Robin Gerster | |
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Born | 1953 (age 70–71) Melbourne, Victoria |
Awards | The Age Non-Fiction Award (1988) New South Wales Premier's Australian History Prize (2009) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Monash University (BA [Hons], MA, PhD) |
Thesis | Big-noting the Promotion of an Heroic Theme in Australian War Prose (1985) |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Monash University University of Tokyo |
Main interests | Cultural histories of war and travel,Japan |
Notable works | Big-noting (1987) Travels in Atomic Sunshine (2008) |
Robin Gerster is an Australian author who was born in Melbourne and educated in Melbourne and Sydney. Formerly a Professor in the School of Languages,Literatures,Cultures and Linguistics at Monash University,Gerster has written prolifically on the cultural histories of war and travel,and on Western representations of Japan. As a postgraduate,he won the Australian War Memorial's inaugural C.E.W. Bean Scholarship,for a research project on Australian war literature. The PhD thesis that emerged from this research was subsequently published as Big-noting:The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing,which remains the landmark study in its field. In 1988,it won The Age Book of the Year Award in the non-fiction category.
In the 1990s he held the Chair in Australian Studies at the University of Tokyo –an experience which led to the controversial[ clarification needed ] travel book,Legless in Ginza:Orientating Japan (1999). His book, Travels in Atomic Sunshine:Australia and the Occupation of Japan ,won the New South Wales Premier's Prize for Australian History in 2009,and was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier's Non-Fiction Book Award and the Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History. It was republished in a new paperback edition,with an afterword,in 2019. Published in 2020,Hiroshima and Here:Reflections on Australian Atomic Culture is a cultural history of Nuclear Age Australia,focusing on the reverberating impact of the atomic bombings of August 1945,and the complexity of Australian responses to the fact and possibility of nuclear destruction.
Hiroshima is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. As of June 1, 2019, the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui has been the city's mayor since April 2011. The Hiroshima metropolitan area is the second largest urban area in the Chugoku region of Japan, following the Okayama metropolitan area.
Wilfred Graham Burchett was an Australian journalist known for being the first western journalist to report from Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb, and for his reporting from "the other side" during the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
The 10th Division was a division of the Australian Army, which served briefly during World War II. It was initially formed on 15 April 1942 from the Militia units of the Newcastle Covering Force. However, personnel shortages led to the division being disbanded in August that year.
The British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) was the British Commonwealth taskforce consisting of Australian, British, Indian and New Zealand military forces in occupied Japan, from 1946 until the end of occupation in 1952.
The 2/6th Battalion was an infantry battalion of the Australian Army that served during the Second World War. Raised in October 1939 as part of the all-volunteer Second Australian Imperial Force, the battalion formed part of the 6th Division and was among the first troops raised by Australia during the war. Departing Australia in early 1940, the 2/6th were deployed to the Middle East where in January 1941, it took part in the first action of the war by Australian ground forces, the Battle of Bardia, which was followed by further actions around Tobruk. Later, the 2/6th were dispatched to take part in the Battle of Greece, although they were evacuated after only a short involvement in the campaign. Some members of the battalion subsequently fought on Crete with a composite 17th Brigade battalion, and the battalion had to be re-formed in Palestine before being sent to Syria in 1941–42, where they formed part of the Allied occupation force that was established there in the aftermath of the Syria–Lebanon campaign.
Clifton Ernest Pugh AO, was an Australian artist and three-time winner of Australia's Archibald Prize. One of Australia's most renowned and successful painters, Pugh was strongly influenced by German Expressionism, and was known for his landscapes and portraiture. Important early group exhibitions include The Antipodeans, the exhibition for which Bernard Smith drafted a manifesto in support of Australian figurative painting, an exhibition in which Arthur Boyd, David Boyd, John Brack, Robert Dickerson, John Perceval and Charles Blackman showed; a joint exhibition with Barry Humphries, in which the two responded to Dadaism; and Group of Four at the Victorian Artists Society Gallery with Pugh, John Howley, Don Laycock and Lawrence Daws.
Charles R. Pellegrino is an American writer, the author of several books related to science and archaeology, including Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, Ghosts of the Titanic, Unearthing Atlantis, and Ghosts of Vesuvius. Pellegrino falsely claimed to have earned a PhD, and errors in his book The Last Train from Hiroshima (2010) prompted its publisher to withdraw it within a few months of publication.
Kenneth Stanley Inglis, was an Australian historian.
David Andrew Day is an Australian historian, academic, and author.
Atomic tourism or nuclear tourism is a recent form of tourism in which visitors learn about the Atomic Age by traveling to significant sites in atomic history such as nuclear test reactors, museums with nuclear weapon artifacts, delivery vehicles, sites where atomic weapons were detonated, and nuclear power plants.
Services Reconnaissance Department (SRD), also known as Special Operations Australia (SOA) and previously known as Inter-Allied Services Department (ISD), was an Australian military intelligence and special reconnaissance unit, during World War II.
Toshi Maruki was a Japanese painter. Maruki is best known for the Hiroshima Panels series that she and her husband Iri Maruki produced collaboratively from around 1950. The Marukis took on heavy themes such as the atomic bomb, genocide, and environmental pollution, and constantly voiced their anti-war and peace message through their art. Toshi Maruki is also known as an accomplished picture book author.
Robert Mainwaring Chitty was an Australian rules footballer in the Victorian Football League (VFL).
On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively. The bombings killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians, and remain the only use of nuclear weapons in an armed conflict. Japan surrendered to the Allies on 15 August, six days after the bombing of Nagasaki and the Soviet Union's declaration of war against Japan and invasion of Japanese-occupied Manchuria. The Japanese government signed the instrument of surrender on 2 September, effectively ending the war.
Substantial debate exists over the ethical, legal, and military aspects of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 August and 9 August 1945 at the close of World War II (1939–45).
John Carroll is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia.
Jennifer Jane Hocking is an Australian historian, political scientist and biographer. She is the inaugural Distinguished Whitlam Fellow with the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University, Emeritus Professor at Monash University, and former Director of the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University. Her work is in two key areas, counter-terrorism and Australian political biography. In both areas she explores Australian democratic practice, the relationship between the arms of government, and aspects of Australian political history. Her research into the life of former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam uncovered significant new material on the role of High Court justice Sir Anthony Mason in the dismissal of the Whitlam government. This has been described as "a discovery of historical importance". Since 2001 Hocking has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Lionel Murphy Foundation.
Rapes during the occupation of Japan were war rapes or rapes committed under the Allied military occupation of Japan. Allied troops committed a number of rapes during the Battle of Okinawa during the last months of the Pacific War and the subsequent occupation of Japan. The Allies occupied Japan until 1952 following the end of World War II and Okinawa Prefecture remained under US governance for two decades after. Estimates of the incidence of sexual violence by Allied occupation personnel differ considerably.
Toshiyuki Tanaka is Japanese historian and political critic.
Travels in Atomic Sunshine: Australia and the Occupation in Japan is a history book by Robin Gerster dealing with the Australian contribution to the British Commonwealth Occupation Force.