Theodore F. Cook, Jr.
Curriculum Vitae
Education
B.A. 1969 Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A., Honors and Distinction in History.
Doctoral Dissertation
"The Japanese Officer Corps: The Making of a Military Elite, 1872-1945," Department of History, Princeton University. Dissertation Supervisor: Professor Marius B. Jansen. I also worked with Professors Richard Challener, Leo Ou-fan Lee, Marion J. Levy, and Sheldon Garon on the project.
Academic and Research Experience
1988– Professor, Department of History, The William Paterson University of New Jersey, Wayne, New Jersey. Assistant Prof. 1988-1995. Associate Prof. 1995-1999. Professor 1999-
1998– Visiting Scholar, Edwin O. Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies, John K. Fairbank Center for East
Asian Research, Harvard University
1996– Advisory Group, Centre for Second World War Studies, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
1994–1995 Visiting Professor, Secretary of the Navy Research Fellow, Department of Strategy, Naval War
College, Newport, Rhode Island
1988–1989 Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Social Science Research, Tokyo University, Japan.
1988–1993 Director, Japanese History and Culture Curriculum, Summer Program in Japanese Culture and
Theatre, University of California San Diego–Japan Performing Arts Center Program in Toga Village, Higashi–Tonami Gun, Toyama Prefecture, Japan
1987–1988 Lecturer in Japanese History, Department of History, University of California San Diego
1987 Lecturer in History, Board of History, Merrill College, University of California Santa Cruz
1984–1987 Doctoral Candidate Completing Dissertation, Princeton University
1981–1984 Military and Political Analyst, Office of East Asian Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, District of Columbia
1977–1981 Sponsored Lecturer in History and Government, Asia Division, University of Maryland
1975–1978 Foreign Research Fellow, Institute for Social Science Research, Tokyo University, Japan.
1973–1974 Assistant–in–Instruction, Department of History, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J.
Major Publications
Japan at War. An Oral History. New York: The New Press, 1992. With Haruko Taya Cook. NY Times Notable Book of 1992; Military Book Club Main Selection. Paperback, 1993. Australian edition: Melbourne: HarperCollins, 1995. Chinese edition pending.
"Our Midway Disaster," in Robert Cowley, ed., What If? The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1999. pages 311-339.
"Making 'Soldiers': The Army and the Japanese Man in Meiji Japan," for Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno, eds., Gendering Modern Japanese History. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press (forthcoming).
"The Japanese Perspective on the Battle of Britain," for Paul Addison and Jeremy Crange, eds., The Battle of Britain. London: Pimlico. (forthcoming). Introduction by Brian Bond.
"Heishi to kokka, heishi to shakai: Yôbei sekai e Nihon no Sannyû," (Soldiers and the State, Soldiers and Society: Japan Joins the Western World) in Junji Banno, ed., Nihon Kin-Gendaishi (A History of Modern and Contemporary Japan), Vol. 2: Shihonshugi to "Jiyûshugi" (Capitalism and "Liberalism"). Tokyo: Iwanami Shôten, 1993. pages 257-298.
"Meiji Shin Kokka to Heishi. Sekai Butai no tanjô." (The New Meiji State and Soldiers. Japan's Debut on the World Stage), in Satô Hideo and Yamamoto Taketoshi, eds., Nihon no kin-gendaishi to rekishi kyôiku (Modern and Contemporary Japanese History and History Education) Tokyo: Tsukiji Shokan. 1996, pages 44-56.
"Mongol Invasion. The Birth of Japan's Kamikaze Legend. Were the 'Sacred Shores' of Japan Spared from the Wrath of Kublai Khan by the "Divine Wind"? for MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History , Winter 1999 (Vol. 11, No. 2), 8-19.
"Our Midway Disaster," in "The Road Not Taken...." Special Feature on Alternative History, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Spring 1998, Vol. 10, No. 3. p. 76.
Entries on Yamamoto Isoroku, Yamagata Aritomo, Yamashita Tomoyuki, Terauchi Masaki, Tôjô Hideki, Nagumo Chûichi, and the Kamikaze Special Attack Force in Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker, eds., The Readers' Guide to Military History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996.)
