After Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931, Ishii Shiro created Unit 731 and began testing biological weapons on unwilling human test subjects. The history of Imperial Japan’s human experiments was one in which Ishii and Unit 731 was the principal actor, but Unit 731 operated in a much larger context. The network in which 731 operated consisted of Unit 731 and all its sub-units, nearly every major Japanese university, as well as many people in Japan’s scientific and medical community, military hospitals, military and civilian laboratories, and the Japanese military as a whole. Japan’s racist ultra-nationalist movement heavily influenced these institutions and people; previous historians have failed to view Japan’s human experiments in this context. This thesis makes use of a combination of declassified United States government and military documents, including court documents and the interviews conducted during the Unit 731 Exhibition that traveled Japan in 1993 and 1994, and then recorded by Hal Gold in his book, Unit 731 Testimony, along with a number of secondary sources as supporting material. Each of these sources has informed this work and helped clarify that Unit 731 acted within a broader network of human experimentation and exploitation in a racist system, which normalized human atrocities. Attitudes of racism and superiority do not necessarily explain every action taken by Japanese military personnel and scientists, nor did every individual view their actions or the actions of their countrymen as morally correct, but it does help explain why these acts occurred. What enabled many Japanese scientists was the racist ideology of the ultra-nationalist movement in Japan.

The purpose of this work is to explore how the interns and those who worked in the Swedishinternment camp in Rengsjö viewed their time there and if their behavior and thoughtschanged during it. It compares this to the theory of historian Michael Fuccault regardingphysical and mental punishments on people. It is also compared with the work of author andholocaust survivor Primo Levi who was a jewish man who survived Auscwich and wrote inhis books how the prisoners and guards were in a constant psychological battle where thegoal was to dehumanize the people to make the workers feel less guilt while putting theprisoners through horrible punishment. This in combination with Michael Foucault's theorythat punishments of the soul were more profitable in terms of the prisoners' debt to the state,will provide a good foundation to the main theory regarding this work: static and floatingstatuses for the human involved in the situation.Within the internment camp in Rengsjö the main objective of the camp was to detain andstore away people that the Swedish government saw as dangerous for Sweden’s situationduring world war 2. They had access to some benefits such as getting paid for their work sothat the interns could purchase items of comfort like cigarettes and coffee. If the internsmisbehaved they would get punished with various punishments such as withheld rights tomoney or furlough. But it was not just the interns that had their daily life within the camp butalso the director and guards. In this work, four individuals are analyzed based on theirposition within the camp: two interns, one guard and the last director of the camp. Thesewere chosen based on their appearances in the many official documents from the campwhich the national archives in Stockholm provided.In this work it is shown that the interns and the people working within the camp were in aconstant struggle regarding what counted as “normal” in the daily life and if it was disturbedsituations escalated to either violence or psychological stress It is also shown that eachintern followed a pattern which lead to them being unruly and even the guard analyzednoticed this and so did the director of the camp. The prisoner came to the camp, started towrite letters that got censored, they stopped to write letters, they were allowed a temporaryleave to go somewhere and when the intern returned that violent and depressed state tookhold of them. Most likely due to the intern wanting to return to freedom and the things theypreviously had during the leave.It has also been shown in this work that Foucault was right regarding his theory ofrehabilitating prisoners with the psychological punishments being more effective in dealingwith prisoners. However; he forgot one crucial part: the dimension of the soul and the “me” ofthe person in question. The prisoners in this internment camp had no issues with doingphysical labor but when their everyday life and the small golden nuggets of their day gotremoved they reacted more violently and depressed. Especially when the prisoners felt likethey were treated like something sub-human. Such is clear when you look at the variousincidents and the new rules and regulations the last director ordered to try and combat thisexact thing during the time he was present. / I detta arbete undersöks Rengsjö interneringsläger och hur fångarna samt personer somarbetade i lägret utvecklades under tiden som lägret var i bruk. Frågorna som besvaras är:Hur utvecklades människorna som var internerade i Rengsjö interneringsläger under derastid i lägret? Finns det en tydlig brytpunkt när deras tankar, agerande eller värderingarändrades och vad var den utlösande faktorn till detta?Detta görs utifrån Michael Focault och Primo Levis teori och tankar som grundas i hur brottoch straff förändrar oss människor till det bättre eller sämre beroende på vad syftet för ensvistelse i ett fängelse eller förläggning är. Arbetet förklarar också min egen teori somframförallt utvecklar Primo Levis tankar om att fångarna vill behålla sitt “jag” och inte bli ensiffra. Det jag menar är att vi människor befinner oss i olika tillstånd, statusar som vi känneross bekväma eller obekväma i, där det ena är statiskt och allt är som vanligt eller ett flytandetillstånd där någonting i vårt statiska tillstånd har rubbats.Från officiella dokument till handskrivna brev undersöks fyra öden som ofta återkommer idessa dokument: Simon Janovsky och Thor Ludvigsen som var internerade i lägret. Bådatvå visar i dokumenten en tidslinje som enkelt kan analyseras om varför utfallet blev som detblev för dem i lägret: de blev intagen till lägret, uppvisar ofördelaktigt beteende en kortperiod, skriver brev som blir censurerade, får permission efter en viss tid, kommer tillbakafrån permissionen och blir sedan våldsam och bryter ihop. Ett mönster som förekommerbland fler internerade i lägret.Även Larks Kaneskog och Birger Högbom undersöks i detta arbete för att se om det finns entydlig punkt där deras beteende ändrades och den har hittats: fångdemonstrationen 16November 1944 när internerna lämnade in en protestlista och gick sedan ut från lägret medavsikten att ta sig till Bollnäs för att prata med lokaltidningen Ljusnan för bättre villkor i lägret.Vilket också blev resultatet även om fångarna inte lyckades ta sig till Bollnäs.

