Embracing_Defeat

Embracing Defeat Dower, John W. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York : W.W. Norton and Company, 1999. As with most accounts of post-war occupations, history is written though the eyes of the victor. The same can be said for previous accounts of the American occupation of Japan. The Japanese occupation differed from German occupation in that the United States did not have sole control in Germany as they did in Japan. The racial issue also plays an important role in the recorded history of the occupation. The United States looked upon the Japanese, in the same respect as they did any other occupants of the Asian continent as “little brown brothers” unable to restore their homeland. In his book, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, John Dower attempts to tell the story from the other side of the fence. He depicts the Japanese characters in the tale and their struggles and willingness to move on, not just the popular American players who are usually portrayed as gods, handing out democracy from above. Through the use of cartoons, photographs, diary entries, and other pieces of everyday life as well as highly demonstrative language, dower, japanese, occupation, japan, language, defeat, world, through, history, social, people, john, highly, embracing, defeated, cultural, book, war, wake, united, reader, powerful, much, misery, illustrations, ii, hope, eyes, everyday, dower’s, american, along, written, tried, time