|
|
We do so in full awareness that many other scholars work diligently in the field and have reached levels of awareness of the intricacy of some of the problems that the author could never hope to attain, even if he gave his whole effort to a very limited area or time period. On the expert testimony of other scholars will rest many an argument: scholars such as Paul Varg, Charles S. Campbell, Jr., Ernest May, Ian Nish, George Monger, Charles Vevier, Richard T. Chang, Warren Cohen, John A. White, James C. Thomson, Robert J. C. Butow, Marius Jansen, Burton Beers, Russell Fifield, Roy Curry, Paul Schroeder, Lloyd Eastman, Alvin Coox, James Morley, Chihiro Hosoya, John C. Vinson, Raymond O’Connor, Michael Blaker, Roberta Wohlsteffer, Gordon Prange, Edwin Reischauer, John Fairbank, Robert S. Schwantes, Yale Maxon, Richard Storry, Rosemary Foot, James I. Matray, Bradford Lee, Johanna Meskill, Frank Ikle, Ernest Presseisen, James Crowley, Gerald Wheeler, Jerry Israel, F. C. Jones, Walter LeFeber, Merze Tate, Herbert Feis, Allyn Rickett, Charles McLane, Julius Pratt, Stuart C. Miller, Theodore Friend, Grant Goodman, Akira Iriye, Teodora Agoncilla, Victor Minear, and the galaxy of Japanese scholars who produced Taiheiyo Senso e no Michi (The Road to the Pacific War), to name some of those who contributed outstanding monographs and articles in the post–Pacific War years. Even the not-so-immature probings of former graduate students will sometimes be considered, concerning which the author acknowledges indebtedness to the following, among others, who have passed through his seminar portals: Serafin Quiason, Nobutoshi Hagihara, Elizabeth Togasaki Shibata, Jong-yil Lah, Masao Nishikawa, Mordecai Rozanski, Toru Takemoto, Pao-chin Chu, Tsing Yuan, George Bilke, I-te Chen, Wen-hsien Chiang, Elliott Meyrowitz, Han-sheng Lin, Pei-chih Hsieh, Cameron Hurst, and John Stephan.
I make special mention to the inspiration provided by a handful of stormy petrels, those revisionists, who have attacked the standard interpretations of earlier eras and provided much food for the author’s thought, whether or not he has considered their arguments worthy of support: George Kennan, William Appleman Williams, Howard Beale, William Neumann, Gabriel Kolko, Masao Maruyama, Ienaga Saburo, Herbert Dix, and John Dower.