Sam Mihara, who was incarcerated at Heart Mountain as a child, will give his nationally recognized lecture at 5 p.m. Thursday, June 12 in the Center Theater at the Jackson, Wyoming, Center of the Arts.
Tickets for the event will cost $18, while online viewers can watch the presentation at home for $5.00. Click HERE for tickets.
Mihara’s presentation on the Japanese American incarceration during World War II led to him being named the 51st Jefferson Lecturer by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He gave the initial lecture on February 26 at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.
While incarcerated, Mihara watched his father go blind because he was denied access to his eye doctors in California and witnessed the death of his grandfather because of mistreated cancer. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and spent 40 years as a rocket scientist for the Boeing Company.
Now 92, Mihara started traveling the country to lecture about the incarceration in 2011 and has spoken in person to more than 100,000 people. He received the 2018 Paul A. Gagnon Prize for his work from the National Council for History Education and was named the Japanese American of the Biennium by the Japanese American Citizens League in 2022.
A panel discussion, Lessons from the WWII Japanese American Incarceration, will follow Mihara’s presentation. He will be joined by Heart Mountain Executive Director Aura Sunada Newlin and board members Shirley Ann Higuchi, Douglas Nelson, and Peter Simpson.