ABSTRACT
The first time that I had a conversation about World War II in Asia and the Pacific,1 1937-45 (hereafter ‘the Asia-Pacific War’ or ‘the war’), with a Japanese person was in August 1994, about a month after I arrived in Japan for the first time. Like many young Westerners, my introduction to life in Japan came via English teaching. I was at the beginning of what would be two years of teaching in a Japanese junior high school. The students were practising marching, which forms the basis of the Olympics-style opening and closing ceremonies of the school sports day. I was watching them with one of my Japanese colleagues. As the students marched past the podium where the headmaster was standing, they turned their heads towards him and did a straight-arm salute. Images of Nazi Germany filled my mind.