"The Merchant Seaman's Tale," MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Winter 1993, Vol. 5, No. 2. pp. 108-111.
"Tokyo: December 8, 1941; Dawn of a New War," MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Autumn 1991, Vol. 4, No. 1. pp. 30-35.
"Cataclysm and Career Rebirth: The Imperial Military Elite," in David W. Plath, ed., Work and Lifecourse in Japan. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983. pp. 135-152.
"The Japanese Reserve Experience: From 'Nation-in-Reserve' to 'Base-Line Defense,'" in L. Zurcher and G. Harries-Jenkins, eds., Supplementary Military Forces: Reserves, Militias, and Auxiliaries, Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1978. pp. 259-273.
"British Policy Toward Japan During the Shanghai Incident of 1932," Thesis for Master of Arts, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1970
"French Indochina in World War Two," Honors Thesis, Trinity College, 1969
Book Projects:
Emperor's War, People's War: The Second World War and Japanese Experience. Under contract with Viking for Penguin-Putnam Press.
Japan's Military Elite: The Officer Corps in War and Society, 1872-1945, monograph under review. Supported by Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship and Japan Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship.
The Pacific War: Japan's War with Asia and the West. Under contract with Routledge Press's Warfare and History series of university-level texts.
The Japanese Army, 1870–1945. Under contract with Routledge Press, in the Routledge–Oxford University Nissan Centre Series in Japanese Studies.
Current Research
The Emperor's Soldiers: Voices from the Ranks; Institutional and Individual Perspectives on the Common Soldier in the Japanese Army 1877-1945. Research supported by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for Humanities, the Japan Foundation, and the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies.
Grants and Awards
1998-2000 Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Research Grant for Research in Violence, Aggression, and Dominance
1999 Andrew S. Mellon Foreign Area Fellowship at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
1996 Northeast Asia Council, Association for Asian Studies, Research Travel Grant for Japan
1994-1995 National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship, NEH College Division
1994 Nobel Research Fellow, Norwegian Nobel Institute, Oslo, Norway
1994-1995 Secretary of the Navy Research Fellow, U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island
1994-1995 New Jersey Faculty Fellow, Project on War, Peace, and Society in Historical Perspective, Rutgers
Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
1993 National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Stipend, NEH Small College Division
1991 Japan Foundation, International Conference Award for "The Pacific War and Modern Memory: War
Culture and Society" at William Paterson College December 5-8, 1991
1991 Northeast Asia Council, Association for Asian Studies, Research Travel Grant for Japan
1990 National Endowment for the Humanities, NEH Travel to Collections Grant for Japan
1988-1989 Japan Foundation, Professional Fellowship for Research in Japan
1987 Fellow, Summer Teaching Seminar on Global Security and Arms Control, UC San Diego
1977-1978 Japan Foundation, Dissertation Research Fellowship for Research in Japan
1975-1976 Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship
1974 Princeton University Summer Workshop in Quantitative Methods Grant
1972-1974 National Defense Foreign Language Title VI Fellowship and National Defense Education Act Title
IV Fellowship, Princeton University
1972 Princeton University Korean Studies Travel Grant
1971-1972 Inter-University Center in for Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo Tuition Grant
1969 Meade Prize in History, Trinity College
Recent Major Papers, Public Lectures, and Commentaries
"The China War: A Bibliographic Exploration of the Japan-China Conflict, 1931–1945", The China War Conference 2000, International House of Japan, Tokyo, Japan, January 11-12, 2000.
"The Soldiers' War in China, 1937-1945," Asia Forum Symposium on Nanking in History, Washington University of St.Louis, St.Louis, Missouri, November 13, 1999.
"What If?" Appearance in History Channel Production on Twentieth Century Wars, first aired nationally November 12, 1999.
"The Mongol Invasions in the Making of the Japanese State," Chinggiz Qan Symposium, Mongol-American Association, New Brunswick, New Jersey, October 25, 1999.
