Remembering the Japanese-American Internment: 75 years with Tom Ikeda
[video:https://youtu.be/K9bnLbp3GLA]
Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, dated February 19, 1942, gave the military broad powers to ban any citizen from a fifty- to sixty-mile-wide coastal area stretching from Washington state to California and extending inland into southern Arizona. The order also authorized transporting these citizens to assembly centers hastily set up and governed by the military. Tom Ikeda is founding Executive Director of Densho, a grassroots organization dedicated to preserving, educating, and sharing the story of World War II-era incarceration of Japanese Americans. A sansei (third generation Japanese American) who was born and raised in Seattle. Tom’s parents and grandparents were incarcerated during World War II at Minidoka, Idaho. In addition to leading the organization over the last 20 years, Tom has conducted over 200 video-recorded, oral history interviews with Japanese Americans. He is joined by CU faculty Patty Limerick (Director, Center of the American West), Daryl Maeda (Associate Professor, Ethnic Studies), and Marcia Yonemoto (Associate Professor, History) to discuss the historic and current ramifications of ‘borders within borders.'