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In many countries in Southeast Asia, such as Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, the arrival of spring also marks the beginning of the new year. Songkran (สงกรานต์), as the festival welcoming in the new year is called in Thai, is often celebrated with playful water fights on city streets over the course of three chaotic days. In 2022, Songkran will begin April 13 and last until the evening of April 15. The dates are calculated via the lunisolar calendar, which accounts both for the movement of the sun through the zodiac and the moon’s cycles. Specifically, the dates mark the period when the Sun’s leaving the constellation of Pisces and entering Aries. Over these days, cities turn into playful battlegrounds. Children emerge armed from their houses and bands of revelers gather on the sides of the roads ready to waylay passersby. This, though, is a war with water.

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The battle for the Pacific island of Saipan during World War II is one of those well-remembered battles between Japan and America, one made worse by the mass suicide of local Japanese civilians who jumped off cliffs, fearful of capture by the Americans. Post-war US military histories focused on the heroism of the battle as US troops obliterated the Japanese military garrison on Saipan, ignoring the experience of the local Pacific Islanders and the Japanese civilians who had settled on many of the islands in the 1920s and 1930s. On the anniversary of the battle, we need a new way of looking at the Pacific War, one that includes the social and cultural aspects of the war and not just the fighting.

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