Author of When Can We Go Back to America? Voices of Japanese American Incarceration during World War II, Susan H. Kamei is an educator and news commentator on the continuing relevance of this tragic history to contemporary issues today. She is teaching "War, Race and the Constitution: Lessons from the World War II Japanese American Incarceration" with us this summer.
You have such a powerful personal connection to this history. Can you start by telling us a bit about your story and how you came to this work?
This is very much a family story. One set of great-grandparents, all four of my grandparents, and my parents were among those incarcerated during World War II. My generation — the Sansei, or third generation — generally didn’t grow up knowing much about it. What we did know was often anecdotal or very superficial.
I was somewhat unusual in that I had an opportunity to learn more early on. My father was very active in the Japanese American community, and he took me along to meetings and events. He would talk to me about what was happening in the community and what he and others were doing about the emerging issues.
That exposure shaped me in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time.
How did that early exposure lead you into the redress movement?
In the 1970s and ’80s, some politically active Nisei and young Sansei attorneys — folks influenced by the civil rights movement — began asking: what exactly happened, and how could it have happened? That questioning helped spark the redress movement.
When I was a law student in Washington, D.C., I found myself, through family connections, at the very beginning of that effort. Even though I was only a second-year law student, I was asked to help prepare testimony for the Japanese American Citizens League for one of the first Senate hearings on a redress bill.
They asked me to write about the wartime Supreme Court cases — the Yasui, Hirabayashi, Korematsu, and Endo decisions. I had just started constitutional law and I remember saying, “Surely there’s someone more qualified.” But they told me, “You’re the best we’ve got.” Looking back, I feel incredibly honored to have worked alongside these community leaders I admired.
I stayed involved for about 11 years as a volunteer. So from early adulthood, I was learning these stories and learning how to talk about them. In many ways, I’ve been doing this work my entire adult life.
What did it mean when redress was finally achieved?
When the Civil Liberties Act was passed in 1988, it was a hard-won victory that was bittersweet because so many of the incarcerees had not lived to know that our government acknowledged its wartime wrongdoing. I went on to a different career that wasn’t directly connected to this work.
But history has a way of resurfacing.
What brought you back to this work years later?
Around 2016 to 2018, I started hearing rhetoric that echoed the past — people openly praising what President Roosevelt had done, or suggesting that Muslims needed to “register” so the government knew where to find “suspicious” people.
My phone started ringing. People I hadn’t spoken to in decades were reaching out, asking, “What do we do?” We thought we had put this history to rest — but suddenly it didn’t feel that way at all.
Not long after, I had the opportunity to create an undergraduate course at USC at the intersection of law, history, and culture. A colleague encouraged me, then said, “But I don’t suppose you have time.” And that was the moment — I realized I needed to make the time.
How did teaching the course shape your thinking — and eventually lead to your book?
In preparing the course, I realized there wasn’t a single resource that brought everything together — history, culture, policy, and constitutional analysis. There’s wonderful scholarship, but it’s often very specialized.
What I felt missing was something that connected all the pieces and helped explain not just what happened, but how and why it happened — and why it still matters today.
Because the truth is, the constitutional questions haven’t gone away. The tensions we saw then—around executive power, civil liberties, and fear-driven policy — are still with us.
That realization is what ultimately led me to write the book.
You’ve taught this material to a wide range of audiences. What has surprised you most in their reactions?
One of the most moving responses is when survivors read the work and feel that I’ve captured their experiences — that means everything to me. I’ve also had people who knew my parents tell me how proud they would be, which is incredibly meaningful.
At the same time, I’m always struck by how many people — including surviving incarcerees and those of my own generation — say, “I didn’t know this.” Or, “I knew something happened, but not the details.” For many, it gives them a way to finally talk about their own family stories and share them with younger generations.
But there are also more difficult reactions. There are still those whom I would call “justifiers” and “deniers.”
What do you mean by “justifiers” and “deniers”?
Justifiers are people who say, “We were at war,” or suggest that the incarceration was necessary or even protective. Those views are often rooted in wartime propaganda.
Deniers say things that aren’t true, such as the incarcerees were treated so well or that they chose to go to camp to demonstrate their loyalty. They minimize what happened or deflect by pointing to other suffering during the war.
Neither response is new, and neither is surprising — but they are dismaying.
That’s part of why this history still needs to be told clearly and fully.
There was also a long silence after the war. Why wasn’t this talked about more openly?
There are many reasons. Some are cultural. Two Japanese concepts often come up: shikata ga nai — “it can’t be helped” — and gaman — to endure with dignity. Growing up, I understood these as values about perseverance and not complaining.
But over time, I’ve come to see that they also reflect the depth of the emotional burden people were carrying. Many simply couldn’t talk about what they had experienced.
There were also very practical reasons. After the war, people had to rebuild their lives from nothing. There was intense prejudice, and many responded by assimilating as quickly as possible — trying not to draw attention to themselves or be identified as Japanese.
Silence was, in many ways, a survival strategy.
We’re only now beginning to understand the deeper emotional and intergenerational impacts of that silence.
What do you hope OLLI members take away from your course?
OLLI members have such a rich depth of life experience, and I hope this history adds another layer to that understanding.
More than anything, I hope they see themselves as storytellers and as advocates—not just for Japanese American history, but as American history, and for others as well.
After 9/11, the Japanese American community reached out to Muslim American communities and said, “We know how this feels.” That’s the lesson: to stand up for others when we see injustice unfolding.
Because if we don’t understand how something like this happens — how fear, policy, and prejudice come together — then we risk seeing it happen again.
And one day, any of us could find ourselves in that category.