SDHF Newsletter No.174 The Buildup to the Greater East Asian WAr from Japanese Perspectives

The Buildup to the ‘Greater East Asian War’
from the Japanese Perspectives
By Aldric Hama
Reviewed by Sugihara Seishiro, Former Professor at Josai University

August 14, 2017

Aldric Hama’s essay, “The Buildup to the ‘Greater East Asian War’ from the Japanese Perspective,” notes how differently the people of Japan and the West view the origins of the so-called Pacific War, and attempts to explain this vast discrepancy in perceptions.
The Western image is, in a word, a regurgitation of the opinions put forward at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the IMTFE or Tokyo Trials) that World War II was an illegal war of aggression launched by Japan’s militarist faction in order to dominate East Asia and the rest of the world.
Although it is true that Japan did ultimately initiate the Greater East Asian War, the series of events that led Japan to the war were not at all conveyed in an accurate manner by the IMTFE. Mr. Hama’s essay makes this point very clear.
Prof. Sugihara’s review of this essay will be a useful introduction to this long essay.
The essay was first published in The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies, Volume 42, Number 1, Spring 2017. The essay has been uploaded to our website and now presented here.

*Essay:
URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/essay-article/1011/

PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Greater-East-Asian-War-from-Japanese-Perspective1.pdf
*Review:
URL: https://www.sdh-fact.com/review-article/1013/

PDF: https://www.sdh-fact.com/CL/Review-of-the-Aldric-Hama.pdf

MOTEKI Hiromichi, Acting Chairman
for KASE Hideaki, Chairman
Society for the Dissemination of Historical Fact