After numerous discussions, on December 1, 1941 civilian and military leaders in Japan came to the decision to attack Pearl Harbor, knowing the risks involved.  To compensate for the imbalance of military resources, appeals to national spirit and awakening were heavily utilized to win the cooperation of the Japanese and peoples in occupied areas. Policymakers came up with persuasive slogans such as “Asia for the Asians” and “Building the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.”  This lecture will examine how Japanese intellectuals developed these slogans and how people of occupied territories, in this case Filipino intellectuals, reacted to them.

Motoe Terami-Wada is a native of Japan and was a resident of Manila for more than two decades. Dr. Terami-Wada obtained her MA in Asian Studies from the University of Hawaii; another MA in Philippine Studies and her PhD in History from the University of the Philippines. She taught at De La Salle University and Ateneo de Manila University and was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Asian Cultures at Sophia University in Tokyo. Her recent works include: The Japanese in the Philippines: 1880s to 1980s (National Historical Commission of the Philippines, 2010) and Sakdalistas' Struggle for Philippine Independence, 1930-1945 (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2014) which received a National Book Award.