Hidden Island

Abstract

The Pacific world of the early twentieth century, dominated by Europe, Japan, and the United States, is gone. The region’s control by outsiders has been succeeded by increasing economic importance, broader political negotiation, and wider cultural acceptance. Whether considering transoceanic communication, popular understanding of air power, the limits to training a continental Asian army, local uses of food, the role of “special” military units, the understanding of nuclear weapons, or the impact of American military occupation, these essays shed light on the volatile Pacific as a whole. The chapters in War in the American Pacific and East Asia, 1941–1972illustrate how the mid-twentieth-century world set the stage for the Pacific of our own era, offering important waypoints for explaining the transition to the twenty-first century.