Under the supervision of Dr. Ōtani Eiichi at Bukkyo University, I will analyze how interwar Jōdo Shinshū (True Pure Land Sect, hereafter Shin) youth groups in Japan, Hawaii, and North America, created an inter-sectarian Buddhist peace movement whose literature engaged with rising nationalism, militarism, and xenophobia in Japan and the U.S. These youth and their leaders worked to apply Shin teachings to overcome religious divides and to deploy their national identities in service of international harmony, but my initial research suggests that their writings sometimes reproduced the very sectarian triumphalism and imperial ideologies they labored to dismantle. While Shin is the largest Buddhist sect in Japan and the Japanese diaspora, Shin youth groups and their transnational networks have yet to be extensively studied. This project will contribute historical context to Dr. Ōtani’s JSPS-funded multi-year project on postwar transnational religious peace movements.