This thesis explores shell shock--a common but misunderstood disorder seen in soldiers of World War One--through a Medical Humanities framework. Chapter 1 conducts a traditional medical review of scientific articles published on the pathology, symptoms, and treatment of shell shock between 1914-50. Chapter 2 builds upon this by offering a literary reading of Rebecca West's novel, The Return of the Soldier, which was published as the war drew to a close in 1918. The reading of West draws upon the medical research detailed in Chapter 1 to offer new conclusions about Chris's shell shock. The thesis shows how taking an interdisciplinary approach to shell shock enables the development of new perspectives of and approaches to shell shock, its history and significance, and its links to present-day mental health conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

In the Spring and Summer of 1942, the population of West Coast Japanese were rounded up and forcibly moved from their homes to temporary camps and soon after to ten permanent relocation camps in the interior Western United States. This thesis traces the history of one such camp, the Tule Lake Relocation Center. In this thesis I argue that from its inception the Tule Lake Center was unique among the ten camps. The decision to build a permanent center at Tule Lake was based upon the unique potential the area provided for agriculture on a huge scale. The other permanent centers were located in remote inhospitable areas where large scale agricultural operations were impossible. The introduction outlines my key research questions and the methodology used. This section identifies my central theme, agriculture at the Tule Lake Relocation Center, and situates my own research within the existing scholarship on the Japanese-American Relocation. Chapter one is a review of the factors, including racial animosity, and wartime hysteria leading up to the decision to relocate every Japanese individual living on the West Coast. Chapter two discusses the little known history of how and why Tule Lake was chosen for a permanent relocation center. Chapter three documents the commitment of the War Relocation Authority to a massive agricultural project at the Tule Lake Center. Chapter four recounts the tumultuous registration period at Tule Lake. In the winter of 1943, the War Relocation Authority and the War Department combined to administer a loyalty questionnaire to every internee over the age of 17, revealing shocking disloyalty at Tule Lake. Chapter five discusses the decision of the War Relocation Authority to segregate Japanese Americans declared disloyal, and the choice of Tule Lake as the segregation center. Chapter six discusses the events, in particular the tragic accidental death of a farm worker, which led to the end of large scale agriculture at Tule Lake. In conclusion, I assert that War Relocation Authority blunders, including a lack of cultural sensitivity, led directly to the cessation of the agricultural project at Tule Lake Segregation Center.

