Bjoern Koeller

Bjoern Koeller lives in Wuppertal and is studying English and American Studies, Protestant Theology and Singing at the University of Wuppertal and Conservatory of Cologne/Wuppertal. He came into touch with the topic of Japanese Americans in the seminar with Dr. Bettina Hofmann. In his free time he enjoys playing waterpolo and going to the opera.

Updated October 2010

Stories from This Author

From a Japanese American Literature Class at a German University

Toshio Mori's "The Trees"

Oct. 13, 2010 • Bjoern Koeller

I first came into contact with Toshio Mori’s works in the “Japanese Americans” seminar I attended this summer term at the University of Wuppertal. What I enjoyed most about Mori’s short stories was that they gave quite brief, but nonetheless vivid and fair, accounts of life in Japanese American society before WW II and during the Japanese internment. At that time, the first generation of Japanese immigrants, or Issei, and the second generation, or Nisei, lived predominantly in communities on …