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"The Mormon Military Experience: 1838 to the Cold War" by Sherman L. Fleek and Robert C. Freeman provides a comprehensive account of the military history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The authors highlight the significant change in the Church's stance on war and peace throughout American history. The book explores the formation of military forces by the Saints, their involvement in conflicts such as the Mexican-American War and the Civil War, and their participation in the world wars, Korea, and Vietnam. The authors also discuss the reasons behind the Church's shift in position on war in the 1890s. Overall, the book offers valuable insights into the history of the Church and its relationship with the military. [Extracted from the article]

The article recounts a story of a group of scientists and crew members on a research vessel in the Gulf of Mexico who wanted to honor the late Jacques Cousteau, a renowned oceanographic explorer. They considered various ideas, including building a monument or taking a picture in watch caps and speedos, but ultimately settled on a 21-gun salute. However, lacking the necessary materials, they improvised by creating a potato cannon and firing off six potatoes into the Gulf. The author reflects on the camaraderie and unique situations that arise during field work, as well as the importance of honoring those who have paved the way in their profession. [Extracted from the article]

Roberta Wohlstetter's Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision is probably the most influential book in the field of intelligence studies. As David Sherman explains, however, government officials attempted to block its publication due to security concerns that seemed to focus on Wohlstetter's passing reference to World War II SIGINT. Because Sherman's history raises issues of such ongoing importance to the field of intelligence studies, the editors have invited four scholars to offer their reflections on the classification issues that bedeviled Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Japan's 1941 attacks on Hawai'i and Hong Kong, Canada relocated, detained, and exiled citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry. Many interracial families, however, were exempted from this racial project called the internment. The form of the exemption was an administrative permit granted to its holder on the basis of their marital or patrilineal proximity to whiteness. This article analyzes these permits relying on archival research and applying a critical race feminist lens to explore how law was constitutive of race at this moment in Canadian history. I argue that the permits recategorized interracial intimacies towards two racial ends: to differentiate the citizen from the "enemy alien"; and to regulate the interracial family according to patriarchal common law principles. This article nuances received narratives of law as an instrument of racial exclusion by documenting the way in which a new inclusive state measure sustained old exclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soon after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans (two-thirds U.S. citizens) were rounded up and ordered into desolate incarceration (internment) camps based only on their ethnic heritage. More than 40 years later, the U.S. government acknowledged that the Japanese American incarceration was unjustified and provided a formal apology and monetary award to surviving incarcerees. The present study investigates the relationship between religious affiliation (Buddhist and Christian) and subsequent perceptions of relief associated with the government's belated redress. Based on a national sample of U.S.-born Japanese American former incarcerees (N = 454), Buddhist incarcerees reported greater relief from receiving redress than Christians. Across religious affiliations, older incarcerees and those with lower income reported more relief. Both Buddhist and Christian respondents who perceived more Japanese American incarceration-related physical suffering, and those who believed in a just world, experienced greater relief. In addition, Buddhists who more strongly believed their lives are controlled by unpredictable fate/fortune, and Christians who more strongly believed their lives were controlled by powerful others experienced greater redress relief. Findings suggest the role of religious frameworks in shaping the restorative capacity of belated reparative acts following historical racial trauma. Public Policy Relevance Statement: Little is known about the individual differences associated with responses to receiving governmental redress for group-level racial injustice. Findings from this study, based on responses of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated by their own country during World War II, suggest the importance of understanding how personal religious frameworks shape the perceived benefits of redress and reparations for historical racial trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frederick Rutland's intelligence activities in interwar Los Angeles have been the subject of much analysis since the war. Interpretations range from the assertion of his biographer that he did essentially nothing illegal to the more recent claim that the technical information he provided to the Imperial Navy helped make the Pearl Harbor attack possible. This article uses recently declassified American documents and Japanese sources to shed new light on Rutland's activities, his role in the wider Japanese intelligence apparatus, and the nature of his mission. Contra most previous analyses, these suggest that the Japanese Navy viewed Rutland as an agent with future potential for wartime rather than one who had already provided valuable services. Those included creating close relationships with high-profile Americans to get strategic information rather than technical intelligence. They also suggest that the Japanese Navy's skewed view of Rutland prevented it from developing a more effective prewar intelligence network, with dire consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1941 and 1945, Americans expressed outrage over Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequent military aggression. Numerous commentators, citizens, and opinion-makers looked beyond wartime atrocities and regularly vilified Japanese for the crime of "ingratitude." Japan, they argued, had not merely attacked the country that had opened it to the outside world a century earlier, but had also declared war on the people who had saved its citizens in 1923. This article explores why, amidst the great whirlwind of wartime inhumanity, Americans harkened back to their 1923 humanitarian engagement with Japan following the Great Kantō Earthquake. Many did so, I suggest, to assist wartime mobilization, to lionize America's righteous global stature, and to forge and reinforce constructions of their enemy's sub-human character. Only humans, many angry Americans argued, understood or could express feelings of gratitude. Highlighting Japan's supposed "ingratitude," and their "betrayal" of America's humanitarian generosity served as an emotive way to dehumanize all Japanese beyond the well-documented discussions of wartime aggression, treachery, or "innate racial characteristics." Elites employed these constructions drawn from their enemy's supposed ingratitude to help legitimate a brutal war waged without mercy against soldiers and civilians alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like the previous year, 2021 was marked by several anniversaries that brought historical events and developments to the center of public attention, at least for a short time. From a German perspective, these notably included the anniversary of the start of official relations between Germany and Japan, which was celebrated as »160 Years of German-Japanese Friendship.« There was greater attention received in Japan as well as internationally for the 80th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December. The handling of this anniversary revealed the tendency of public commemoration to focus on certain details or specific aspects, including Japanese victimhood, while largely ignoring others. It is in this context that the reform of UNESCO's World Memory Heritage initiated by Japan is noteworthy. Recent data from the non-profit organization Genron confirm that the public handling of historical events continues to be seen as a major obstacle on the path to Japan's reconciliation with China and Korea. A less publicized anniversary was celebrated by the Japan Center for Historical Records, which has existed as part of the National Archives for 20 years and enjoys a high reputation among experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The first line of the preface to John D. Wilsey's I God's Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles i promises an exploration of Dulles's "worldview as informed by his religion." Little of the voluminous literature on the foreign policy of the Eisenhower administration appears in the notes, which may be why Wilsey seems to have missed the critical insight that Eisenhower, not Dulles, controlled policy. Wilsey then turns to Dulles's time at Princeton and examines in detail Dulles's senior thesis, ostensibly an essential window into Dulles's adult worldview. Wilsey, who refers to Dulles as Foster, discusses Dulles's father, the minister Allen Macy Dulles, at length, highlighting his descent from a long line of influential Presbyterian leaders. [Extracted from the article]