WWU's Center for Cross-Cultural Research to Host Donna Nagata Oct. 15

Western Washington University's Center for Cross-Cultural Research and Department of Psychology will host University of Michigan Professor of Psychology Donna Nagata from 4-5 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 15 in Academic West 204, when she will present "Long-Term and Intergenerational Psychosocial Impacts of the World War II Japanese American Incarceration."

Shortly after Japan’s World War II attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order authorizing the removal of all persons with Japanese ancestry from Western regions of the United States. As a result, more than 110,000 Japanese American women, men, and children (many of whom were U.S. citizens), were forced to leave their homes and live in isolated incarceration camps during the war, based only on their ethnicity. 

A formal review, conducted decades later, concluded that the incarceration decision had been unjustified and the government eventually provided redress to surviving former incarcerees. However, the consequences of this historical trauma for Japanese Americans have extended across more than 75 years. This talk will present research on the nature of these intergenerational incarceration impacts.  In doing so, it will highlight the wide-ranging personal and collective impact of race-based trauma.