Cette recherche doctorale porte sur la construction du récit muséal d’un évènement historique majeur du XXe siècle : le Débarquement en Normandie du 6 juin 1944. La Basse-Normandie est un territoire, aujourd’hui marqué par la présence de près d’une trentaine de structures muséales et de lieux de mémoire. Quel discours sur le Jour-J est-il délivré ? Que contient-il ? Sur quels aspects historiques insiste-il ? Au contraire, quels éléments sont passés sous silence ? La narration délivrée dans la région est mise en rapport à l’historiographie la plus récente mais est également comparée aux expositions de musées blockbusters que sont l’Imperial War Museum de Londres, le Musée de l’Armée de Paris et le Musée Royal de l’Armée de Bruxelles. Cette démarche, en plus de nous conduire à déterminer l’existence -ou non- d’un récit typiquement normand, doit nous permettre d’analyser les messages portés par ces structures et de comprendre à qui ils s’adressent en priorité. / His PhD thesis focuses on the museal story construction of one the XXth century main historic event: the landing of June 6, 1944. Nowadays, Lower Normandy is a territory scattered with almost thirty museums and memorials. What is the speech about D-Day? What is it made of? On which aspects does it insist? And which ones are ignored? The storytelling of this region is compared to the newest historiography and also to exhibitions of blockbusters’ museums such as the London’s Imperial War Museum, Paris’s Army Museum and the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History of Brussels. In this approach, we'll try to determine whether a specific speech from Normandy exists or not, and we will also analyse the museums' discourses as well as to whom they are addressed.

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The subject of this paper is the experiences and observations of Lt. Edwin Best of the 618th Ordnance Ammunition Company from 1943 until 1946. This includes time in the United States, England and France. The primary sources for this paper include letters home from Lt. Best and an oral history transcript. Secondary sources have been used to place Lt. Best into the overall context of the war. He made keen observations regarding the level of training before D-Day, comparisons of life in England and the US, from the "communications zone" in Normandy, as a temporary Judge Advocate General officer, and finishing the war in Southern France. Though he may not have been on the front line, or in an HQ, his comments are valuable to the historical record.

Writers from both world wars, concerned with the representation of war, wrestled with the predicament of partial sight. Their work reveals the problematic dichotomy that exists between the individual’s selective range of vision and the immense scale of conflict. Central to this authorial dilemma is the question of the visual frame: how do you contain – within the written word – sight that resists containment and expression? The scale of the two world wars accentuated the representative problem of warfare. This thesis, by examining a wide range of World War One and World War Two literature, explores the varied literary responses to the topical relationship between sight and reality in wartime. It examines the war poetry of Wilfred Owen, Ford Madox Ford’s tetralogy Parade’s End, The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West, Elizabeth Bowen’s The Heat of the Day, and Virginia Woolf’s novels Mrs Dalloway and Between the Acts alongside less well-known works such as David Jones’s prose-poem In Parenthesis, the two short stories ‘The Soldier Looks for His Family’ by John Prebble and ‘The Blind Man’ by D.H. Lawrence, as well as William Sansom’s collection of short stories Fireman Flower, and Louis Simpson’s war poetry. This thesis, by focussing on the inherent difficulties of reconciling perception and representation in war, interrogates the boundaries of sight and the limits of representation. The changing place of sight in writing from the two world wars is examined and the extent to which discourses of vision were shaped and developed, in the early decades of the twentieth century, by war experience is explored. The critical containment and categorisation of sight that often dominates readings of sight in texts from both world wars is questioned suggesting the need for a more flexible understanding of, and approach towards, sight.

Most people’s perceptions of the Second World War leave little room for static, attritional fighting; instead, free-flowing manoeuvre warfare, such as Blitzkrieg, is seen as the norm. In reality, however, much of the terrain fought over in 1939-45 was unsuitable for such a war and, as a result, bloody attritional battles and trench fighting were common. Thus ordinary infantrymen spent the majority of their time at the front burrowing underground for protection. Although these trenches were never as fixed or elaborate as those on the Western Front a generation earlier, the men who served in Italy, Normandy, Holland and Germany, nonetheless shared an experience remarkably similar to that of their predecessors in Flanders, Picardy, Champagne and Artois. This is an area which has been largely neglected by scholars. While the first war produced a mountain of books on the experience of trench warfare, the same cannot be said of the second war. This thesis will attempt to fill that gap by providing a comprehensive analysis of static warfare in the Second World War from the point of view of British infantry morale. It draws widely on contemporary letters and diaries, psychiatric and medical reports and official documentation – not to mention personal narratives and accounts published after the war – and will attempt to interpret these sources in light of modern research and organise them into a logical framework. Ultimately it is hoped that this will provide fresh insight into a relatively under-researched area of twentieth century history.