TY - BOOK AU - Murray,Stephen C. TI - The battle over Peleliu: islander, Japanese, and American memories of war T2 - War, memory, and culture SN - 9780817388898 AV - D767.99.P4 M87 2016eb U1 - 940.54/2666 23 PY - 2016///] CY - Tuscaloosa PB - The University of Alabama Press KW - Peleliu, Battle of, Palau, 1944 KW - World War, 1939-1945 KW - Campaigns KW - Palau KW - Peleliu Island KW - Collective memory KW - Historic sites KW - Conservation and restoration KW - Bataille de Peleliu, Belau, 1944 KW - HISTORY KW - Europe KW - Western KW - bisacsh KW - Manners and customs KW - fast KW - International relations KW - Military campaigns KW - Japan KW - Relations KW - United States KW - Peleliu Island (Palau) KW - Social life and customs KW - History KW - Belau KW - Japon KW - États-Unis KW - Peleliu, Île (Belau) KW - Mœurs et coutumes KW - Histoire KW - Electronic books N1 - Includes bibliographical references and index; Palauan and colonial landscapes -- History, memory, and island landscapes -- Colonial masters and island society -- Peace, war, and a new empire -- Smiling sky, gathering clouds -- War -- Exile, fear, and hunger: Ngaraard, Babeldaob, 1944-1945 -- An island desolated, a trust betrayed, 1946-1994 -- Pursuing memory -- Retrieving the dead -- Remembering a painful victory -- Parallel histories: three peoples' memories of war and loss -- Conclusion: the roots of the plant N2 - "An ethnographic and historical account of the commercial, cultural, and military encroachment by Japan and the United States on the island nation of Palau The expansionist Japanese empire annexed the inhabited archipelago of Palau in 1914. The airbase built on Peleliu Island became a target for attack by the United States in World War II. The Battle over Peleliu: Islander, Japanese, and American Memories of War offers an ethnographic study of how Palau and Peleliu were transformed by warring great powers and further explores how their conflict is remembered differently by the three peoples who shared that experience. Author Stephen C. Murray uses oral histories from Peleliu's elders to reconstruct the island's prewar way of life, offering a fascinating explanation of the role of land and place in island culture. To Palauans, history is conceived geographically, not chronologically. Land and landmarks are both the substance of history and the mnemonic triggers that recall the past. Murray then offers a detailed account of the 1944 US invasion against entrenched Japanese forces on Peleliu, a seventy-four-day campaign that razed villages, farms, ancestral cemeteries, beaches, and forests, and with them, many of the key nodes of memory and identity. Murray also explores how Islanders'memories of the battle as shattering their way of life differ radically from the ways Japanese and Americans remember the engagement in their histories, memoirs, fiction, monuments, and tours of Peleliu. Determination to retrieve the remains of 11,000 Japanese soldiers from the caves of Peleliu has driven high-profile civic groups from across the Japanese political spectrum to the island. Contemporary Japan continues to debate pacifist, right-wing apologist, and other interpretations of its aggression in Asia and the Pacific. These disputes are exported to Peleliu, and subtly frame how Japanese commemoration portrays the battle in stone and ritual. Americans, victors in the battle, return to the archipelago in far fewer numbers. For them, the conflict remains controversial but is most often submerged into the narrative of "the good war." The Battle over Peleliu is a study of public memory, and the ways three peoples swept up in conflict struggle to create a common understanding of the tragedy they share."--EBSCO UR - https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&AN=1105468 ER -