Sam Mihara
History educator and author Sam Mihara is the recipient of the 2023 Salem Award for Human Rights and Social Justice, Voices Against Injustice announced on Aug. 11.
As a survivor of Japanese American incarceration during World War II, Mihara has spent more than 20 years speaking to audiences about both his family’s experience and contemporary injustices around mass incarceration and the detention of undocumented immigrants.
In 2014, Mihara joined the Board of Directors of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, which “works to preserve what remains of the World War II Japanese American confinement site in Park County, Wyoming, and to tell the stories of the more than 14,000 people unjustly incarcerated at the site.”
Mihara is also the author of Blindsided: The Life and Times of Sam Mihara, which describes his family’s harrowing experience with Japanese American incarceration.
On receiving the award, Mihara said, “There is a commonality between the purpose of the Salem Award and the purpose of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, that social injustice and the violation of human rights took place in both places. Such injustice should never happen again to anyone.”
An awards event honoring Mihara will be held on Nov. 10.