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

Testing assumptions of Japanese scholars

You know, I was kind of concerned about the Japanese scholars studying the Japanese American experience, and trying to caution them to be careful about the assumptions underlying their framework. And I think it’s very important that they do these studies because they can tell you a lot from their perspective.

But, I was saying to them, for us it’s a matter of perspective and a matter of getting our own perspective on our own identity. And I says, “If you were looking for answers to the question of your own identity, would you start out with, suppose, Ruth Benedict’s Chrysanthemum and the Sword?” I said, “That was done during the wartime with a very eminent anthropologist interviewing Japanese Americans about the Japanese identity.” And I says, “If you really wanted to get a line on your own identity, would you start out with a book like that?” I says, “It’s important for you to look at that book, but I’d certainly start out from your own perspective.” I says, “Your experiences in Japan and your scholarship training have various kinds of assumptions, so that if you’re studying the immigrant population of the Japanese all over the world, then test your own assumptions.”

education identity Japanese Americans

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)