AND INDIA; 10. Remembering World War II: Legacies of the War Fought in China by Huang Jianli; 11. How to Assess World War II in World History: One Japanese Perspective by Takashi Inoguchi; 12. Obstacles to European Style Historical Reconciliation between Japan and South Korea - A Practitioner's Perspective by Andrew Horvat; 13. World War II Legacies for India by Sunanda K. Datta-Ray.
