Nan'yō: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885-1945

Pacific Islands Monograph Series

by Mark R. Peattie

416 pages University of Hawai'i Press; illustrated edition edition (May 1988) English 0824810872 978-0824810870

Genres: History, Japan, Japanese History, Nonfiction

306 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

The son of expatriate writers, Mark Peattie grew up in Santa Barbara, California. He earned a BA in history at Pomona College and an MA in history at Stanford University. After service in Asia and Washington, DC as a member of the U.S. Information Agency, Peattie returned to the United States and earned a doctorate in history from Princeton University. He taught at Pennsylvania State University, the University of California – Los Angeles and the University of Massachusetts in Boston. For many years, Peattie was a research fellow at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University. He was also a senior research staff member of the Hoover Institute on War, Revolution, and Peace, before becoming a visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford University.

Reviews

[Steven Shaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

As an overview of a subject both expansive and acute, it did a good job of leaving the reader knowledgable enough to begin asking more intelligent questions about the matter. In that sense it is an unequovicle success. Extremely informative, it mostly succeeds at a balanced account, in terms of Japanese history written by US scholars, but occasionally gives a less than clear perspective of the indigenous subjects. Although packed with details and data, it does occasionaly feel that suddenly, "and then this happened!". Keen scholars will quickly want to dive into Peattie's bibliography.

[Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I now remember skimming through this book in '90 or '91, looking for info specifically on Ponape/Pohnpei and the East Caroline Islands. This time I gave it a bit more thorough reading, but again not word for word. It's a bit too much info for anyone other than a scholar of that time and place.

Still, I am so grateful for what the book did offer. Perhaps if I read Japanese I could find one that covers in more depth my particular interest area.

[AskHistorians]

An engaging study of pre-colonial Japanese activity in Micronesia, Japanese colonial rule in the South Seas League of Nations Mandate, and Japanese activity in the region during World War II. Peattie specializes in Japanese military and imperial history, and this book represents the first in-depth exploration of Japanese imperial activity in the Pacific Islands.