Imperial Entanglements: Permanent Conditions of War in the Pacific

Presented by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU. Co-sponsored by the NYU Native Studies Forum and Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program in the NYU Department of Social & Cultural Analysis.

In Sacred Men: Law, Torture, and Retribution in Guam (Duke University Press, 2019) Keith L. Camacho (University of California, Los Angeles) demonstrates how the 1944 and 1948 US Navy tribunals in Guam used and justified imprisonment, torture, murder, and exiling of accused Japanese and Chamorro war criminals in order to institute a new American political order. Camacho presents on Sacred Men, which Lisa Yoneyama (University of Toronto) has called, “a truly singular work of immense importance…. a pathbreaking, field-shifting intervention.” Yoneyama is the author of Cold War Ruins: Transpacific Critique of American Justice and Japanese War Crimes (Duke University Press, 2016), which considers the ongoing efforts to bring justice to Japanese war crimes, the legacy of US military occupation, and the failure of decolonization in the aftermath of World War II. In her talk, she speaks about her work on transpacific militarism and its legacy.

This program is moderated by Dean Saranillio (NYU Department of Social & Cultural Analysis).