World War 2 
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
2/26/2021
Seeking the True Story of the Comfort Women
by Jeannie Suk Gersen
A Harvard Law School professor tried to understand why her colleague made a provocative and contrarian argument that Korean "comfort women" engaged in voluntary sex work. She discovered that recourse to the facts was both straightforward and frustrating.
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SOURCE: New York Times
2/26/2021
A Harvard Professor Called Wartime Sex Slaves ‘Prostitutes.’ One Pushed Back
One of the last survivors among the Korean "comfort women" of World War II has denounced a recent paper characterizing the trafficking of women by the Imperial Japanese Army as ordinary prostitution.
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2/28/2021
An Unwanted Journey "Home": Black American Internees in World War II Europe
by Eve Brandel
"Living in Europe in the interwar years, Black Americans enjoyed freedoms denied them at home, but, ironically, America’s entry into World War II meant arrest and internment for those who had not left in time."
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SOURCE: The Metropole
2/25/2021
The Tokyo Moment: What Developing Cities Can Learn From The Postwar Japanese Capital
by Ben Bensal
"Studying postwar Tokyo helps historicize the discourse on megacities, which is still in its infancy. While there are important similarities between today’s megacities in terms of their size, organizational complexity, and socio-economic challenges, there are important contextual differences that are best assessed using a historical approach."
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SOURCE: The Asia-Pacific Journal
2/23/2021
Supplement to Special Issue: Academic Integrity at Stake: The Ramseyer Article
by Alexis Dudden
The Asia-Pacific Journal is publishing a collection of letters in opposition to the controversial article by Harvard Law professor J. Mark Rameseyer which characterized the sexual abuse of Korean women during World War II as freely contracted sex work.
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SOURCE: The Nation
2/23/2021
Japanese Internment, Football, and a Legendary Team
Dave Zirin's Edge of Sports podcast hosts Bradford Pearson, the author of "The Eagles of Heart Mountain," the story of a group of interned Japanese American teens whose football team dominated the state of Wyoming.
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SOURCE: Bitter Southerner
2/18/20201
Forgotten Camps, Living History: Japanese Internment in the South
by Jason Christian
Camp Livingston, deep in the Louisiana pines, used to be the site of a World War II Japanese internment camp. Drawing from the memories of internees, the research of two Louisiana State University librarians and other historians, and the activism of survivors and their descendants, this story uncovers a buried piece of American history.
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SOURCE: The New Republic
2/16/2021
Can Historians Be Traumatized by History? (Content Warning)
by James Robins
"If the historian—the very person supposed to process the past on behalf of everyone else—struggles with trauma, then it is little surprise that societies as a whole struggle to face the violence of how they were formed and how they prevailed."
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SOURCE: Inside Higher Ed
2/16/2021
Harvard Law Prof Rejects Historical Consensus on ‘Comfort Women,' Historians Respond
"There has been so much scholarship produced in the 30 years since the first survivor came forward and it’s almost as if Professor Ramseyer's decision is to just ignore all of the debate -- as if he’s the first person to come into this," said Alexis Dudden, an expert on modern Japanese and Korean history.
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SOURCE: Harvard Crimson
2/15/2021
Journal Delays Print Publication of Harvard Law Professor’s Controversial ‘Comfort Women’ Article Amid Outcry
"Against the historical consensus, Ramseyer claims in his paper, entitled “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War," that comfort women were not coerced and instead voluntarily entered into contracts with Japanese brothels."
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SOURCE: History.com
2/11/2021
New Documentary: Tuskegee Airmen: Legacy of Courage
TV journalist Robin Roberts produces a documentary on the famed Tuskegee Airmen – including her father – whose service in World War II supported the long movement for civil rights.
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2/14/2021
Immigrant Families are the Second Casualty of War
by Elliott Young
If truth is the first casualty in war, immigrants follow as a close second. During the first and second world wars, tens of thousands of immigrants in the United States were locked up in prisons as part of a geopolitical game beyond their control.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/27/2021
No More Lies. My Grandfather Was a Nazi
"Suddenly, I no longer had any idea who my grandfather was, what Lithuania was, and how my own story fit in. How could I reconcile two realities? Was Jonas Noreika a monster who slaughtered thousands of Jews or a hero who fought to save his country from the Communists?" writes Silvia Foti.
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SOURCE: History
1/20/2021
How Tuskegee Airmen Fought Military Segregation With Nonviolent Action
Alan Osur and Todd Moye help tell the story of the efforts of the Tuskegee Airmen to integrate military recreational facilities in 1944.
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SOURCE: New York Times
1/7/2021
South Korean Court Orders Japan to Pay Compensation for Wartime Sexual Slavery
A South Korean court ordered the Japanese government to pay direct restitution to 12 women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military. Japan has rejected the court's authority.
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SOURCE: Washington Post
1/2/2021
Man Travels to Virginia in Quest to Interview WWII Veterans
A young Californian has traveled across the world after founding a nonprofit agency to collect and preserve the stories of surviving World War II veterans.
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SOURCE: Smithsonian
12/8/2020
Rosie the Riveter Gets Her Due 75 Years After the End of World War II
This month, women war industry workers from the World War II era were collectively awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, an honor a dwindling number have survived to enjoy.
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SOURCE: New York Post
12/12/2020
Hitler’s Pet Alligator to be Stuffed, Put on Display in Russia
The 84 year-old reptile will be stuffed and displayed in Moscow after traveling from Mississippi to Berlin and being gifted to Russia by British troops after the capture of Berlin in 1945.
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12/13/2020
Seven Years from the "Day of Infamy" to "Human Rights Day"
by Rick Halperin
"As 2020 comes to a close, even in the midst of a terrible pandemic which may claim 300,000 U.S. deaths by year’s end, we would do well to pause and reflect upon how much progress has been made, and still needs to be made, in the struggle for human rights."
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SOURCE: Popular Mechanics
12/4/2020
Fishermen Catch WWII Mine, Extremely Satisfying Explosion Ensues
The Royal Navy identified the mine as a German device dating to the World War II era and detonated it underwater.
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