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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
“Many people asked me what happened to me in Vietnam to make my eyes open to the horrors of war. Many things happened. … But I'd like to share with you one thing that changed my life forever.
[1] Allen Nelson (2006) To End the Misery of War Forever: No Reconciliation, No Peace, Kyoto: Kamogawa Shuppan, p. 19-20.
[2] A collective decision was made to use only students' first names in this paper.
[3] Allen Nelson, interview conducted by Philip Seaton and the organizing committee, 20 February 2008. Nelson's story is also documented in manga form: Saeguchi Yoshihiro (2005) Neruson-san, anata wa hito wo koroshimashita ka? (“Mr. Nelson, Did you kill the people?” (sic.)), Tokyo: Kodansha.
[4] Nelson, To End the Misery of War Forever, p. 1.
[5] The Marines Go Home Page is: here.
[6] In January 2008, environmentalists won a partial victory when “U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled Thursday [24 January 2008] that the U.S. military violated federal law when it failed to evaluate the air station's potential effects on the Okinawa dugong, a 455-kg mammal related to the manatee and the extinct Stellar's sea cow.” The Japan Times, “New base must consider effects on dugong”, 26 January 2008, accessed online.
[7] Kawazoe Makoto and Yuasa Makoto, “Action Against Poverty: Japan's Working Poor Under Attack”, Japan Focus.
[8] Yamamoto, Mari (2004) Grassroots Pacifism in Post-war Japan: the Rebirth of a Nation, Oxon: Sheffield Centre for Japanese Studies/Routledge Curzon, pp. 8-11.
[9] More accurately speaking, the “interview” with Chika is an abridged version of her written submissions supplemented by her comments during meetings. The same is true of the other three “interviews”.
[10] Chika went with 8 other young adults from Hokkaido on a 4-day tour (6-10 August) to Nagasaki. On 6 August they visited the Nagasaki Peace Park. On 7-9 August they attended the World Conference. About 6800 people attended the opening ceremony, including over 100 non-Japanese from 23 countries. Speakers included the Mayor of Nagasaki and hibakusha. The conference's official page is http://www10.plala.or.jp/antiatom/en/WC/e07wc/index.html (Accessed 7 March 2008).
[11] Nelson's dislike of insects also features in the manga version of his story: Saeguchi, Mr. Nelson did you kill the people?, p. 24.
[12] Seaton, Philip (2007) Japan's Contested War Memories: the “memory rifts” in historical consciousness of World War II, London: Routledge, especially Chapter 9.
[13] Dower, John (1999) Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, New York: Norton, pp. 58-61.
[14] The Chinese Returnees Association (Chukiren) homepage; The Winter Soldier Investigation
[15] The site wintersoldier.com is “dedicated to the American veterans of the Vietnam War, who served with courage and honor” and disputes confessions of atrocities; in Japan's case, nationalists such as manga artist Kobayashi Yoshinori have attacked the confessions of Chukiren members and other soldiers. Kobayashi simply dismisses then as “brainwashed”: Kobayashi Yoshinori (1998) Sensoron, Tokyo: Gentosha, pp. 183-94.
[16] My own work on Japan, especially Japan's Contested War Memories, covers many of the themes in research on Vietnam, for example, McMahon, Robert J. (2002) “Contested Memory: The Vietnam War and American Society, 1975-2001”, Diplomatic History, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Spring 2002), pp. 159-184. See also Laura Hein and Mark Selden (eds) (2000) Censoring History: Citizenship and memory in Japan, Germany and the United States, New York: M.E. Sharpe for discussion of Japan and the US in comparative perspective.
[17] See for example John Spiri, “Sitting out but standing tall: Tokyo Teachers Fight an Uphill Battle Against Nationalism and Coercion”, Japan Focus.
[18] The phrase in Oe's Japanese original that Shimpei refers to has been translated as the “truly human character of the people of Hiroshima” in Oe, Kenzaburo (1995, translated by David L. Swain and Toshi Yonezawa) Hiroshima Notes, New York: Grove Press, p. 17. My translation “characteristically Hiroshima-like person” is based on how Shimpei explained his interpretation of this phrase to me.
[19] On Barefoot Gen, see Nakazawa Keiji interviewed by Asai Motofumi, “Barefoot Gen, the Atomic Bomb and I: The Hiroshima Legacy,” Japan Focus.
[20] The Japanese film Gekko no Natsu (1993) is based on an actual incident. Two music students who have become kamikaze pilots visit a school to play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on their final night before flying their missions. Fast forward to the 1980s and the schoolteacher who let the pilots play during the war years is campaigning to prevent the old piano being thrown out. She embarks on a journey to find out what happened to the pilots and discovers one of the pilots survived. The film is rich in themes of survivor guilt and the futility of war. The actual piano is now displayed at the entrance to the Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots in Chiran, Kyushu.
[21] Yamamoto, Grassroots Pacifism in Postwar Japan, p. 206.
[22] See Johnson, Chalmers “The ‘Rape’ of Okinawa,” Japan Focus.
[23] The Japan Times (20 February 2008), “Another marine is held by U.S., this time for alleged counterfeiting”, accessed online; (5 March 2008), “Arrest soldier for rape, Filipinos say”, accessed online.
[24] Another published transcript of an interview with Allen Nelson is “A Vietnam War Veteran Talks About the Realty (sic.) of War: An Interview with Allen Nelson”, Nanzan Review of American Studies (2004) Volume 26, pp. 43-56. Available online (Accessed 13 March 2008)
[25] The program is explained on this site (accessed 11 March 2008).
[26] Homepage. An article about Nelson is available here (Accessed 13 March 2008).
[27] This point had been made to me in an interview with another veteran, Mitsuyama Yoshitake, a Japanese veteran of the Battle of Okinawa. Following our interview (26 September 2007), Mitsuyama sent me a copy of an article from Hokkaido Shimbun which described how the seven suicides among SDF troops who had returned from Iraq constituted a rate three times the standard suicide rate among SDF personnel). Hokkaido Shimbun, “Iraku haken, jieikan no jisatsu 7-ken ni”, 26 January 2007 (morning edition).
[28] “On March 10, 2005 Judge Jack Weinstein of Brooklyn Federal Court dismissed the lawsuit filed by the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange against the chemical companies that produced the defoliants/herbicides that they knew were tainted with high level (sic.) of dioxin. Judge Weinstein in his 233 page decision ruled that the use of these chemicals during the war, although they were toxic, did not fit the definition of ‘chemical warfare’ and therefore did not violate international law.” Online (Accessed 29 February 2008).
[29] Link available here.
[30] Yamamoto, Mari “Japan's Grassroots Pacifism”, Japan Focus.
[31] The Japan Times (4 April 2008), “Police arrest U.S. sailor in cabby slaying”, accessed online.
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