Lecture Series 1: Invited Lecture by Dr. Mira Shimabukuro (July 31, 2020)

The Global Education Office hosted the first lecture of this year on July 31, 2020, on the online Zoom. Dr. Shimabukuro explained how Japanese Americans used private writing in incarceration camps to resist and redress discrimination they confronted during the second World War.
After introducing the indigenous concept of Gaman in the Japanese cultural context, she went on to explain that for Japanese Americans, private writing had served as a way to reconstruct composure to the inner self and to sharpen one’s self-identity as a member of a large community group enduring hardship.