Greetings!

This issue probes several of the signal disasters experienced throughout Asia in the long twentieth century. The firebombing of Tokyo, which arguably exacted the largest death toll in a single raid in world history, remains in the shadow of the atomic bombings that followed. On the 70th anniversary of the March 10th raid, Saotome Katsumoto & Richard Sams tell the story through the memoirs of survivors. Returning to the site of the 3.11 triple disaster at Fukushima, William Johnston with Eiko Otake highlight the human scale of the disaster through Eiko's dance performance on the ruins in the wake of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown. As the Japanese government steps up its public relations efforts to deny signature atrocities of the Asia-Pacific War, it has launched a public relations campaign by directly pressuring the American publisher McGraw Hill to eliminate all reference to the military's wartime sexual slavery program known as the comfort women system. ARUDOU Debito interviews textbook author Herbert Ziegler to relate the story. No Gun Ri is the signal American atrocity of the Korean War. Pulitzer prize winning journalist Charles J. Hanley presents the latest evidence of US attempts to coverup its role at No Gun Ri at a time when the Republic of Korea has established a museum that details the massacre. Matthew Allen sheds new light on Okinawan cultural identity through examination of the life of the accomplished Japanese/Okinawan musician/teacher and community activist Grant (Sandaa) Murata.