Dartmouth Events

“On the Transnational Destruction of Cities: What Japan and the U.S. Learned from the Bombing of Britain and Germany in World War II”

How did it become “normal” to bomb cities and civilians? Focusing on the aerial bombardment of Japan in 1945, Garon will spotlight the role of transnational learning in the construction of the “home front” among all the belligerents. Not only did each power seek to destroy the enemy’s home front and civilian morale, but they also studied each other’s efforts to defend their own civilians from the air war. It was Japan’s fate to suffer the war’s most lethal firebombing, based on what Germans and Allies had learned by bombing the enemy’s cities.

A specialist in modern Japanese history, Sheldon Garon also writes transnational history that spotlights the flow of ideas and institutions among the U.S., Japan, and European and Asian countries. His publications include Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves, Molding Japanese Minds, and The State and Labor in Modern Japan. He is currently writing a transnational history of “home fronts” in Japan, Britain, and the United States in World War II.

Sponsored by The Henry and Amy Nachman Fund in History, The John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, and the Japan Studies Fund.