Part 1

• Oceanic Mode of Remembrance: Japanese Ships of Peace along the Southeast Asian Coast Akira Nishimura University of Tokyo

  The Asia-Pacific War was fought overwhelmingly at sea, yet postwar “sites of memory”—monuments, memorials, and commemorative facilities—have been anchored, almost exclusively, on land. This paper introduces the concept of the “Oceanic Mode of Remembrance” to analyze maritime pilgrimages conducted by Japanese religious organizations, most notably the Seinen no Fune(“Ship of Youth”) and Heiwa no Fune(“Ship of Peace”) voyages along the Southeast Asian coast.

  Where terrestrial modes of memory tend toward the “crystallization” or “petrification” of the past through fixed, land-based monuments, the oceanic mode is characterized by fluidity, non-fixity, and an openness to the encounter with the “other.”

  The primary case study is the series of Seinen no Fune voyages to the Philippines initiated by a Buddhist-derived new religion Risshō Kōsei-kai in the 1970s. Participants initially set out to restore cemeteries for Japanese war dead; however, through encounters with local survivors of the Bataan Death March, their mission was transformed from an act of exclusive mourning into a collaborative project of the continued exchange as well as building the “Friendship Tower”—a monument to repentance and forward-looking reconciliation.

  Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s distinction between “strategy” and “tactics,” I argue that these maritime pilgrimages constitute “tactical” acts of memory. Unlike state-sponsored “strategic” commemorations, they remain responsive to what I term the “WarPhase-Environment Complex”—the particular entanglement of wartime contingency and natural environment. I conclude that oceanic remembrance functions as a “new memory economy,” one that liberates and reactivates sedimented experience from the enclosures of nation and ethnicity through dialogical encounter with others.

• Recollecting the Forgotten Chinese Histories in Foreign Lands: Transnational Memorial Network of the Second World War in Southeast Asia Jacqueline ZHENRU LIN Hong Kong Baptist University

  This anthropological study focuses on battlefield tourism in the China-Burma-India Theater during the Second World War, jointly operated by NGOs in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. Since the 2010s, transnational tours to former battlefields in Thailand and Myanmar have gained popularity on Chinese social media platforms and livestreaming channels. Another draw for PRC citizens is visiting overseas Chinese communities established by war veterans and their descendants, depicted as compatriots upholding authentic Chinese traditions. Employing participant observation, in-depth interviews, content analysis, and digital ethnography, this study examines the organization, management, and transnational collaboration of these tours. By foregrounding the experiences of various participants on these commemorative journeys, this research addresses the following questions: What makes battlefield tourism in Southeast Asia appealing to Chinese citizens? How does transnational cooperation among civil organizations influence war memories? In what ways have Chineseness and China been reimagined through cross-border interactions? What role do new media platforms play in facilitating cooperation and shaping power dynamics Through this exploration, the study aims to shed light on the complex interplay between memory, tourism, and civil diplomacy, and the evolving transnational network of war remembrance in Southeast Asia.

• The politics of place in American and Australian veterans’ ‘healing journeys’ Mia Martin Hobbs Deakin University

  Between 1981 and 2016, thousands of American and Australian veterans returned to Việt Nam. Drawing on original oral histories with over 50 returned veterans, this paper explains why veterans returned and how they reacted to the people and places of Việt Nam - their former enemies, allies, and battlefields - as the war receded into history and memory. Veterans returned in response to nostalgia for ‘Vietnam’, the memory of the place where they were at war, searching for resolution, or peace, in their personal relationships with the war. Consequently, veteran returns mirrored the national geographies of the war experience, creating national enclaves in contemporary Việt Nam and establishing former military areas as lieux de mémoire for growing numbers of returning veterans, their descendants, and fellow citizens. American and Australian veterans understood the idea of ‘healing’ in Vietnam in different ways: anti-war Americans engaged in redemptive work while proud Australians integrated the Vietnam War into the national ‘Anzac’ tradition through battlefield pilgrimage. Veterans from both countries also found their memories of war were eased by witnessing Việt Nam at peace. Yet this peacetime reality also challenged veterans’ sense of belonging to Vietnamese spaces: the place they imagined returning to was Vietnam, a space in war memory, not Việt Nam, the country. As visible remnants of the war disappeared and veteran claims to lieux de mémoire were increasingly challenged by the Vietnamese, many veterans expressed a sense of loss or despair over ‘their Vietnam’. Ironically, veterans drew on national wartime narratives to negotiate this displacement, relying on familiar stories to make sense of a suddenly unfamiliar place.

