During my residency at CSEAS I am working on my PhD dissertation. I investigate the impact of Japan’s occupation of Indonesia (1942-1945) on the war memories of both Japan as the occupier and Indonesia as the occupied. My analysis ranges from 1) how Japan and Indonesia institutionalize and politicize war memories to 2) the role of personal memories in the construction of historical war narratives. I focus on memories that are mediated by audio-visual media, such as films. Films are vital media because their function is analogous to human memory: they link past and present events into a whole. These media also mediate memory across time, connecting the memories of those who experienced the war firsthand with the memories and perceptions that later generations have of the war.