Two East Asian Scholars to Assist Declassification Work of Interagency Working Group
Press Release · Thursday, January 22, 2004

Washington, DC

Contacts: Giuliana Bullard, IWG, 703-532-1477
Susan Cooper, National Archives, 202-501-5526

College Park, MD. . . The U.S. Interagency Working Group charged with locating and declassifying federal records dealing with Nazi and Japanese World War II war crimes has added two East Asian experts to the roster of historians who are aiding the effort. Steven Garfinkel, chair of the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Interagency Working Group (IWG), announced the appointment of Dr. Carol Gluck, of Columbia University, to the IWG's Historical Advisory Panel and Dr. Daqing Yang, of The George Washington University, to the team of independent historians who consult for the IWG.

Garfinkel said, "The IWG welcomes the opportunity to work with Drs. Gluck and Yang, and we look forward to their contributions. As we move forward into the final phase of this very important project, the expertise and knowledge that they bring to the table will be especially important. The IWG is committed to identifying and making accessible as many records related to war crimes in the Asian Theater as we can, and I am confident that with their help we will accomplish this goal."

Carol Gluck is the George Sansom Professor of History at Columbia University, where she specializes in modern Japan from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. She holds a B.A degree from Wellesley College, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, and has also studied at the Universities of Munich and Tokyo. She was Visiting Professor of History at Harvard University (1991), at the Institute of Social Science, Tokyo University (1993), and l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales (1995 and 1998); also, Visiting Research Associate at the Faculty of Law, Tokyo University (1978-9, 1985-6, 1992). In 1999-2000 she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. Among her many honors and awards are the Fulbright 50th Anniversary Distinguished Scholar Award (2002), the John King Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association, the Lionel Trilling Award of Columbia University (both for Japan's Modern Myths); election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. She served as president of the Association for Asian Studies; chaired the American Advisory Committee of the Japan Foundation; and was a government-appointed member of the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission and of CULCON for seven years. She is currently on the boards of the Japan Society and the Asia Society, and is involved in numerous editorial boards and visiting committees. Gluck is the recipient of grants from the Ford Foundation, Fulbright and Japan Foundation, among others. Her major publications include Japan's Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton University Press, 1985); Showa: the Japan of Hirohito (co-editor with Stephen Graubard, W.W. Norton, 1992), and Asia in Western and World History (co-editor with Ainslie Embree, M.E. Sharpe, 1997). Her Past Obsessions: War and Memory in the Twentieth Century will be published by Columbia University Press in 2005. She publishes widely and is a regular columnist for Newsweek Japan.

As a member of the IWG Historical Advisory Panel, she joins a group of distinguished scholars who recommend measures to improve the effectiveness of the IWG and the federal agencies implementing the Disclosure Acts.

Daqing Yang is an Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at The George Washington University, where he teaches modern Japanese history. He is author of the book Technology of Empire (Harvard University Press, 2005), which examines telecommunications networks and prewar Japanese expansion. In addition, he writes extensively on the memory and historiography of the Asia-Pacific War, Japan's postwar relationship with Asia, and historical reconciliation. His publications have appeared in American Historical Review, Journal of American History, Journal of Asian Studies, Monumenta Nipponica, Gunji Shigaku, Ronza, and Shisô.

A native of Nanjing, China, Yang received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and has also studied at Keio University in Tokyo. He has received numerous fellowships, including the American Council of Learned Societies/ National Endowment for the Humanities/ Social Science Research Council's Fellowship for International and Area Studies, the Japan Foundation Research Fellowship, and most recently, the Abe Fellowship awarded by the Social Science Research Council/Japan Foundation for Center for Global Partnership.

As a member of the IWG's team of historians, Yang will work directly with IWG staff archivists to help assess the historical value of identified documents and help place declassified records into historical context.

The Interagency Working Group originated with the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998 (PL 105-246), which tasked it to locate, identify, inventory, and recommend for declassification classified U.S. records relating to Nazi and Japanese Imperial Government war crimes. The Japanese Imperial Government Disclosure Act (PL 106-567), which became law in December 2000, reiterated the importance of the search for Asian Theater records. On January 22, 2004, the U.S. Congress extended the life of the group one year through the end of March 2005 as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004 (PL 108-99).

The IWG consists of high-level representatives from federal agencies and public members, including Elizabeth Holtzman, former Congresswoman from New York; Thomas Baer, head of Steinhardt Baer Pictures Company, and Richard Ben-Veniste, a partner at Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw.

Since 1999, the IWG has declassified and opened to the public an estimated 8 million pages of documents that are helping to shape our understanding of the Holocaust, war crimes, and World War II and postwar activities of U.S. and Allied intelligence agencies. The IWG has issued two reports to Congress (in October 1999 and March 2002), and it issues news releases and occasional newsletters. U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis, a 15-chapter book prepared by the IWG team of historians, was published and is available through the National Archives Trust Fund by calling 1-866-272-6272. The IWG website is http://www.archives.gov/iwg/.

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