• Echoes of the Wall: Remembering Vietnam from the Shore of Lake Superior, Northern Minesota Sarah Wagner George Washington University

  This presentation examines the commemorative call and response between national and local sites of Vietnam War remembrance. Juxtaposing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC dedicated in 1982 with the Northland Vietnam Veterans Memorial built on the Lakewalk in Duluth on the shores of Lake Superior a decade later, it reflects on the circulation and localization of the war’s contested memory. In setting these two examples together, we see how Maya Lin’s particular symbology of individual names etched on black granite gets taken up in a discrete, highly localized context. The vernacular adaptation of the “The Wall” invokes the watery horizon of remembrance of a war fought on distant shores at the same time that it recalls the specificity of the individual fallen from the region. How has this second, smaller memorial become integrated into the memoryscape of the Northland and how does its commemorative work ripple back to the nation’s capital?

Part 2

• The rivers of memory: Commemoratives rituals for war dead on Thach Han river in Quang Tri, Vietnam Tam Ngo NIOD Thi Ha Lan Tran NIOD/UvA

  After fighting four major international wars in the 20th century, Vietnam becomes a destination for dark tourism in Asia. Visitors, both international and domestic, search for material and spiritual traces of Vietnamese violent past and reenact their own personal connection to it. In recent decades, Vietnamese state has turned battlefields such as Dien Bien Phu, Khe Xanh and Quang Tri Citadel into tourism hubs in order to boost economic development in these economically stagnating regions. Battlefield tourism was also intended to be an effective tool for education, enlivening a narrative of historical righteousness, patriotism and heroism while heritagizing a violent past. In this paper, we use the example of the growingly popular tours “Thăm lại chiến trường xưa” offered to visitors to Quang Tri Province where the 17th parallel divided Vietnam in North and South during the American-Vietnam War (1955-1975). Our focus is less on the international visitors (veterans and their families from the United States in particular) but more closely on domestic tourists (veterans and families of Vietnamese soldiers who died in Quang Tri) who recently partake in the burgeoning battlefield tourism. The locale that we zoom on into is the Thach Han River Memorial Port where regular commemorative rituals are organized for the thousands of North Vietnamese soldiers, killed in the 1972 Quangtri Citadel battle but bodies lost in the river. Following Viet Thanh Nguyen’s theoretical lead in understanding war legacy and memory we hope to demonstrate that battlefield tourism for many Vietnamese tourists is a journey down the lanes of painful and grievous memory in which they have to fight the war once more. We argue that the economic and educational as well as the spiritual aspects of battlefield tourism are entangled and complicate the process of heritagization of past violence for all parties involved.

• The Vietnamese Village Memory Ecosystem: Community-led Exhibitions as Therapeutic Spaces for Post-war Reconciliation Van Huy Nguyen Nguyen Van Huyen Museum Vu Hoang Nguyen VNU University of Social Sciences and Humanities

  Drawing on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s observation that “all wars are fought twice, the second time in memory,” this paper analyzes how a village community in Vietnam constructs spaces to confront this “second war” through a multilayered memory ecosystem. In the photography village of Lai Xa, the memory of martyrs is shaped not only by static institutions such as cemeteries or memorials but is also “re-lived” and transformed through community-based memory displays.

  Using a case study approach and applied anthropology, the paper delves into four specific healing journeys:

  1. Transnational reconciliation within the family of martyr Tran Ngoc Dem, where wives from Vietnam and Cambodia unite in shared remembrance;
  2. The “repatriation of memory” through the diary of a B-52 specialist returned from Germany, transforming private knowledge into community heritage;
  3. The dissolution of animosity during the encounter between a U.S. veteran and the family of the late combat cameraman Nguyen Van Gia within the village’s sacred space;
  4. The role of exhibitionary practice in creating a “spiritual home” for martyrs whose remains have yet to be recovered.

