With the development of economic globalization, how to get rid of extreme national isolationism and overcome ethnocentric sentiment has become an indispensable prerequisite for the people in the Asia-Pacific. As historians and educators, how can we teach and present World War II to the younger generation? Is it possible for the people who had different experiences and memories in the past and different values and interests to share memories of World War II? This project is designed to examine how the creation or recreation of public memory concerning World War II has constrained contemporary China-Japan-US relations and to clarify to what extent it has affected contemporary China-Japan-US relations. I will focus on three areas: (I) to analyze history education at the high school level, mainly to examine how and why history textbooks on the depiction of World War II have been transformed and under what kind of domestic and international environment they have been transformed in Japan, China and the United States; (2) to explore how the popular culture, for instance, war museums has affected people's historical perceptions; and finally (3) to examine historians' role and responsibility in the process of history education. I will systematically collect archival documentation and poll data in China, Japan and the Unites States and analyze the different historical views and their changes in the last two decades. The use of multiple archives, interviews and sources not only in English, but also in the Chinese and Japanese languages will enable us to understand the same historical events in different views and perspectives. Moreover my analysis of archival documentation, interview data, memoirs, media sources, and scholarly works from China, Japan and the United States can help us to deepen mutual understanding in order to build confidence in the Asia-Pacific region.