Steven Bullard

Steven joined the Military History Section in 1997 as a Senior Research Officer with the Australia–Japan Research Project (AJRP). He was Project Manager of the AJRP from 2002, involved with the design and compilation of the project’s database and websites, and organising several international symposiums and workshops. Being a Japanese speaker, he has translated several seminar and symposium papers, and was awarded a grant from the Japan Foundation to translate extracts from the Senshi sosho (War history series), the official account of the Japanese experience of the Second World War. He has also provided language assistance to other sections in the Memorial.

Steven’s PhD dissertation, completed in 2004, explored issues of nationalism and identity in Kyoto in the 1890s, the role of the preservation and display of cultural artefacts, civic celebration, and the spread of modern technology through expositions. His recent research interests include the experience of the Japanese in the Second World War, Japanese and Allied strategy, Japanese prisoners of war in Australia, and the Australian experience of peacekeeping.

In 2007 Steven was appointed a Senior Historian in the Military History Section. His first task is to write a volume for the Official history of Australian peacekeeping, humanitarian, and post–Cold War operations project. His volume will document relief efforts by the Australian Defence Force in response to overseas natural disasters.

Selected publications

Books

• In their time of need: Australia’s overseas emergency relief operations, 1918–2010, Port Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming
• (Translator) Army operations in the South Pacific area: Papua campaigns, 1942–1943, Canberra, Australian War Memorial, 2007
• Blankets on the wire: the Cowra breakout and its aftermath, Canberra, Australian War Memorial, 2006.
• (Edited, with Keiko Tamura) From a hostile shore: Australia and Japan at war in New Guinea , Canberra, Australian War Memorial, 2004
• “Celebrating Kyoto, 1895: regional and national identity in the 1,100th anniversary, the Heian Shrine and the industrial exposition”, Australian National University PhD thesis, 2004

Articles and book chapters

• “Japanese strategy and intentions towards Australia”, in Peter Dean (ed), Australia 1942: in the shadow of war, Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2012
• “Clearing the minefields”, in Nola Anderson, The Australian War Memorial: treasures from a century of collecting, Millers Point, Murdoch Books, 2012
• “After the fall”, Wartime, vol. 53, 2011
• “’You don’t return alive from New Guinea’: Japanese army forces in the South-West Pacific Area during the Second World War”, in Raise, train and sustain: delivering land combat power: Chief of Army History Conference 2009,Canberra: Australian Military History Publications, 2010
•  “Australia’s war in New Guinea, and Australia in the liberation of the NEI”, entry in The encyclopaedia of Indonesia in the Pacific war, Leiden and Boston, Brill, 2010
• “Threat, response and moderation: Australia’s grand strategy in the years leading up to the outbreak of war in the Pacific”, in NIDS International Forum on War History: proceedings, Tokyo: Bōeishō Bōei Kenkyūjo, 2009
•  “Home but still apart”, Wartime, 45, 2009
•  “In their time of need”, Wartime, 43, 2008
•  “A model gift”, Wartime, 41, 2008
• “The god of strategy”, Wartime, 39, 2007
• “Traitor or unsung patriot?”, Wartime, 31, 2005
• “The humiliation of defeat”, Wartime, 31, 2005
• “Flying with eagles”, Wartime, 26, 2004
• “‘The great enemy of humanity’: malaria and the Japanese Medical Corps in Papua, 1942–1943”, Journal of Pacific history, 20, 2004
• “Kokoda: a Japanese tragedy”, Wartime, 20, 2002

Conference, symposium, and seminar presentations

• “’From a hostile shore’: the role of the Australia-Japan Research Project in disseminating memories of war”, Memories of war and their succession: memorial, education, and tourism, International Symposium, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima, July 2012
• “Japanese strategy and intentions towards Australia”, In the shadow of war: Australia 1942, Military History and Heritage Victoria conference, Melbourne, April 2012
• “Japanese intentions in New Guinea: prelude to an invasion of Australia?”, From Pearl Harbor to Guadalcanal, The International Conference on WWII, National WWII Museum, New Orleans, December 2011
• “’You don’t return alive from New Guinea’: Japanese army forces in the South-West Pacific Area during the Second World War”, Raise, train and sustain: delivering land combat power, Chief of Army History Conference 2009, Canberra, October 2009
• “Threat, response and moderation: Australia’s grand strategy in the years leading up to the outbreak of war in the Pacific”, National Institute for Defense Studies International Forum on War History, Tokyo, September 2008
• “‘Smashing jewels’: aspects of researching and translating Japanese military history”, Australian Historical Association conference, Canberra, July 2006
• “From a hostile shore”, Asia Pacific Week, Australian National University, Canberra, February 2005
• “‘From a hostile shore’: Translating military history”, Literary and Scholarly Translations: a Colloquium, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, November 2004
• “Australian accounts of the Japanese at war in Papua, 1942–1943: reflections on military history and nationalism”, RSPAS seminar series, Australian National University, Canberra, September 2004
• “‘Sons of Nippon’: Japanese in Australian accounts of the Pacific War”, Globalization, Localization, and Japanese Studies in the Asia–Pacific Region, University of Sydney, Sydney, November 2003
• “Japanese medical corps in the Papua campaigns, 1942–1943”, The Pacific War in Papua New Guinea: Perceptions and Realities, Australian National University, Canberra, August 2003.
• “How do researchers and librarians view the outlook for Japanese library resources in Australia ?” panel at Japan Studies Association of Australia biennial conference, University of New South Wales, Sydney, June 2001
• “Pre-1980 Japanese monographs”, Asian Accounts of Australia, National Library of Australia, Canberra, March 2001
• “Representing the past: inventing the future”, 12th biennial Asian Studies Association of Australia conference, University of New South Wales, Sydney, October 1998