Lon Kurashige - Pacific America: Histories of Transoceanic Crossings

2017 University of Hawaii Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Kurashige, Lon, editor.
Title: Pacific America : histories of transoceanic crossings / edited by Lon Kurashige. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017004009 | ISBN 9780824855765 (cloth ; alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: InterregionalismAsia. | InterregionalismPacific Area. | InterregionalismUnited States. | AsiaRelations. | Pacific AreaRelations. | United StatesRelations.
Classification: LCC JZ1320.7 .P335 2017 | DDC 327.09172/3dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017004009

University of Hawaii Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.

Over a muggy August weekend in San Diego, ten scholars met to piece together an inclusive and coherent vision of transpacific history, an area of study focused on movement, connections, and conflict within and across the Pacific Ocean. This meeting led to Conversations on Transpacific History, a special issue of Pacific Historical Review (PHR) published May 2014. By later adding five scholars, we have been able to expand, enrich, and elaborate our initial discussions. The fruits of this reappraisal are presented in this book, which includes a new introduction geared toward students as well as specialists and nonspecialists alike.

Each of the authors in this collection comes to transpacific history with a different set of scholarly identities, locations, and training. These include the study of Chinese diaspora and maritime networks, Southeast Asian studies, Pacific Islander studies, Asian American studies, US history, and the histories of modern China and Japan. In addition, the groups diversity is embodied in its members varied institutional homes in Hong Kong, Japan, and throughout the United States. Being part of such a wide-ranging group of scholars has forced us, as one contributor put it, to surmount the comfortable academic silos that limit conceptualization of history as a field and experience. At the same time, the vastness of the Pacific Ocean and the diversity of its peoples and the experiences that have occurred within and across it require us to acknowledge the partial, preliminary, and ongoing nature of our conversations. We did not start transpacific history, nor do we claim to have reached definitive conclusions about this emerging research field. Each of us is an English speaker (although almost all are bilingual) and either a US citizen or resident who has lived in the United States for an extended period of time. All but one of us hold an advanced degree from a US university.

Throughout this book, we confront different convention about the order in which people style their names. Unless otherwise noted, the names of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean authors appear in the traditional Asian order, with the family name first, when they are writing in those languages, but according to Western conventions when they are writing in English; x names thus appear as they do on the title page of particular works. For instance, Yujin Yaguchis chapter in this book has his name written with the family name last, but his Japanese-language book is cited with his name given as Yaguchi Yujin.

This book would not have been possible without cooperation from its authors, who not only shared their original research but responded to many queries and requests, as well as waited patiently for this book to emerge. Many thanks go to David Johnson, Carl Abbott, and Susan Wladaver-Morgan for their guidance in publishing ten of these essays in the PHR. Madeline Hsu and Yujin Yaguchi, coeditors for the PHR issue, recruited authors to the project and provided constant support and feedback. Madeline also contributed the books title, wrote and edited parts of the preface and introduction, and communicated with authors and the press. The books introduction benefitted from feedback provided by Eiichiro Azuma, Keith Camacho, Christen Sasaki, and Susie Woo. Two anonymous reviewers for the University of Hawaii Press offered useful comments and much-appreciated support for an earlier manuscript version of this book. Final appreciation goes to Masako Ikeda, Debra Tang, and others at UH Press. Masako, in particular, went above and beyond her editorial duties to bring this project to fruition.

The book is dedicated to the memory of John E. Wills, Jr., a member of our author team who was involved with this effort from the beginning. For over twenty years, Jack was my colleague, mentor, and friend at the University of Southern California; and for much longer, he was a guiding light to all students of transoceanic history.

LK xi