A Militarized Peace: East Asia Between World War II and the Korean War

Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs 

East Asia Program presents

Bringing East Asia to the SU Classroom Series

A Militarized Peace: East Asia Between World War II and the Korean War

When and how did World War II end? Historians have spilled oceans of ink on the causes and conduct of the war; far less attention has been trained on what happened when the guns fell silent and the mobilized came home. Although major combat operations in World War II ceased in August 1945, many of the social processes unleashed by the war continued to shape life in East Asia well into the postwar. Using the concept of militarization as a lens, this talk will focus on the late 1940s and early 1950s, looking at events that included the deconstruction of the Japanese colonial empire, the occupations of Korea and Japan, the revolution in China, and the outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula.

Connor Mills

Postdoctoral Fellow

Harvard University

Connor Mills received his PhD from Princeton University in 2020 and is a postdoctoral fellow in the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He is currently working on revising his dissertation to produce a book manuscript, tentatively titled American Bases, Japanese Towns: Everyday Life and Militarization in Postwar Japan. Other current research projects include work on the history of prisons in twentieth-century Japan and an investigation into hundreds of Japanese who impersonated U.S. military service members during the Allied Occupation.

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For more information, please contact Havva Karakas Keles, hkarakas@syr.edu or to request accommodation arrangements, please contact Morgan Bicknell, mebickne@syr.edu.