Race for Empire

Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans during World War II

Takashi Fujitani

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780520262232
• eBook ISBN: 9780520950368
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: History

Race for Empire offers a profound and challenging reinterpretation of nationalism, racism, and wartime mobilization during the Asia-Pacific war. In parallel case studies—of Japanese Americans mobilized to serve in the United States Army and of Koreans recruited or drafted into the Japanese military—T. Fujitani examines the U.S. and Japanese empires as they struggled to manage racialized populations while waging total war. Fujitani probes governmental policies and analyzes representations of these soldiers—on film, in literature, and in archival documents—to reveal how characteristics of racism, nationalism, capitalism, gender politics, and the family changed on both sides. 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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• RACE FOR EMPIRE
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of Illustrations
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Note on Romanization and Naming
• Commonly Used Acronyms
• Introduction Ethnic and Colonial Soldiers and the Politics of Disavowal
• PART ONE FROM VULGAR TO POLITE RACISM
• PART TWO JAPANESE AS AMERICANS
• PART THREE KOREANS AS JAPANESE
• Epilogue “Four Volunteer Soldiers”
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index