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

Not bringing shame to family

Of course we were raised in a Japanese American community, so that we were always cautioned about not bring shame onto the family, and whatever you do is going to reflect on the family kind of stuff. So we’d get admonitions of that sort.

I remember one time when one of the local nisei boys, I think he was a little bit older than me, ran away. And there was a orphanage in our community, and the orphanage sent their kids to the local school, so that they were our classmates. Apparently this one kid, he and some kids from the orphanage ran away one day. And I can’t remember what they were doing, [or] what they did, but it became a big gossip in the community about that.

And it’s used as a lesson about how not to bringing shame on your family. Now the community that I grew up in was, I would guess, about 50/50 Japanese Americans and Japanese and non-Japanese. In my specific class, three-quarters of us were nisei. We were the majority. But, we still had the sting of racism, you know, sort of ground into us.

communities discrimination identity interpersonal relations racism

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)