School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemJustifying and defending redress for the internment of Japanese Americans, 1970-88( 2016)This thesis provides a new perspective on the Japanese American campaign for redress in the 1970s and 1980s. It argues that the 1970s was a decade of intense work by the Japanese Americans Citizens League (JACL), with six years of important debate and discussion taking place up to 1976, when activists worked to provide a rationale for reparations payments from the government. Whereas previous studies have consigned these early years to oblivion, they were actually a crucial time where much of the vital work of constructing a rational for reparations was carried out. These initial years were also spent trying to convince wavering members of the Japanese American community that a reparations campaign was the only way of proving to the American public that their internment during the Second World War had not been justified. In 1977 the focus of the JACL shifted to garnering support for redress from the American people. A new argument was used to convince the wider public of the necessity of redress, with redress activists arguing that the only way of preventing future injustices like the internment was to make the American government pay substantial monetary redress. Finally, it will be shown that one of the greatest challenges to the success of the redress campaign was those who supported an official apology in the place of redress payments. This chapter will focus particularly on 1984, when these opponents of redress argued that monetary redress was not appropriate and not justified, and that an apology would be the proper method of conveying contrition. While redress was attained in 1988 by the passage of the Civil Liberties Act, this thesis will explore one method of opposition that helped block the progress of a redress bill in its initial years in Congress.
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ItemQuiet in the Balkans: the role of Romania in the German-Soviet relationship during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact( 2013)Vyacheslav Molotov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), met with Adolf Hitler, the German Führer, in Berlin in November 1940. It was the first time Molotov had left the Soviet Union since 1921. He had arrived to discuss the future of the relationship between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; the two nations had been cooperating closely since August 1939. The talks, however, achieved nothing. Instead, they demonstrated how shallow the relationship really was and how incompatible their interests were. Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and leader of the Soviet Union had ordered Molotov to try to lay the groundwork for further discussions which might even lead to another agreement similar to the Non-aggression Pact of August 1939. Why were the Soviets trying to reach an agreement with the Nazi-led Germans? The Soviet leadership were terrified of war but at the same time believed it was inevitable in the contemporary international climate. Their aim was to put off this war for as long as possible, even if this meant reaching long-lasting agreements with Hitler’s Germany, the archenemy of communism. In the series of conversations that took place however, Hitler’s evasions were revealing. He avoided Molotov’s attempts to discuss concrete proposals, opting instead to discuss a partition of the British Empire and suggesting the Soviets look southwards towards Iran and India, ignoring the Soviet Foreign Minister’s assertions of security interests in the Balkans and the Middle East. The talks were a dead end. Molotov left with no agreement, only vague promises of further discussions.1 Hitler, however, now knew what he had to do. German and Soviet aims were irreconcilable; there was no point putting off the inevitable. A month later, on 18 December 1940, Hitler released Directive No. 21. It ordered: “The German Wehrmacht must be prepared to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign.” (From Introduction)