Nikkeijin Illinois: Extended Stories

Jason Finkelman, artistic director of Global Arts Performance Initiatives at the Krannert Center, presented the Spurlock Museum exhibition "Nikkeijin Illinois." He walked through twelve profiles of Japanese American students, faculty and staff connected to the University of Illinois before, during and after World War II incarceration, including an engineering professor, a 442nd Regimental Combat Team veteran, a YWCA leader, and landscape architect Hideo Sasaki. He documented the University's 1942 policy excluding Japanese American students and read Sasaki's 1944 rejection letter and anguished response, and showed family artifacts and his own genealogy. Friday Forum / Conversation Cafe, co-sponsored by Diversity and Social Justice Education.