"The Japanese Soldier's Experience of War, 1937–1945," Mellon Scholar's Lectures, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C, July 1, 1999
"Escaping Death: Opposition and Resistance within the Japanese Army, 1937-1945," in Panel "Military Opposition and Resistance in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan," American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C, January 9, 1999
"Visualizing the Soldiers' War in China: The Japanese Drive on Nanking," at New York Military Affairs Symposium, December 4, 1998.
"Memory and History in Japan's War: Questioning Oral History in the Classroom," Teachers as Scholars Program, The School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., November 10, 1998
"Soldiers in the 'China War': Unearthing Their Experience," Paper, Conference on "The Nanking Incident: In Historical Fact and In Historical Memory," Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, April 17–18, 1998
"The Japanese Experience of War: History and Memory," Lecture, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, April 3, 1998
"The Manchurian Incident: 9.18.1931," Commentary, Fourth International Symposium on the History of Sino-Japanese Relations, Keio University, Tokyo, November 16, 1997.
"Uncovering the Japanese Experience of War," The Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn., November 6, 1997.
"Recovering a Lost War: Japan's Official War History of the Greater East Asia War in 102 Volumes," at the "Official Histories: Problems, Limitations, and Value" Conference sponsored by the British Commission for Military History, Oxford University, Oxford, England, May 3, 1997.
"Japanese National Strategy: The Civil Dimension in the Second World War," Lecture, US Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, March 26, 1997.
"Making 'Soldiers': The Japanese Army and the Japanese Man," Conference and Workshop on "Gendering Modern Japanese History," at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California, March 1, 1997
"'Soldiers' in the Making of a Social History of the Japanese Army," Faculty Senate Lecture sponsored by the Women's Studies Program, the Asian Studies Program and the Department of History, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 15, 1996.
"The Pacific and Asian Theatres in the Second World War," Opening Ceremonies, Centre for Second World War Studies, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, October 18, 1996
"The Dead in the Making of Japan's Memories of a Pacific and Asian War," presented at the "Workshop on Memory and Historical Method" at "Memory, History and Critique: European Identity at the Millennium," the Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas (ISSEI), August 23, 1996.
"Japan's Experience of War," Humanities Symposium, Kalamazoo College, Michigan., April 11, 1996
"Japan's Decision for War," Lecture, U.S. Naval War College, Newport, R.I., December 7, 1995
"The Fate of the Japanese Soldier," Conference on "Violent Endings, New Beginnings: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the End of World War II in Asia and the Pacific," Co-sponsored by the National Archives at College Park and the University of Maryland, October 14, 1995
"Japan at War: The Pacific War and Japanese Memories," The Japan Society of Fairfield County, Connecticut, September 8, 1995
C-SPAN Television network Special on the 50th Anniversary of the Japanese Surrender Ending World War Two, September 2, 1995, national appearance.
"The Pacific War: Strategies and Legacies," War History Division, National Defense Studies Institute, Japan Defense Agency, Tokyo, Japan, August 24, 1995
"Soldiers in the Making of 'Future Memory,'" in "Fifty Years Later—The Second World War and Japanese Historical memory in Comparative Perspective: An International Symposium," United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan, August 21, 1995
"World War Two in the Pacific between Pearl Harbor and Potsdam," Institute for Social Science Research, Tokyo University, Tokyo, Japan, July 24, 1995
"Japanese Examine Japan's War," National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on "War in the Pacific: Experiences and Legacies," Five College Center for East Asian Studies, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, July 17, 1995
"Japan at War," Washington, D.C. sponsored by the Japan Cultural Center and the Embassy of Japan, Washington, D.C., June 16, 1995
"A Lost War in Living Memory: Japan's Second World War," Conference on Memory and the Second World War in International Comparative Perspective, The Netherlands Historical Institute for War Documentation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, April 28, 1995
"Japan Prepares for the 'Final Battle,'" Conference on the End of World War Two in the Pacific, New York Military Affairs Symposium, City University of New York Graduate Center, New York, New York, April 8, 1995
