Eighty years after the guns fell silent in the Pacific theater of World War II, the region it reshaped continues to remember – and forget – in strikingly different ways. In China, the memory has never faded. A major military parade is scheduled for September 3, marking the victory over Japan with full state ceremony. Today’s youth, born generations after the war, know its details intimately – not just from family stories, but from textbooks, museum visits, battlefield reenactments, and cinema. The most popular film of the summer is “Dead to Rights,” a graphic portrayal of the Nanjing Massacre.
For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the war’s memory is not just history – it is ideology, identity, and political capital.
In the United States, by contrast, the war in Asia has largely slipped from public consciousness. Few young Americans today know the names of Guadalcanal or Iwo Jima, or understand the critical role their grandfathers played in ending the Japanese Empire in East and Southeast Asia.
