This project will examine the transformation of the moral order following World War II in Japan, Germany, and the United States. Its objective is to investigate how collective memories of the War are transmitted to the postwar generation, and how the new generation, in turn, reconstructs the past and defines the meaning of the legacies. The comparative design of this study elicits both a broader theoretical understanding of how collective memory shapes national culture, and a specific understanding of why national cultures that seek different responses to remembering the War also resemble one another in their approach to legitimating the past. The study also points to the importance of clarifying these cross-national differences for educational practices. Building on pilot studies and cross-national surveys already completed in earlier phases of this project, the research to be conducted with the Abe Fellowship involves in-depth case studies of 75 Japanese, German and American high-school teachers focused on their practices and beliefs about teaching World War II history. The results of this project will be published as a book and also in several articles.