The Nichi Bei Foundation put on display the prolific nature of scholarship of Japanese American history at its first ever “Nichi Bei Book Fest” held July 27 at the KOHO Co-Creative Hub in San Francisco Japantown’s East Mall.

The event, featuring vendors specializing in Asian American books, featured a day full of discussions with authors, including a celebration for historian Arthur A. Hansen.

Hansen, an emeritus professor of history at California State University, Fullerton, was the founding director of the Japanese American Project of the Oral History Program and the Center for Oral and Public History, and founding faculty member of the Asian American Studies Program at the university. The Nichi Bei Foundation recognized Hansen as one of its most prolific contributors, having authored 75 reviews over 14 years and also presented his latest book: “A Nikkei Harvest: Reviewing the Japanese American Historical Experience and Its Legacy,” a collection of his book reviews published in the paper.

Hansen recounted his life with Nancy Ukai, a scholar and Nichi Bei Foundation board chair, and Frank Abe, an author and scholar who — like Hansen — focuses his work on wartime resistance by Japanese Americans in the concentration camps.

Ukai described Hansen as a “kid from Hoboken, N.J.” who loved baseball. Hansen joined the event via a Zoom call from his Los Osos, Calif. home wearing a Tule Lake baseball jersey he received from Tule Lake Committee Board President Hiroshi Shimizu. Beyond his passion for baseball, Hansen spoke to the years of interpersonal connections he’s had with Japanese Americans, which built his academic career.

From a terrible term paper on the Japanese American wartime incarceration he wrote as a senior at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1960 to the interviews he did with Harry Ueno who revealed his involvement in the beating of Fred Tayama, which sparked the Manzanar Revolt in 1942, Hansen spoke of the journey culminating in his latest book, which emphasizes the prolific nature of scholarship on the Japanese American wartime experience.

“I tried to get this book published by two other presses before the Nichi Bei Foundation salvaged it, and both of them didn’t even look at the manuscript. They said it was a non-starter. ‘We would never publish a book that consisted largely of book reviews,’ and so I was disappointed by that,” Hansen said. “I kept telling those people who were refusing things, it’s more than just book reviews,” he said. “I’ve written essays about nine different areas of Japanese American history as prefaces to the book reviews.”

An entourage of guests congratulated Hansen on his achievements, including fellow academics, as well as the City and County of San Francisco.

“I just want to say thank you, Art. After Wayne Maeda, my mentor, founding board member of the Nichi Bei Foundation, passed in 2013, … you really stepped in pretty seamlessly, not only taking over his reviews, but also being my main advisor in terms of all things Japanese American history,” Kenji G. Taguma, president of the Nichi Bei Foundation, said.

While the nonprofit capped off the event by recognizing Hansen, the day-long lecture series also featured the scholarship of work by Hansen’s contemporaries. Starting with a discussion with Sam Nakahira, author and illustrator of “Ruth Asawa: An Artist Takes Shape,” the event emceed by Koji Lau-Ozawa, an archaeologist and Nichi Bei Foundation board member, featured discussions with authors Wendi Yamashita, Greg Robinson, Jonathan van Harmelen, Abe and Satsuki Ina, who presented on their latest books.

Nakahira discussed her book, a graphic biography on the early portion of the San Francisco-based Nisei artist’s life. Nakahira spoke about working with the Asawa Lanier family to tell the artist’s story.

“When I met the Asawa family, I thought I had kinda gotten to know Ruth Asawa (through her own research), but actually didn’t know too much about her at all. Or like, my thoughts about her were different, because she’s a lot more complex and interesting than the biography people kind of conveyed,” she said.

Yamashita, an assistant professor of ethnic studies at Sacramento State University and Nichi Bei board member, interviewed Nakahira about her book, as well as spoke on her own new book, “Carceral Entanglements: Gendered Public Memories of Japanese American World War II Incarceration,” with Chrissy Yee Lau, assistant professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University. Yamashita spoke on her own journey to becoming an academic as a Yonsei whose grandfather was a “No-No,” which led her to write her book analyzing how Japanese Americans form their historical narratives.

