The Power of Stories: Remembering Japanese American Incarceration

(This program was originally scheduled to take place on February 13 but was rescheduled due to inclement weather.)

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 JACL members Alan de Queiroz, Nancy Mattson, and Rhoda Thalman, moderated by Meredith Oda, associate professor of history at University of Nevada, Reno.

Photo credit: Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration

Alan de Queiroz is a science writer and biologist who lives in Reno with his partner Tara and their children Hana and Eiji. Alan’s father, Richard de Queiroz, who was half Japanese and half Mexican, was a teenager in the Amache camp in Colorado during World War II. Many of Richard’s letters to his girlfriend from the Amache days, Frances Sasano, are in the collection of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Alan’s mother, Kristine de Queiroz (formerly Kawaguchi) was living in Southern California when the war began, but her family was sponsored by friends in rural Utah and spent the war there, avoiding incarceration in the camps. However, because of the forced move, the family had to abandon a flower-growing business, which they never regained.

Nancy Mattson was born in Iowa, grew up in California, and has lived in Reno for the past forty-six years. As a Sansei of Japanese-American heritage, she grew up hearing many stories from her parents who were interned in Poston, Arizona during the war. From oral histories and family documentation, Nancy has been able to piece together the tapestry that was her family’s pre-war, internment, and post-war history. Nancy was an active member of the Watsonville Buddhist Temple, and is currently a member of the Reno chapter of the JACL and a performing member of Reno Taiko Tsurunokai.

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.

Rhoda Kealoha Thalman was born and raised on the Island of Maui. Rhoda relocated to Reno with her husband in 2015. As a graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Rhoda holds a B.A. in theatre performance with an emphasis on musical theater and theater arts of Asia and the Pacific. She joined the Reno Tsurunokai Taiko group and the Hula Group Halau Hula o’ Leilani in 2017 as a way to reconnect to her island roots. Rhoda has served on the board of the Reno chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League since 2022 as the chapter reformed after Covid, and currently serves as the 2025 Chapter President for JACL.

Host or Publisher Nevada Humanities