Ray Matsumoto

This is happening next week! Please come join us!

The Atomic Bombs’ Forgotten Korean Victims Survivors of the nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still fighting for recognition.

Of the hundreds of thousands hit by the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 10 to 20 per cent were Korean. Though they had much in common with Japanese victims, they were denied specialized medical coverage and sidelined.

Japan's Immigration Policy and the Kurdish Population - Foreign Policy Research Institute In a 2024 article on Japan’s changing refugee policy in the Asia-Pacific Journal, Maximilien Xavier Rehm, a researcher at Doshisha University, argues that

My article on the Kurdish diaspora in Japan has been published at @fpri.bsky.social ! I explore the issues of Japan's immigration policy and the hate speech targeting Kurds in recent years.
www.fpri.org/article/2025...

New Mexico high school champs advance to National History Day national contest Four New Mexico students are advancing to the National History Day national contest after producing a documentary that won them a state title.

Four sophomores at Albuquerque School of Excellence recently won a state title in the National History Day competition for their short documentary on Unit 731: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce1y...

If you're in Japan this month & July you won't want to miss these special programs in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Ehime, and Niigata!

最高裁の新しい判事に沖野眞已氏を起用 初めて女性が4人に | NHK 【NHK】政府は6日の閣議で、最高裁判所の新しい判事に沖野眞已氏を起用することを決めました。

It's progress...I guess? Japan's gov is trumpeting that, with the appointment of legal scholar Okino Masami, four members of the country's Supreme Court are women for the first time ever. Conversely, this means that 11 of its 15 members - a clear majority - are still men.

buff.ly/CYp1Y7n

Records show how America stood back and watched as Gwangju was martyred for Korean democracy US intelligence records obtained by an American journalist — and now out in Korean translation — show how meticulously the US watched as a junta massacred those protesting for democracy

Lot of details in here if you’re interested in the US response to the Gwangju Democracy Movement 45 years ago

english.hani.co.kr/arti/english...

Found in the Densho Digital Repository

A photograph of Seattle's
Nihonmachi (Japantown) after the mass removal of Japanese Americans. The photograph captures the emptied Jackson Photo Studio, located at 624 Jackson St, after its Japanese American operators were removed. The photograph was taken on May 15, 1942.
🗃 #skystorians #OTD

Thank you so much, Dr. Ishikawa!

I have officially graduated with my MA in history from WSU! I can't thank my advisor, professors, and cohort enough for making it possible! Next up, PhD at UCLA!

『帝国大学の朝鮮人：大韓民国エリートの起源』（慶應義塾大学出版会、2021年）を語る

著者の鄭鍾賢さんと翻訳者の渡辺直紀さんをお迎えし、本の紹介や韓国での読者の反応などをお聞きします。渡辺先生のご厚意でMJHA初の日韓通訳つきで行います！めちゃくちゃ楽しみです！

「제국대학의 조센징: 대한민국 엘리트의 기원, 그들은 돌아 와서 무엇을 하였나?』 의 저자 정종현 씨와 번역자 와타나 베 나오키 씨를 모시고 책 소개와 한국 독자들의 반응 등을 들어봅니다. 한일 통역이 있음.

RSVP： shorturl.at/Mhlqg

Yamahata Yōsuke is best known for his grizzly photos of Nagasaki, which offered many Americans their first look at the bodily toll of the a-bomb when they were published in Life in 1952

What I learned only today was that before he was on the ground in Nagasaki, he was in the sky over Chongqing 1/

Presented and co-organized the 3rd Annual WSU HGSA Conference! I presented my paper on the 1958 Komatsugawa Incident and its broader significance on Ethnic Responsibility among Japanese Progressive Intellectuals.

Presented at the 2nd Annual Northwest Holocaust Student Research Workshop hosted by the University of Idaho!

MA Thesis Defense Complete ✅
Last Wednesday, I successfully defended my thesis, "Constructing Identity through Power: Analyzing War Responsibility Discourse through Zainichi Koreans and Japanese Settlers Abandoned in Manchuria"!

The Trump administration has immediately cancelled all present and future NEH grants, including those already awarded. The NEH is a vanishingly small drop in the bucket of federal funding, but is nevertheless vital to supporting local museums, music, artists, and scholarship.

Et voilà: our NEH grant with Harriet Murav for “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union” has been terminated. This project does not, the letter notes, support “the furtherance of the President’s agenda.” I guess work on Jews surviving genocide is out of step with the agenda of this presidential administration whose only use for Jews is the weaponization of Jewish safety to destroy higher education.

My @nehgov.bsky.social grant “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union” was canceled by “DOGE.” The project doesn’t support "the furtherance of the President's agenda.” Jews surviving genocide: out of step w/ the agenda of using Jews to destroy higher ed.

Japan arrived late to policing its colonies from the air, but by 1930 it was bombing colonial subjects into submission.

Case in point: the fierce bombing campaign against Seediq settlements at Musha, in the mountains of Taiwan.

An important prelude to Japan's own bombing of urban China from 1931.

My first time presenting at an AAS Annual Conference! Thank you so much to Dr. Leksa Lee for organizing our panel!
#AAS2025