John W. Dower is Ford International Professor of History, professor emeritus of Japanese history, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dower's interests lie in modern Japanese history and US-Japan relations. He also has broken new ground through his scholarly use of visual materials and other expressions of popular culture in reexamining Japanese and US-Asian history. He was the executive producer of a documentary film entitled Hellfire -- A Journey from Hiroshima, which was nominated in 1988 for an Academy Award.
Dower's book, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (1999), won numerous honors, including the Pulitzer Prize in Letters for General Nonfiction, National Book Award in Nonfiction, Bancroft Prize in American History, John K. Fairbank Prize in Asian History, Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History, Mark Lynton History Prize, and L. L. Winship/PEN New England Prize.