"Workshop on World War Two in the Pacific: 'Coming to Terms with Japan's Pacific and Asian War'" in the program on "Legacies of the Second World War," American Historical Association, Chicago, Illinois, January 8, 1995
"Japan at War: The Pacific War and Japanese Memories," The US-Japan Society of Washington, Washington, DC, October 27, 1994
"Society, State and the Soldier in Meiji Japan," Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis at Rutgers University Seminar on "War, Peace, and Society in Historical Perspective," October 25, 1994
"The Japanese High Command and the Defense of the Philippines," MacArthur Memorial Symposium Commemorating General MacArthur's Return to the Philippines, Newport, VA, Oct. 21, 1994
"The Legacy of Japan's War," National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on "War in the Pacific: Experiences and Legacies," Five College Center for East Asian Studies, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, June 26, 1994
"Japan's Military Elite: The Road to the Top in the Imperial Army," The Conference of Army Historians, Washington, D.C., June 16, 1994
"The First Sino-Japanese War, 1894-1895," New York Military Affairs Symposium, City University of New York Graduate Center, April 22, 1994
"Recalling Japan's War," Triangle East Asia Colloquium, Spring Symposium on Oral History in East Asia, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, February 12, 1994
"The Soldier and the 'Internationalization' of Meiji Society and State," the Washington and Southeast Regional Japan Seminar, Georgetown University, February 5, 1994
"Voices from Japan: The Pacific War and Japanese Memories and Personalities," in Seattle Asia Week in connection with the APEC Summit, The Seattle Public Library, Seattle, Washington, sponsored by Seattle Chapter, Japanese American Citizens League, the Washington Center for the Book, and the Church Council of Greater Seattle, November 18, 1993
"Meiji shin kokka to heishi. Sekai gekidai no tanjô [The New Meiji State and the Soldier: Striding onto the World Stage]," History and Historical Education Forum, Yokohama, Japan, November 12, 1993.
"Nihonjin to Sensô [The Japanese and the War]," Toyama International Center, Japan, August 12, 1993
"Japanese Memories of World War Two," International House of Japan, Tokyo, Japan, July 5, 1993
"Japan at War: An Oral History," The University of Maryland, College Park, Md., April 22, 1993
"Memories of War: Japanese Recollections of World War II," Columbia University, April 13, 1993
"The Japanese Experience in World War Two," Felician College, Lodi, NJ, March 18, 1993
"Japan at War," The Japan Society of New York, February 23, 1993
"1942: The Japanese Army at the Moment of 'Victory,'" New York Military Affairs Symposium, City University of New York Graduate Center, May 23, 1992
"Which Way Is West?" in "Canon Fodder; World History and Western Civilization in the Undergraduate Curriculum," Northern Great Plains History Conference, Mankato, Minnesota, October 3, 1991
"Listening to History; Oral Sources and the Study of Modern Japanese Social History," presented Toyama City, Toyama, UCSD-Toyama Prefecture International Lecture Series, July 21, 1990
"Learning from Toyama; Perspectives from Place" presented Kurobe City, Toyama, Japan, UCSD-Toyama Prefecture International Lecture Series, August 7, 1990
"They Bombed Pearl Harbor: Japanese Reflections," Second World War Lecture Series, William Paterson College, December 5, 1989
"Military Leadership in Imperial Japan: Integration and Disintegration in the Japanese Officer Corps," at British Sociological Association, Conference on War, Violence, & Social Change, Hull, UK 1985
"Military Manpower and the Defense Debate in Japan," National Conference, Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, Chicago, 1980
"The Japanese Army Officer Corps: Social Origins of a Military Elite," paper presented at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Toronto, 1976
Professional Memberships and Associations
References
Dean Isabel S. Tirado, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, William Paterson University
Professor Ezra Vogel, Director, John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University
Professor Emeritus Marius B. Jansen, Princeton University, 222 Mt. Lucas, Princeton NJ 08540.
Professor Hisashi Takahashi, Professor of International Relations, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan.
Professor Junji Banno, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan; formerly Director, Institute for Social Science Research, Tokyo University, 1-3, Hongo 7-chôme, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113, Japan.
Professor John W. Dower, Henry R. Luce Professor of International Relations and Global Stability, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Last Modified: January 1, 2000