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When Sam Mihara was 9, the U.S. government forced his family from San Francisco to a desolate Wyoming prison camp. Today, the award-winning civil rights speaker and 2024 NEH Jefferson Lecturer tours the nation sharing his story. Mihara will join us online to present his firsthand experience—featuring historic photographs by Dorothea Lange—and answer audience questions.This event is sponsored by Phi Alpha Theta, the UAF Department of History, and the UAF Asian Studies Program.
Event: “Witness to History: The Japanese American Incarceration Experience” feat. guest speaker Sam Mihara
Date:Thursday, November 19, 2026
Time: 5:30-7 p.m. AKST
Location: Schaible Auditorium
Zoom Option: https://alaska.zoom.us/j/89106058884
About Sam Mihara
Sam Mihara is a second-generation Japanese American (Nisei) born and raised in San Francisco. When World War II broke out, the United States government using armed military guards forced Sam, age 9, and his family to move to the Heart Mountain, Wyoming prison camp. It was one of 10 such camps in the country that together housed over 120,000 West Coast residents of Japanese ancestry, most of them U.S.-born American citizens. Sam and his family lived in one room, 20 by 20 feet square in a barrack for three years. Our entire family living in one small room with no utilities, poor food at the start, embarrassing toilets, severe medical problems and cold winters as low as minus 28 deg. F. in blizzards.
After the war ended, the family returned home to San Francisco. Sam attended Lick Wilmerding High School, U.C. Berkeley undergraduate and UCLA graduate schools, where he earned engineering degrees. He became a rocket scientist and joined the Boeing Company where he became an executive on space programs. Following retirement, Sam changed careers - he became a national speaker on the topic of mass injustice in the U.S. He has visited many federal prisons including today’s detention facilities for undocumented immigrants. Sam helped in the education and preservation of the Heart Mountain historic prison site in Northwest Wyoming. Since 2014, he is a board member of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, the non-profit organization that oversees the National Historic Landmark site. And Sam is a member of the Japanese American Citizens League, SELANOCO Chapter.
To date, Sam has delivered over 450 speeches to over 90,000 students of all ages in the U.S., Asia and Europe.
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Event venue
UAF Schaible Auditorium, 323 Tanana Loop,College,AK,United States, Fairbanks
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