Abstract This article reconstructs the life history of Korean War prisoner Im Kwan-taek and analyzes his strategy for survival. Im, a North Korean who forces of the United Nations Command (unc) captured, refused repatriation to North Korea and decided to go to a neutral country. After two years in India, he finally settled in Brazil. This study examines his prisoner of war (pow) interrogation reports and the results of two oral history interviews to understand Im’s experiences and survival strategies. Born in Ch’ungch’ŏng Province, Im grew up in southern Korea. However, in 1946, he moved to northern Korea with the support of his deceased father’s comrades from the anti-Japanese movement in China. With the start of the Korean War on 25 June 1950, Im became an officer in the Korean People’s Army (kpa). As a pow, he concealed his identity as much as possible to ensure his survival, and these efforts continued in neutral countries. After the Republic of Korea awarded Im’s father the South Korean Patriotic Medal in 2001, his “secret survivalism” strategy relaxed and he began organizing communication and networks between surviving former pows.

Abstract From 2006 to 2008, Peter J. Vernezze served as a Peace Corps volunteer at Sichuan Normal University in Chengdu, taking a two-year leave of absence from his regular job as a philosophy professor. During this time he facilitated a film series for his Chinese undergraduate students which showed classic and contemporary American films – everything from Casablanca to the Marx brothers to Brokeback Mountain. The goal of the series was "to use film in order to shed light on and increase the understanding of American culture and values." This essay is a personal account of the discussions which took place after the screenings and what this American and these Chinese students may or may not have learned from each other about universalities and differences in cultures.

Abstract The Nationalist government struggled to control the content and exhibition of motion pictures in Shanghai in the 1920s. Officials of the Shanghai Municipal Council in the foreign-controlled International Settlement, empowered by the right of extraterritoriality, stymied Chinese efforts to control foreign – predominantly American – motion pictures shown in the enclave. The struggle over political control was exacerbated by increasing nationalist sentiment and belief that foreign motion pictures contained distorted and unflattering images of China and its people. Demonstrations targeted Hollywood films including those by Douglas Fairbanks and Harold Lloyd. Ultimately, neither strenuous Chinese efforts nor stubborn foreign resistance could resolve the matter satisfactorily, but the dispute became moot with Japan's seizure of Shanghai in 1937.

Abstract In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, international and transracial adoption have become more prominent than ever before. Celebrity culture and mainstream television and film—for example, Angelina Jolie's adoption of a Cambodian boy, an Ethiopian girl, and most recently a Vietnamese boy, and the adoption of a Chinese baby girl by Kristin Davis's character Charlotte York at the conclusion of the iconic HBO sitcom “Sex and the City”—have reflected as well as disseminated new racial sensibilities regarding family formation to the general public. But these sensibilities are not as new as they seem. They have a history. This essay challenges the popular notion that international adoption is an unprecedented facet of current American multiculturalism by connecting it to the international adoption by families in the United States during the Cold War 1950s and 1960s of mixed-race children of Asian women and U.S. servicemen. While histories of adoption have located the origins of Asian international adoption in the post–World War II and post–Korean War periods,2 the original contribution of this essay is to emphasize and to critically explore how the analytical category of race is fundamental to understanding the demographics, discourses, and institutions of earlier Asian international adoption history.

If the U.S. wants Japan's opinion as to whether the U.S. should base a carrier in Japan or not, or wants Japan's agreement, the Prime Minister authorized me to say Japan would support the U.S. plan.—Funada Naka, Speaker of Japan's House of Representatives

It all started on 2 June 1963, the day I graduated from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That same day, I was commissioned as an ensign in the United States Navy. Although ensigns are lowest in the pecking order of naval officers, I got my first choice of duty, a coastal minesweeper homeported in Sasebo, Japan. I knew nothing of Japan, but my junior and senior year Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps instructor convinced me that small ship duty (“where you will immediately be a department head”) was preferable to serving on an aircraft carrier (“where you will be the assistant Coca Cola procurement officer”). Since I was single, I also desired to test the World War I Navy recruiting slogan, “Join the Navy and See the World!” Sasebo was the most remote place where the Navy based ships, and Japan sounded exciting.