  The authors argue that when memorabilia (photographs, diaries, letters) are moved from private domains into public presentation, they curate a new “sacred space.” Within this space, political, spiritual, and emotional elements intertwine, allowing the living and the deceased, former enemies and kin, to participate in a collective journey of reconciliation. The paper asserts that community displays are not merely extensions of traditional rituals but serve as a vital therapeutic medium to soothe post-war lingering pain, transforming geographical loss into the enduring presence of heritage.

• USAID’s Intervention in Vietnam’s War Remnants Museum: A Project of Unjust Forgetting Xuan Dung Phan Australian National University

  This paper investigates the memory war surrounding the now-defunct USAID-funded renovation of the War Remnants Museum (WRM) in Vietnam, slated for completion in 2025 to mark the 30th anniversary of U.S.-Vietnam normalization. WRM is a defining stop on Vietnam’s war tourism map and also a site of transnational mnemonic encounters between two former enemy states and their people. The WRM-USAID collaboration, which began in 2021, emerged from deepening bilateral ties and growing cooperation to address the war’s enduring consequences, including the environmental and health effects of Agent Orange. The partnership offered the museum an opportunity to revamp its controversial Agent Orange exhibition, ostensibly to align with international museological standards and the positive narratives on Vietnam-U.S. relations. Yet, the project, intended to showcase progress in war legacy cooperation, was fraught with contention. USAID envisioned a celebration of U.S.-sponsored humanitarian programs, seeking to downplay American war crimes with a story of American benevolence. However, Vietnamese curators and consultants fought to preserve a complex perspective that acknowledges both ongoing Vietnamese suffering and the value of American assistance. This vision was progressively sidelined as the project was captured by American actors who wielded structural power to subordinate Vietnamese voices. The Trump administration’s suspension of foreign aid and dismantling of USAID in early 2025 abruptly stalled the exhibition, alongside programs that address war legacies on the ground, further laying bare the asymmetrical dynamics of memory coproduction in bilateral relations. This paper argues that USAID’s intervention represents a form of unjust forgetting—the manipulation of history to serve prejudicial agendas under the guise of reconciliation. It is a case of how the American industry of memory marginalizes Vietnam’s perspective of war within its own landscape and memorial apparatus.

• From Social Memory of “The Last Samurai” to Onoda Trail and Caves of Adventure Tourism Huong Bui Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University

  The nexus of war memories and contemporary touristic exploitation of the place has been neglected in research area. The complexities and dynamics of place transformation, from intangible memory to tangible touristic places, are being explored in the current research. Underpinning by the interpretivist paradigm, the hermeneutic phenomenology approach employed for this study uncovers the interactions between various social groups, including locals, tour guides, and government officers in the reconstruction of memories of the Japanese Pacific War in the Philippines, featuring Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, a war survivor in the jungle for three decades. Drawing on evidence from the process of development of the site of memory into a trail of adventure, the current research offers an insightful explanation of the conversion of social memories to a touristic site. Authors argue that tourism establishes its own ways of remembering historical events and figures. Tourism with its functions of moving people to come and direct experience of historical places, therefore continues to preserve the memory of the past for future generations. Tourism as a dynamic social phenomenon also offers a place for interconnecting of different versions of memory. Thus, the mechanism to transform a site of memory to touristic place entails temporal, social dimensions along with industrial operations structure.

Show Paper Abstracts

Abstract

Keywords

• Agent Orange
• Asia-Pacific War
• Vietnam
• WWII memories
• War Remnants Museum
• battlefield pilgrimage
• battlefield tourism
• commemorative rituals
• community-led exhibitions
• memory
• memory war
• post-war reconciliation
• ship(s)
• transnationalism
• unjust forgetting
• village memory ecosystem
• war commemoration
• war heritage