Starting this semester, JEA senior students are welcome to join this monthly event which aims to introduce students to new research in Japanese history as well as the chance to interact with graduate student researchers from around the world. For those who are interested in applying for graduate school this forum is a great opportunity to find out more about graduate studies and begin building a professional network. The next session will be on April 12th at 6pm in KIBER 110.

Our presenter this month will be Dr. Dayna Barnes (City, University of London), who will give a presentation titled “Locked up in the Embassy: The Experiences of American Diplomats after Pearl Harbor.”

The attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 came like a bolt out of the blue to most Americans, but events were seen differently by US diplomats on the ground in Tokyo. While the location was unanticipated, the strike was an expected surprise which marked the end of a long, tense, and failing negotiation between the two countries. One staffer wrote in his diary on December 8th that what he and his colleagues felt most of all was an “unutterable relief” that the dreaded and unavoidable had come at last.

He could not know it then, but what followed for the group was a forced six-month internment in the compound of the US embassy, and then a return home to develop US-Japan relations and plan the treatment of Japan after surrender. Drawing on the published and unpublished diaries and letters of diplomats interned at the American embassy in Tokyo, this talk considers the fate of individuals caught at a turning point in history, the legal treatment of diplomatic representatives of a country turned enemy, and how the personal experiences of policymakers effected bilateral relations long after the war.

Dr Dayna Barnes is a lecturer in Modern History in the Department of International Politics at City, University of London. She is the author of Architects of Occupation: American Experts and the Planning for Postwar Japan (Cornell, 2017).