Arthur A. Hansen

Art_Hansen

Art Hansen is Professor Emeritus of History and Asian American Studies at California State University, Fullerton, where he retired in 2008 as the director of the Center for Oral and Public History. Between 2001 and 2005, he served as Senior Historian at the Japanese American National Museum.

Updated October 2009

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Recollections from Jerome and Rohwer

By Arthur A. Hansen, Nichi Bei Weekly
22 Jan 2023

In 2002-2004, I was honored to serve with two distinguished historical colleagues, the late Roger Daniels and the late Franklin Odo, as a co-consultant for the Life Interrupted Project, jointly sponsored by the Public History Program of the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, and the Japanese American National Museum. Funded chiefly by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting statewide issues of economic, racial, and social justice, this project generated eight new exhibitions, initiated elementary- and secondary-level educational curriculum, produced a n…

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'A Heuristic Model' for Historians to Emulate with Other Camps

By Arthur A. Hansen, Nichi Bei Weekly
8 Jan 2023

Having read in Saara Kekki’s Acknowledgements within the book under review that its contents had been favorably vetted by three historians of the Japanese American World War II experience that I greatly admire (Eric Muller, Greg Robinson, and Paul Spickard), and having observed that the latter two of these historical scholars had provided promotional comments on the book’s cover attesting to the work’s seminal significance, I was utterly thrilled with the fortuitous opportunity to read and review Japanese Americans at Heart Mountain. This was especially the case because t…

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Life in the Tule Lake Stockade

By Arthur A. Hansen, Nichi Bei Weekly
1 Sep 2022

There now exists a richly diverse number of publications devoted to the World War II concentration camp for Japanese Americans generically called Tule Lake. This penal facility was initially known as the Tule Lake Relocation Center when it opened on May 27, 1942. However, in the wake of an ill-conceived so-called “loyalty questionnaire” imposed on all 10 of the “relocation centers” and administered by the War Relocation Center in early 1943, it alone—thanks to pressure applied jointly by the U.S. government, the U.S. Army, and the Japanese American Citizens Leag…

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Bio of Issei Journo Shines

By Arthur A. Hansen, Nichi Bei Weekly
25 Aug 2022

Prior to reading this book, my knowledge about prominent Issei lawyer/journalist Sei Fujii derived from two starkly contrasting experiences. The first of these was co-authoring with Ronald Larson a forthcoming published essay entitled DOHO: The Japanese American “Communist” Press, 1937-1942. The second was my viewing of the 30-minute award-winning 2012 film Lil Tokyo Reporter directed by Jeffrey Chin (the co-publisher with Fumiko Carole Fujita of A Rebel’s Outcry) at the Nichi Bei Foundation’s 2016 Films of Remembrance. Whereas Doho roundly denounced Fujii for pa…

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‘Brilliant’ Work Relies on Oral Histories of Japanese American Hibakusha

By Arthur A. Hansen, Nichi Bei Weekly
17 Aug 2022

In 1974, Betty Mitson and I co-edited a modest and virtually self-published and crudely fabricated book titled Voices Long Silent: An Oral Inquiry into the Japanese American Evacuation. It was conceived and developed as a way to open up discussion about a World War II event that had heretofore largely been muted by the general U.S. public and even the Japanese American community: the Nikkei’s wholesale and unjust eviction by the U.S. government from their predominantly West Coast homes and subsequent incarceration in inland concentration camps. The principal methodology we used in this …

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Arthur A. Hansen

Series this author contributes to

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Journal Entry #Lesson 3450: "Sharpen Your Pencils!"

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Herald Salutes – Staff Sergeant Higuchi

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