Overview

Three weeks after Imperial Japan’s surrender, five men dressed in baggy khaki uniforms stared at the camera. They and two colleagues were the only survivors out of the 210 Allied airmen which Imperial Japan had imprisoned in “paradise.” Joining them were 18 British soldiers, the only survivors of 600 of their countrymen similarly but separately imprisoned. Another 10,000 Allied soldiers and civilians were also imprisoned on the South Pacific island of New Britain. More than half died before liberation. What motivated such inhumane treatment? This book’s quest for an answer traces the genesis of Bushido, Imperial Japan’s martial code, and surveys the prisoners’ recollections of their ordeal as the Battle for Rabaul raged around them from 1942 to March 1944.

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9781527570962

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A student of East Asian history and languages since 1963, C. Kenneth Quinones received his PhD in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard University in 1975. Careers as a university professor and diplomat, plus coordinating US-East Asian educational exchanges enabled him to live in Japan (12 years), South Korea (10 years) and North Korea (six months), and to travel extensively in East and Southeast Asia, the Russian Far East, Europe, and Australia. In 2006, he was appointed Chairman of the Global Studies Program at Akita International University, Japan’s first truly international university with students from over 35 nations. He taught East Asian history at this institution, and was promoted to Dean of Research before retiring in 2015. His publications include over 30 academic articles and five books.

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