The Politics of War, Memory, and History in the Mariana Islands

In 1941 the Japanese military attacked the US naval base Pearl Harbor on the Hawaiian island of O‘ahu. Although much has been debated about this event and the wider American and Japanese involvement in the war, few scholars have explored the Pacific War’s impact on Pacific Islanders.Cultures of Commemoration: The Politics of War, Memory, and History in the Mariana Islands, by Keith L. Camacho, fills this crucial gap in the historiography by advancing scholarly understanding of Pacific Islander relations with and knowledge of American and Japanese colonialisms in the twentieth century.

“Cultures of Commemoration performs a unique intervention into existing studies of the memory of the Pacific War in its astute analysis of the complex intersections of commemoration, colonialism, tourism, and indigenous memory at work in the Marianas Islands. In Guam, commemoration that is shaped by narratives of loyalty and liberation are shown by Keith Camacho to be layered with postcolonial ambivalence and contestation. Camacho’s study shows us that the study of indigenous memory is not only crucial to the field of memory studies but a key framework through which the politics of memory will be rethought.” —Marita Sturken, New York University, author of Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero

Pacific Islands Monograph Series, No. 25
May 2011 / ISBN 978-0-8248-3546-0 / $52.00 (CLOTH)
Published in association with the Center for Pacific Islands Studies, University of Hawai‘i