Department of History and Institute for Japanese Studies present:
Sheldon Garon, Princeton University, Department of History
Abstract: "How did it become "normal" to bomb cities and civilians? Focusing on the aerial bombardment of Japan in 1945, Prof. Garon spotlights the role of transnational learning in the construction of the "home front" among all the belligerents. Not only did each power seek to destroy the enemy's home front and civilian morale, but they also studied each other's efforts to defend their own civilians from the air war. It was Japan's fate to suffer the war's most lethal firebombing, based on what Germans and Allies had learned by bombing the enemy's cities."
Biography: A specialist in modern Japanese history, Prof. Garon also writes transnational history that spotlights the flow of ideas and institutions among the US, Japan, and European and Asian countries. His recent book, Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves, has received global media attention, and he has spoken recently at the OECD, Federal Reserve Bank, JP Morgan Chase, and European Savings Banks Group. Previous publications include The State and Labor in Modern Japan; Molding Japanese Minds: The State in Everyday Life; and the co-edited The Ambivalent Consumer: Questioning Consumption in East Asia and the West. He is currently writing a transnational history of "home fronts" in Japan, Germany, Britain, and the World States in World War II.
This event is free and open to the public and is cosponsored by Department of History, Mershon Center for International Security Studies, Institute for Japanese Studies, East Asian Studies Center, and U.S. Department of Education (Title VI).
For more information, please contact Janet Stucky Smith, Institute for Japanese Studies, stucky.7@osu.edu or 614-292-3345.
