The students were pressing for any kind of classes that had to do with ethnic experience. And so the Dean of Social Sciences got me to be the faculty member for one of the initial classes that had to do with the ethnic experience. And all this time, you know, I’m not knowing what’s happening very much, because I had just come back from Africa. And then so when the Dean told me that he was going to sponsor a course in the Behavioral Social Science School on Ethnic Experience. So I says, “OK, I’ll take over the class.”
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum.
Interviewee Bio
James Hirabayashi, son of hardworking immigrant farmers in the Pacific Northwest, was a high school senior in 1942 when he was detained in the Pinedale Assembly Center before being transferred to the Tule Lake Concentration Camp in Northern California.
After World War II, he earned his Bachelor of Arts and Masters in Anthropology from the University of Washington, and eventually his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Dr. Hirabayashi is Professor Emeritus at San Francisco State University where he was Dean of the nation’s first school of ethnic studies. He also held research and teaching positions at the University of Tokyo, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and Ahmadu Bellow Univerity, Zaria, Nigeria.