Japan Times :: Sunday, June 28, 2009

• 13. THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK - HIROAKI SATO
  Mythmaking and the Kamikaze 'volunteers'
  June 28, 2009
  THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK. Mythmaking and the Kamikaze 'volunteers'
  By HIROAKI SATO
  NEW YORK — Lisa Hosokawa Garber, a fresh graduate of St. Andrews Presbyterian College in North Carolina, has sent me "Crosswind," her short, imaginative account of three months in the life of a youth training to be a Kamikaze pilot. It describes what its author calls a Shakespearean "twist of fate": The young man is let off a suicide mission at the last minute because the news reaches his air base that his entire family has been annihilated in Hiroshima. continued ...


• 29. NATIONAL NEWS
  North threatens to shoot spy planes
  June 28, 2009
  SEOUL (AP) North Korea threatened Saturday to shoot down any Japanese planes that intrude into its airspace, accusing Tokyo of spying near one of its missile sites. continued ...


• 30. BOOK REVIEWS - JEFF KINGSTON
  When in war, why bomb the innocent?
  June 28, 2009
  Historians argue that bombing civilians is a tragic and virtually ineffective strategy
  By JEFF KINGSTON
  BOMBING CIVILIANS: A Twentieth Century History. Edited by Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn Young. New York: The New Press, 2009, 291 pp. $30 (cloth)
  How one feels about what one is reading can differ depending on where and when. Reading these essays while boarding a flight from Tokyo, transiting Hanoi and then arriving in Laos — all places that have been subjected to extensive U.S. bombing — is to feel the long arm of history tug at one's conscience. continued ...


• 37. NATIONAL NEWS
  Aso leaning toward early August election
  June 28, 2009
  LDP executives may also be reshuffled to boost poll numbers
  Kyodo News
  As speculation grows over the timing of the next general election, Prime Minister Taro Aso began moving Saturday toward holding it in early August, coalition sources said. continued ...