论湘西会战和芷江受降的历史地位

在中国抗日战争和世界反法西斯战争胜利的前夕,湖南发生了两件大事:湘西会战和芷江受降。这两件大事对中国乃至世界都有重要的历史意义,足以彪炳史册。     

The Specter of Revolution: Reconsidering Japan's Decision to Surrender

Existing studies of the Pacific War tend to focus on the adverse military situation in explaining Japan's decision to surrender. Special emphasis has been placed on both the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Soviet entry into the war. Although these are no doubt critical to understanding the end of the Pacific War, they fail to tell the whole story. This paper seeks to broaden the scope of the scholarly debate by focusing on Japan's domestic situation as a major factor behind the decision to surrender. It argues that a near-obsessive fear of social revolution among Japan's conservative ruling elite played an important role in prompting Japanese elites to make the decision to end the war.     

The Battle of Saipan in Japanese Civilian Memoirs: Non-combatants,Soldiers and the Complexities of Surrender

In Japan, ‘Saipan’ refers both to a nearby tropical holiday, and to the site of a battle that annihilated Japanese troops, embroiled the large population of Japanese residents on the island and ultimately spelled the end of the Japanese empire, now within the reach of bombers. In other places, and particularly amongst the Allies, Saipan conjures up images of civilians jumping to their death rather than facing capture, leading to simplistic assessments about fanaticism being rife across all sections of Japanese society; to a focus on suicide that overshadows the true extent of the battle’s collateral damage; and to largely unexamined statements about military exploitation of civilians and the murder of civilians in extremis. This article uses the memoirs of civilian survivors of the battle to reflect on the civilian experience of the battle of Saipan, relationships between Japanese combatants and non-combatants during the fighting, and the complexities of surrender.