Author Event: "Enmity and Empathy" with Ka F. Wong

Overview

Join us for an author talk and book signing with Ka F. Wong, author of Enmity and Empathy: Japanese Americans in Minnesota During World War II, published by MNHS Press.

The forced eviction and confinement of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor in 1941 was one of the worst civil rights violations of the twentieth century, and the repercussions were numerous. The effect in Minnesota was dramatic: only fifty-one Japanese American people lived in the state in 1940, but by war’s end there were several thousand.

Drawing on personal interviews, archival sources, and historical literature, scholar and professor Ka Wong explores the courageous struggles of trailblazers who left the incarceration camps and rebuilt their lives in the North Star State, overcoming hostility and hardship along the way. Despite the enmity ignited by war hysteria, bonds of empathy developed between the resettlers and allies who advocated for them personally and professionally.

This volume illustrates the multiple ways in which Japanese American people transformed both wartime Minnesota and their own lives, including narratives of college students pursuing higher education, young men and women training at the Military Intelligence Service Language School at Camp Savage and then Fort Snelling, the US Cadet Nurse Corps serving in Rochester hospitals, and entrepreneurial families and individuals in the Twin Cities and beyond.

Ka F. Wong is professor of Asian Studies at St. Olaf College. He is producer, director, and writer of the film Beyond the Barbed Wire: Japanese Americans in Minnesota. Wong lives near Northfield, Minnesota.

Copies of Enmity and Empathy will be available to purchase at the event (limit 2 per attendee). This event is free. Access to museum exhibits requires purchase of site admission.