Event Overview

"With a narrative style that is consistently crisp, clear, and cogent, this book brilliantly fills a significant void in the study of the Japanese American detention in World War II."
  -- Arthur A. Hansen, editor of the Japanese American World War II Evacuation Oral History Project

Camp Harmony: Seattle's Japanese Americans and the Puyallup Assembly Center is the first full portrait of a single "assembly center"--located at the Western Washington fairgrounds at Puyallup, outside Seattle--that held Japanese Americans for four months prior to their transfer to an incarceration camp during World War II. Gathering archival evidence and eyewitness accounts, Fiset reconstructs the events leading up to the detention as they unfolded on a local level: arrests of Issei leaders, Nikkei response to the war dynamics, debates within the white community, and the forced removal of the Nikkei community from Bainbridge Island. The book explores the daily lives of the more than seven thousand inmates at "Camp Harmony," detailing how they worked, played, ate, and occasionally fought with each other and with their captors.

About the speaker

Louis Fiset, Affiliate Associate Professor, University of Washington, is also the author of Imprisoned Apart: The World War II Correspondence of an Issei Couple and co-editor of Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest. The introduction will be given by Roger Daniels, Ph.D., Charles Phelps Taft Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Cincinnati.

Program

6:00 p.m.
Auditorium doors open

6:30 p.m.
Introduction by Roger Daniels

6:40 p.m.
Lecture by Louis Fiset

7:20 p.m.
Questions by audience

7:30 p.m.
Book sales and signing

Admission

This event is free of charge. Admission to the Wing Luke Asian Museum is free every third Thursday of the month.

Directions

The Wing Luke Asian Museum is located in Seattle's International District at 719 South King Street. Directions available at www.wingluke.org.

Event Co-sponsors

Densho co-presents this event with the Wing Luke Asian Museum.

Questions?

For more information, contact Densho at 206-320-0095 or info@densho.org.