The Power of Stories: Remembering Japanese American Incarceration

In recognition of the 83rd anniversary of Japanese American incarceration during World War II, join Nevada Humanities and the Japanese American Citizens League for an evening of conversation about remembrance and the power of stories in the Japanese American community. The event will place inside the Theater, at the Nevada Museum of Art.

The evening begins with a presentation of audio excerpts from “The Magpie of Heart Mountain” — a 2021 episode from the podcast This Is Love featuring the story of Shigeru Yabu. Yabu was nine when he was incarcerated at Heart Mountain, where he befriended a wild baby magpie whom he named Maggie.

The program concludes with a discussion with members of the Japanese American Citizens League moderated by Meredith Oda, associate professor of history at University of Nevada, Reno.

Photo credit: Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration

Meredith Oda is Grace A. Griffen Associate Professor of American History at the University of Nevada, Reno. Originally from Philadelphia, she has lived in the Bay Area, Chicago, and the Central Valley of California. Her first book was The Gateway to the Pacific: Japanese Americans and the Remaking of San Francisco (Chicago, 2018) — a transpacific history of San Francisco. Oda has published in scholarly journals as well as outlets like the San Francisco Chronicle and TIME magazine. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Huntington Library, and others and she is currently working on a book about what happened to Japanese Americans as they left the WWII incarceration camps for new homes and communities all over the country.

Host or Publisher Nevada Humanities