Remembering our history
May 5, 2021 |
San Diego City College history professor Susan Hasegawa has dedicated much of her adult life to ensuring we remember the atrocities the United States inflicted on American citizens of Japanese ancestry during World War II.
During Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, which comes as Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are being targeted by bigots blaming them for the COVID-19 pandemic, those efforts take on even greater meaning. “As a historian, you have to study why and how things come about,” said Hasegawa. “And you find that a lot of anti-Asian racism is latent, it’s always been there, it’s never really gone away. It saddens me, but it certainly isn’t surprising. My hope is that people will be willing to learn, to educate themselves, and perhaps keep history from repeating.”
Hasegawa has been doing more than her share to fight the hate. She addressed Day of Remembrance events at both UC San Diego and Cal State San Marcos recalling February 19 as the day in 1942 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 forcing the incarceration of all persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
She also is the faculty advisor for SAMAFILA, the Filipino American club at City College that will be holding an Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month event via Zoom on May 6. She is also working with the San Diego Public Library on a Clara Breed exhibit honoring the former city librarian who reached out, corresponded with, and advocated for San Diego children who were sent with their families to a prison camp in Poston, Arizona during the war. Hasegawa teaches both U.S. History from the Asian Pacific American Perspective and History of the United States at City College.
A fourth-generation Japanese-Filipino American, born and raised on the island of Maui, Hasegawa came to the mainland to study history and arrived in San Diego for her master’s degree at UCSD. She worked for a nonprofit for several years before her career took her to City in 1999. Hasegawa’s area of research is focused on the Japanese American community in San Diego – her master’s thesis detailed the post-war return of detainees to San Diego. Now on sabbatical, Hasegawa is creating test banks comprising more than 700 questions for an open educational resources (OER) history text. Hasegawa also is writing an OER textbook on local and state government through a more unconventional approach.
“Asian American authors have published a number of fascinating novels and memoirs, spreading our stories,” Hasegawa said. “Please reach out to me via email for summer reading recommendations at shasegaw@sdccd.edu.”