Interview with Samuel Yamashita, author of Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies:
Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese

Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies is the first English translation of personal diaries kept by ordinary Japanese during World War II.  The selections in this volume offer readers a vivid picture of life on the battlefield and homefront, one dramatically at odds with the prevailing American image of wartime Japan. For example, some of these diaries suggest that Japanese morale was so low in the spring and summer of 1945 that the country might have surrendered without the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, other diaries confirm that many Japanese were prepared to fight to the death, thus requiring the demonstration of the Allies' terrible new weapon.  

Samuel Yamashita is the Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History at Pomona College, where he has taught Asian history since 1983. He has written extensively on a broad range of topics.  These include early modern Sino-Japanese intellectual history, an interpretive history of Asian studies at liberal arts colleges, a star-crossed Japanese American baseball team, and a personal and historiographic memoir on the modern Japanese history field.  

AsiaSource spoke to Yamashita about the importance of diaries in historical research and what these newly translated diaries reveal about our knowledge of World War II and the atomic bombings of Japan. Below access a video interview of Samuel Yamashita and his selected readings from the book.