[japan@ihj] Origins of World War II and the Future of U.S.- Asia Relations

  • Date: Monday, March 29, 7:00 pm
  • Speaker: James Bradley, Writer
  • Moderator: Akiyo Okuda, Professor, Keio University
  • Admission: Free
  • Language: English & Japanese (with simultaneous translation)
  • Co-sponsors: Japan Society of Boston, U.S. Embassy

The New York Times No. 1 best-selling author, James Bradley, returns to Japan to discuss his new book, The Imperial Cruise.
Bradley’s current bestseller, The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War (Little, Brown and Company, 2009), documents that Theodore Roosevelt based U.S.-Japanese relations on race theories he had studied at Harvard and Columbia Universities and that Roosevelt agreed a secret treaty with Tokyo to allow Japan to expand into Korea—all without the knowledge of Congress or the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. The New York Times wrote, “The Imperial Cruise is startling enough to reshape conventional wisdom about Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency.”

James Bradley


James BradleyJames Bradley: An American historian of the Pacific. Studied at Sophia University in Tokyo. President of the James Bradley Peace Foundation, which for a decade has sent American high school students to live and study in Japan and China. Bradley’s No. 1 best-seller, Flags of Our Fathers (Bantam, 2000), tells the story of six Americans who raised the flag on Iwo Jima, one of whom was Bradley’s father, John Bradley. Clint Eastwood’s movie version was released in 2006. Bradley’s second book, Flyboys: A Story of Courage (Little, Brown and Company, 2003), details the secret executions of eight American flyboys on the island of Chi Chi Jima. One flyboy survived. His name was Lt. George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States.

Akiyo Okuda

Akiyo Okuda teaches at Keio University in Tokyo, specializing in American history and literature. She has received her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the turn-of-the-century America, especially its racial aspects. Her most recent article, “‘A Nation is Born’: Thomas Dixon’s Vision of White Nationhood and His Northern Supporters,” was published in the Journal of American Culture in September 2009.