Interviews

1. Family interrelations between mother and father

2. Christian gatherings in homes

3. Nickname

4. Not bringing shame to family

5. Little interaction with parents

6. Life in camp as teenager

7. Politics in ethnic studies

8. Center for Japanese American Studies in community

9. Involvement with theater

10. Involvement with ethnic studies

11. Involvement with strike

12. Relationship with S.I. Hayakawa

13. How ethnic studies strike affected him

14. Context affects meaning

15. Past ties to present situation in Middle East

16. Role of the Japanese American National Museum

17. Gordon's parents' experience in prison

18. Testing assumptions of Japanese scholars

James Hirabayashi

(1926 - 2012) Scholar and professor of anthropology. Leader in the establishment of ethnic studies as an academic discipline

Life in camp as teenager

When we got into camp, I only went home to the barracks room when I had to go to sleep. And so, I remember…and I relied on the fact that the walls in the barracks between families only went up to the rafters, and it was open all the way through, so that you could hear the neighbors. So I relied upon that to do whatever I wanted to do. You know, my parents didn’t allow us to even play cards—any kind of cards—because it was associated with gambling. So I didn’t learn to play cards until I got into camp. And we didn’t even eat with our parents, you know, because it’s mess hall. So we ate with our peers. We played ball and that kind of stuff. And we’d stay up late and I learned how to play pinochle. And then I’d go home. And then one night my mother had enough of it. And she gave me a talking to that everybody could hear all up and down the barracks.

barracks imprisonment incarceration World War II World War II camps

Date: January 7, 2004

Location: California, US

Interviewer: Art Hansen

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.

He passed away in May 2012 at age 85. (June 2014)

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