Fighting for the Enemy

"Palmer’s study is long overdue in addressing Japan’s colonial policy and how the exigencies of war forced Tokyo to revise its initial policies for a people they long considered to be inferior. . . . [This book is] Essential."

"Palmer's study is long overdue in addressing Japan's colonial policy and how the exigencies of war forced Tokyo to revise its initial policies for a people they long considered to be inferior. A must for any library seeking to upgrade its collection on the Pacific War."

"[B]alanced, exhaustive, and textured….Palmer’s work must be placed with T. Fujitani’s Race for Empire as one of the two most important works on the subject in the English-language literature on the war period in Korea. It will certainly stand as the platform from which further study of the late colonial period will evolve."

"Brandon Palmer’s study manages to achieve the often sought-after combination of brevity, readability, and greater historical awareness. . . . [A] fascinating, objective look at the experience of Korean men during the Second World War. Fighting for the Enemy does not set out to be an end-all history of colonial Korea, but anyone who wishes to study the period would be remiss if it wasn’t part of his or her collection."

"Skillfully synthesizes a broad body of material in both Japanese and Korean, including official government documents, personal histories, and previous scholarly studies to produce an excellent study of Japan's wartime mobilization of the Korean population that often challenges conventional scholarly perspectives."