The stories of local Japanese Americans who were incarcerated in Idaho concentration camps during World War II are the subject of a talk by Tom Ikeda, founder and executive director of “Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project,” on Thursday, Feb. 27, at 7 p.m. at the Longhouse Cultural Center on the Evergreen campus in Olympia. Admission is free and open to the public.
Ikeda’s presentation, “When Citizenship Didn’t Matter: Personal Stories from Japanese Americans Incarcerated during World War II,” will explore issues of democracy, intolerance, wartime hysteria, and civil rights, based on hundreds of oral histories conducted by Densho over the last 18 years.
Ikeda was born and raised in Seattle. His parents and grandparents were incarcerated during World War II at Minidoka, Idaho. A former manager at Microsoft, Ikeda graduated from the University of Washington. He has received numerous awards for his historical contributions, including the Humanities Washington Award for outstanding achievement in the public humanities, the National JACL Japanese American of the Biennium Award for Education, and the Microsoft Alumni Fellows Award.
The Evergreen State College is located at 2700 Evergreen Parkway in Olympia. (end)