Tadaima! What can transnational history reveal? seminar

October 10, 12:00pm - 1:30pm
Mānoa Campus, Moore Hall 319 (Tokioka Room)

"Tadaima! What can transnational history reveal?"

Public lecture by Tom Coffman, political reporter, and three-time recipient of the Hawai?i Book Publishers Association's award for nonfiction writing.

Thursday, October 10, 2019
12:00 - 1:30 p.m.
Moore Hall 319 (Tokioka Room)

"'Tadaima! I Am Home: A Transnational Family History' (UH Press, Oct. 2018) unearths the five-generation history of a family that migrated from Hiroshima to Honolulu but never completely settled. In the telling, the traditional Japanese greeting “Tadaima!” takes on a perplexing meaning. What is home?

Where most people establish roots in their new place, or return to their place of origin, or transmigrate to yet another place, the Miwa family represents a fourth category. Across two centuries, they went back and forth repeatedly and often. With one foot psychologically in Japan, the other in America, they attempted to maintain a life in Hiroshima and, variously, Honolulu, San Francisco, Denver and New York. In the process, they experienced internment, civilian prisoner exchange, the Atomic Bomb, and the loss of their possessions on both sides of the Pacific. Key figures were ostracized and, in moments, isolated from one another by conflicting notions of national power and correct behavior.

Succeeding generations climbed from poverty to wealth, and then fell precipitously from wealth into poverty. The latest generations have regrouped by dint of intense determination and devotion to education, exercised against the strange transition from despised “other” to America’s model minority. They maintained a cheerful face that gave no clues as to what they had been through. Until now."

This talk is sponsored by the Department of American Studies, University of Hawai?i Press, and the Center for Japanese Studies. It is free and open to the public. For disability access, please contact the Center at 956-2665 or cjs@hawaii.edu

For visitors’ parking on campus: https://manoa.hawaii.edu/commuter/visitor.php


Event Sponsor
Center for Japanese Studies, Dept. of American Studies, UH Press, Mānoa Campus

More Information
808-956-2665, cjs@hawaii.edu

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