There is a large literature devoted to Japanese immigration and settlement, as well as the official confinement of some 120,000 ethnic Japanese from the West Coast during World War II.  Yet, the essential question, “What happened after people left camp?” remains all but unanswered by historians. Excluded from the wartime economic boom and scarred psychologically by their wartime ordeal, the former camp inmates struggled to remake their lives in the years that followed.   Even if the resettlement and renewal that followed the release of inmates from camp lack the massive drama and conflict of the wartime events, they must be counted  as equally important, if not more so, in setting the course of people’s lives and fortunes.  

Join us as award-winning author, Nichi Bei Weekly columnist, and noted scholar of Japanese American history, Dr. Greg Robinson,  discusses his work concerning a large, unexplored area of American history: the midcentury Japanese American experience.

Greg Robinson, a native New Yorker, is a  full professor of history at l'Université du Québec À Montréal, a French-language institution in Montreal, Canada. A specialist in North American ethnic studies and U.S. political history, he is the author of many notable books, including:
By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans (Harvard University Press, 2001), which spent four months on Academia magazine’s scholarly bestseller list

A Tragedy of Democracy: Japanese Confinement in North America (Columbia University Press, 2009), winner of the 2009 history book prize of the Association for Asian American Studies

After Camp: Portraits in Midcentury Japanese American Life and Politics (University of California Press, 2012), winner of the Caroline Bancroft History Prize of Western History and Genealogy

Pacific Citizens: Larry and Guyo Tajiri and Japanese American Journalism in the World War II Era (University of Illinois Press, 2012) 

Professor Robinson also writes a regular column, “The Great Unknown and the Unknown Great,” for the San Francisco Nichi Bei Weekly.

Cost:  Free with admission to the museum (nonmembers, $5; students and seniors over age 65, $3; JAMsj members and children under 12, free).  

Information Please contact PublicPrograms@jamsj.org or call (408) 294-3138 to reserve a spot.