“I was also feeling disconnected by these kind of community narratives of who we are. And so much of that is wrapped up in our identity, so I really wanted to investigate how does that happen, how does that get produced? And why? And what is that in service of?” Yamashita said, noting that the heteronormative metrics of success Japanese Americans presented at a nonprofit fundraiser reiterated the model minority myth and defined a “proper citizen subject” that makes Japanese Americans deserving of Redress. She added that queer Nikkei groups and activists opposing Donald Trump presidency’s policies now challenge that narrative.

In the second session of conversations, Robinson, a professor of history at the l’Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada and Harmelen, a scholar who recently received his Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Santa Cruz, discussed their book, “The Unknown Great,” a compilation of essays the two historians wrote over the pandemic years. Lau-Ozawa, led the discussion.

“This book was born out of the pandemic, but it’s also born out of the idea of not just writing for academic audiences, but bridging academic and public audiences with our writing. And starting with, of course, the Nichi Bei and Discover Nikkei, and finally bringing it together into a book … as being a general counter history,” Harmelen said of the collection of essays.

Robinson said this was his third collection of essays he has written, and while they are “readable and fun stories of unheralded figures in Japanese American history,” he said he hoped that they challenge stereotypes of Japanese Americans and inspire further scholarship into the diversity of the Japanese American community.

Abe, who worked with Robinson on his previous book on novelist John Okada, also presented on his latest book, “The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration.” The collection of 68 pieces of writing by Japanese Americans also delved into lesser known voices among Japanese Americans to give a chronological overview of Japanese American thoughts on the wartime incarceration up to present day.

“The selections favor writing that is pointed, rather than poignant. Not all are polished, but each conveys a central truth,” Abe said, having worked with co-editor Floyd Cheung to curate a list of works that went beyond the works of more established voices such as Yoshiko Uchida or Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. While the essays individually may vary from accommodation to protest, Abe said the villain of the story was the U.S. government.

“I think the consistency is that responding to the actions taken against them by the government. So I think the government is, as in all my works, the villain of the piece, the antagonist. It’s always the outside force that the press pushes against. And that’s what becomes a page turner, that you want to see how people overcome each of these challenges from camp to camp, to the final destination of Tule Lake,” he said.

Finally, Ina, a retired psychotherapist and professor at Sacramento State University, presented her latest book, “The Poet and the Silk Girl: A Memoir of Love, Imprisonment and Protest.” Ina’s memoir started as an effort to make available the 182 letters her parents exchanged before and during the war for historical research. Her father Itaru Ina was a member of the pro-Japan Hoshi Dan and was imprisoned in the Tule Lake stockade, later sent to Bismark, N.D. The letters included correspondence Ina’s parents exchanged while they were split apart.

“When the editor at Heyday said, ‘We need the daughter’s voice,’ these letters are going to be helpful and useful, but they’re going to have more impact and meaning with the daughter’s voice. So it took me a total of 20 years to finish this book. The last five years were the memoir format that the editor had encouraged me to write,” Ina said.

“It wouldn’t have been possible for me to write it 20 years ago, because I had absorbed and internalized a good part of the narrative that had been promoted by the JACL, by others, even friends would say, ‘Oh, your parents were the bad guys.’” Ina said. “I think writing this narrative today is a turning point, … there are more scholars, academics, more people, just family folks, who are saying, ‘Wait a minute, let’s get to the truth of the story.’”

Hansen said he had spent the latter half of the last century trying to shed light on the wartime incarceration, even as many argued the model minority myth-driven positives that came with it. His book reviews highlight the continued scholarship that highlights the dark chapter of American history.

“The Japanese American community in recent years has gone from being the most populous of the Asian American communities in the United States to be one of the smallest. And yet, even though it’s the smallest, the proliferation of books continues to just pour out, and a lot of it has to do because of the incarceration experience, which is still not very well understood by most of the country,” Hansen said.

The collection of authors and books at the first ever Nichi Bei Book Fest, if anything, seemed to indicate Hansen’s work need not be carried out alone.