Jonathan van Harmelen
@jonathanJonathan van Harmelen is currently a Ph.D student in history at UC Santa Cruz specializing in the history of Japanese-American incarceration. He holds a BA in history and French from Pomona College and an MA from Georgetown University. He can be reached at jvanharm@ucsc.edu.
Updated February 2020
Stories from This Author
Artist and Documentarian: The Life of Kango Takamura
Aug. 28, 2023 • Jonathan van Harmelen , Greg Robinson
What images come to mind when we think of the wartime experience of Japanese Americans? For many, the photographs produced by Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams or Toyo Miyatake come to mind, with their unique portrayals of the human condition. Yet equally powerful and moving are the representations of the incarceration experience produced by the diverse crew of visual artists who worked in camp, including such figures as Miné Okubo and Chiura Obata. One artist who created striking images of confinement …
A Northern Lesson: Carey McWilliams and the Incarceration of Japanese Canadians
Aug. 7, 2023 • Jonathan van Harmelen
The incarceration of Nikkei communities across the Pacific world in 1942 represents one of the most notable examples acts of transnational racial exclusion. Indeed, despite the relatively small sizes of the communities affected—120,000 in the United States, 22,000 in Canada—as compared to the total population of those countries, the forced removal of the entire Nikkei communities from the West Coast of the two countries regardless of citizenship is a sad yet important chapter in their histories. Ironically, observers and Nikkei …
Toshio Aoki: The Wandering Meiji Artist and Father of Tsuru Aoki
July 26, 2023 • Jonathan van Harmelen
A month ago, I visited the Crocker Art Gallery in Sacramento during a weekend trip to the city. In California, the Crocker houses some of the most impressive collections in the state. Many of the collections in the museum focus on the history of “Old California,” in the period between the Spanish Colonial Period through Mexican Independence and into California’s early decades in the Union. As I wandered through the hallways of the Early California exhibit, I was surprised to …
Exploring Global Nikkei History in Victoria: A Conversation with the Past Wrongs, Future Choices Scholars and Artists - Part 2
July 10, 2023 • Jonathan van Harmelen
Read Part 1 >> Jonathan van Harmelen: Andrea, just to ask you briefly, have you ever thought about performing yours or your grandmother’s poetry? I mean, I guess the presentation yesterday was close to that. Andrea Mariko Grant: For me, what was surprising was the extent to which people did seem to enjoy my grandmother’s poetry. I’ve agonized a lot about translation. I was very worried that none of the power of her work would come across, because the translations …
Exploring Global Nikkei History in Victoria: A Conversation with the Past Wrongs, Future Choices Scholars and Artists - Part 1
July 9, 2023 • Jonathan van Harmelen
In the world of academia, rarely does one encounter international research centers dedicated to researching a historical event. Yet that is the case with the University of Victoria’s Past Wrongs, Future Choices Initiative. The Past Wrongs, Future Choices (PWFC) is an initiative based at the University of Victoria that documents the global history of Nikkei incarceration during the Second World War. Led by Jordan Stanger-Ross of the University of Victoria and Audrey Kobayashi of Queen’s University, the PWFC initiative connects …
Object Lesson of a Lost Temple: A Postcard of the Fresno Buddhist Church, 1912
June 22, 2023 • Jonathan van Harmelen
One of my favorite hobbies is collecting postcards. I began collecting in 2013, after I inherited a large collection of stamps and envelopes from my Dutch grandparents, a pair of avid collectors who amassed thousands of stamps ranging from the 1850s to the 1980s. What initially struck me about my grandparents’ collection was its magnitude and variety; some stamps came from newly-formed republics in Africa and Southeast Asia after decolonization, while others originated from now-extinct states such as Yugoslavia and …
Paul Higaki – The One Who Made It Big
June 8, 2023 • Jonathan van Harmelen
On August 2, 1949, legendary Nisei composer and musician Takeshi “Tak” Shindo penned an article for the Rafu Shimpo profiling the rise of a new Nisei musician in the jazz scene: Paul Higaki. Then just 25 years old, Higaki had earned a spot in Lionel Hampton’s orchestra as a top-notch trombone player, and was declared by Shindo to be “the top Nisei trombonist in the country.” To some, he was the one “who made it big” - the first Nisei …
The legacy of Toyo Takata, Who Captured the Voice of Japanese Canadians
April 19, 2023 • Jonathan van Harmelen
The book Nikkei Legacy served as an important reminder to Canadians of the suffering that Japanese Canadians endured during the war. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Toyo Takata’s Nikkei Legacy, a book that put the history of Japanese Canadians into sharp focus. For Japanese Canadians across Canada, Takata’s book captured the voice of the immigrant generation and served for decades as a “bible” of Japanese Canadian history, alongside Ken Adachi’s The Enemy that Never Was. …
Making History: Remembering Nikkei Legacy
April 12, 2023 • Jonathan van Harmelen
Recently, I have been researching the life of Toyo Takata. The late Japanese Canadian journalist and author was a leading voice within the postwar Japanese Canadian community, working as the editor of the community newspaper The New Canadian from 1949 to 1951 and as a columnist from 1949 until his retirement in the 1980s. Originally born in Victoria, BC, Takata and his family were incarcerated by the Canadian government in several camps in 1942, first at Hastings Park and later …
Dutch Leonard - The Ballplayer who challenged Fresno's racism
March 6, 2023 • Jonathan van Harmelen
“Dutch” Leonard is no longer a household name, but he left behind an enduring reputation in baseball history. Originally born in Birmingham, Ohio and raised in Fresno, California, Hubert Benjamin Leonard became one of the greatest pitchers in baseball as a left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox. In 1914, he achieved the modern-era record for lowest single-season earned run average (ERA) of all time at 0.96 – a record that he still holds to this day. He led the …
