Cold War AsiaUnlearning Narratives, Making New Histories

Masuda Hajimu (ed.), Kisho Tsuchiya (contrib.),
The University of North Carolina Press, 2025
368 pp., ISBN978-1-4696-8631-8

From the Editor

Contents

List of Illustrations ix
Foreword by Odd Arne Westad xi
Acknowledgments xv

Introduction

Reconceptualizing the Cold War: On-the-Ground Experiences in Asia 1
Masuda Hajimu  

Part I    Social Warfare 

1 Terror in East Java: The NU versus PKI Conflict before and after September 30, 1965 23
Imam Muhtarom 

2 Islam and Communism in West Java:
The Cold War and Sociocultural Polarization in Indonesia, 1945–65 44
Matthew Woolgar 

3 Assimilation of Ethnic Chinese in Cold War Thailand, 1948–57 73
Cui Feng 

4 Voices of the Voiceless: The Cold War and the Hmong in Northern Thailand, 1965–82 91
Prasit Leepreecha 

Part II    Local Imaginings and Identity Politics 

5 Reconsidering the Naxalite Movement:
Local and Social Experiences of the Cold War in Kerala, India, in the 1960s 115
Muhammed Kunhi Mahin Udma 

6 Theorizing Southeast Asia’s Cold War: Timor in 1974–75 143
Kisho Tsuchiya 

7 Anti-Vietnamese Xenophobia as the Vernacular Expression of Anticommunism in 1950s Laos:
Rethinking (Not Removing) Our Cold War Lens 174
Simon Creak    

Part III    Individual Hope, Negotiation, and Trauma 

8 Bodyguards of the US Military? The Voices of US-Educated Okinawans, 1949–72 205
Kinuko Maehara-Yamazato 

9 The Voices of Young  Vietnamese  Women Volunteers during the Vietnam War 231
Luong Thi Hong 

10 The Red Guards in Burma, 1960s–80s: An Oral History 252
Bin Yang 

11 Afterlife of Cold War Memories:
Familial Transmission of Martial Law–Era Memories in the Post–Cold War Philippines 274
Mary Grace R. Concepcion 

12 Letter to Granddad: Tracing the Life of a Leftist during the Malayan Emergency, 1948–60 299
Sim Chi Yin

Reflections 

13 The Long, Hot Cold Wars of Asia—and Latin America 307
Alan McPherson 

14 An Archipelagic Turn: Islands as Method in Understanding Cold War Asia 319
Taomo Zhou 

15 The Cold War in Asia 328
David C. Engerman

Contributors 335
Index 339