The Battle of Saipan in the Mariana Islands, fought between June 15 and July 9, 1944, was among the most bitterly contested of the Asia-Pacific War. With Japanese forces dug into caves and determined to fight to the death, casualties mounted. According to the US Military History, some 24,000 Japanese soldiers were killed and 5,000 committed suicide while 2,949 Americans died and 10,364 were wounded. According to historian John Toland, 22,000 Japanese civilians, as well as an unspecified number of islanders also died, some by compulsory suicides.

In the wake of the DPJ landslide victory and the first decisive defeat of a reigning Japanese government in more than half a century, attention has focused on two signature issues of the Hatoyama administration:

• The U.S-Japan and China-Japan Relations and the possibility of a more independent Japanese foreign policy.

• The critique of neoliberalism and the possibility of economic and social policies more effectively addressing Japan's troubled economy and growing intra-societal divisions.

Less attention has been paid to environmental issues and their intersect with policies associated with the construction state pioneered by the Liberal Democratic Party over half a century. Yet these policies also have profound implications for Japan's economic future.

The August 15, 1945 announcement by the Japanese Emperor declaring Japan's intention to accept the Allied forces' terms of unconditional surrender sent Koreans throughout the empire into the streets in celebration. For the first time in decades they could freely associate with their fellow countrymen, communicate in their native language, and wave their national flag (taegeukgi) as Koreans without fear of punishment.[1]

This is the first installment of Daniel Ellsberg's personal memoir of the nuclear era, “The American Doomsday Machine.” The online book will recount highlights of his six years of research and consulting for the Departments of Defense and State and the White House on issues of nuclear command and control, nuclear war planning and nuclear crises. It further draws on 34 subsequent years of research and activism largely on nuclear policy, which followed the intervening 11 years of his preoccupation with the Vietnam War. The author is a senior fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His earlier Building a Better Bomb: Reflections on the Atomic Bomb, the Hydrogen Bomb, and the Neutron Bomb is available here.