Throughout the Pacific theater of World War II, Allied prisoners were often starved, tortured, beheaded, even cannibalized by Japanese soldiers. Yet, during the Boxer Rebellion in China and the savage Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, the Western press lauded the Japanese for their kindness to the enemy wounded and imprisoned. "Warriors of the Rising Sun" chronicles the Japanese military's transformation from honorable "knights of Bushido" into men of historic cruelty. Photos.

Revelations of abuse at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay had repercussions extending beyond the worldwide media scandal that ensued. The controversy surrounding photos and descriptions of inhumane treatment of enemy prisoners of war, or EPWs, from the war on terror marked a watershed momentin the study of modern warfare and the treatment of prisoners of war. Amid allegations of human rights violations and war crimes, one question stands out among the rest: Was the treatment of America's most recent prisoners of war an isolated event or part of a troubling and complex issue that is deeply rooted in our nation's military history?Military expert Robert C. Doyle's The Enemy in Our Hands: America's Treatment of Prisoners of War from the Revolution to the War on Terror draws from diverse sources to answer this question. Historical as well as timely in its content, this work examines America's major wars and past conflicts -- among them, the American Revolution, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Vietnam -- to provide understanding of the UnitedStates' treatment of military and civilian prisoners. The Enemy in Our Hands offers a new perspective of U.S. military history on the subject of EPWs and suggests that the tactics employed to manage prisoners of war are unique and disparate from one conflict tothe next. In addition to other vital information, Doyle provides a cultural analysis and exploration of U.S. adherence to international standards of conduct, including the 1929 Geneva Convention in each war. Although wars are not won or lost on the basis of how EPWs are treated, the treatment of prisoners is one of the measures by which history's conquerors are judged.

A little-known story of mutiny and murder illustrating the centrality of smuggling and slavery in early American society On the night of June 1, 1743, terror struck the schooner Rising Sun. After completing a routine smuggling voyage where the crew sold enslaved Africans in exchange for chocolate, sugar, and coffee in the Dutch colony of Suriname, the ship traveled eastward along the South American coast. Believing there was an opportunity to steal the lucrative cargo and make a new life for themselves, three sailors snuck below deck, murdered four people, and seized control of the vessel. Mutiny on the Rising Sun recounts the origins, events, and eventual fate of the Rising Sun’s final smuggling voyage in vivid detail. Starting from that horrible night in June 1743, it narrates a deeply human history of smuggling, providing an incredible story of those caught in the webs spun by illicit commerce. The case generated a rich documentary record that illuminates an international chocolate smuggling ring, the lives of the crew and mutineers, and the harrowing experience of the enslaved people trafficked by the Rising Sun. Smuggling stood at the center of the lives of everyone involved with the business of the schooner. Larger forces, such as imperial trade restrictions, created the conditions for smuggling, but individual actors, often driven by raw ambition and with little regard for the consequences of their actions, designed, refined, and perpetuated this illicit commerce. At once startling and captivating, Mutiny on the Rising Sun shows how illegal trade created demand for exotic products like chocolate, and how slavery and smuggling were integral to the development of American capitalism.

The Alamo Scouts, Sixth Army's Special Reconnaissance Unit of World War II, provided intelligence-gathering and tactical reconnaissance in the Pacific Theatre. During the war, they performed over 106 successful missions in the Admiralty Islands, New Guinea and the Philippines, most deep behind enemy lines. The Scouts took part in liberating two POW camps. The Scouts evolved from a simple reconnaissance unit to a sophisticated intelligence unit supplying and coordinating large-scale guerilla operations on Leyte and Luzon. They did this without losing a man, killed or captured. The Scouts are now recognised as forerunners of the modern Special Forces.

Japanese film is enduringly fascinating, challenging and rewarding. This book provides a cultural, historical and philosophical study of Japanese film, from the silent era to the present-day, focusing on its expansive consciousness. The author examines masterpieces by Ozu, Mizoguchi, Oshima and many other directors, discussing their influence on the Japanese culture of esoteric Zen Buddhism and relating them to recent neuroscientific theories of brain trauma.

Hostile Comanche warriors tear three young women away from their families. The three young women are forcibly taken back to a Comanche village located inside Blanco Canyon. A small company of Texas Rangers are dispatched to rescue the three young women from the Comanches. Can these Texas Rangers rescue the three young women and bring them safely back to their families? Or will the three young women remain trapped living with the hostile Comanches for the rest of their lives? Cooper McCaw, a former cavalry officer who was stripped of his rank and branded a coward, was summoned to Fort Concho by its commanding officer. Cooper is offered a chance to be reinstated back into the cavalry with his old rank if he agrees to journey into Blanco Canyon, kidnap a Comanche warrior named White Buffalo, and then bring White Buffalo safely back to Fort Concho alive. Will Cooper be able to fulfill this mission, or will he fail and forever be branded a coward?

Creating Military Power examines how societies, cultures, political structures, and the global environment affect countries' military organizations. Unlike most analyses of countries' military power, which focus on material and basic resources—such as the size of populations, technological and industrial base, and GNP—this volume takes a more expansive view. The study's overarching argument is that states' global environments and the particularities of their cultures, social structures, and political institutions often affect how they organize and prepare for war, and ultimately impact their effectiveness in battle. The creation of military power is only partially dependent on states' basic material and human assets. Wealth, technology, and human capital certainly matter for a country's ability to create military power, but equally important are the ways a state uses those resources, and this often depends on the political and social environment in which military activity takes place.

The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949 shows that the Western treatment of World War II, the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War as separate events misrepresents their overlapping connections and causes. The Chinese Civil War precipitated a long regional war between China and Japan that went global in 1941 when the Chinese found themselves fighting a civil war within a regional war within an overarching global war. The global war that consumed Western attentions resulted from Japan's peripheral strategy to cut foreign aid to China by attacking Pearl Harbour and Western interests throughout the Pacific in 1941. S. C. M. Paine emphasizes the fears and ambitions of Japan, China and Russia, and the pivotal decisions that set them on a collision course in the 1920s and 1930s. The resulting wars together yielded a viscerally anti-Japanese and unified Communist China, the still-angry rising power of the early twenty-first century.

Li's parents, Li Yu Chu, was framed for infidelity, caged and sunk. When he returned, his personality had changed drastically. He had beaten up his stepmother and abused his own younger sister. His methods had been extremely ruthless. What a joke, how could she dress up as a sloppy young miss that could be easily bullied! Rumors had it that the Li family's eldest daughter had become a yaksha and was carrying a prostitute who didn't know who her father was. No one dared to marry her! I am the mother Yaksha I am proud, I bring the oil bottle I am proud of! As for who would dare to marry — what was the point of having two men lined up in front of Li's house? The little bun jumped out, "Mother, I'll choose your man!" Pick and choose... Li Yu Chu smacked his lips and asked, "Bastard, and you chose such a cripple for your mother?" "He said that he can eat soft food in the kitchen and bring children. Mother, I think it's suitable for you!"

Give me a little sunshine, I can be brilliant, binding an empty hold, I can give the world a new sky! His right hand held the scalpel, his left hand held the high-tech, cutting through thorns and thorns, reneging on the marriage with the crown prince, reviving the house of the Marquis, holding hands with lovers, blocking people's path to murder, killing gods and gods! Gold is mine, home is mine, country is mine, you are mine, mine or mine!