Event

Across Barbed Wire & Racial Lines: Interracial Friendship & Girlhood during World War II

Thursday, November 16, 2023 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM EST
At MHS

Author: Sonia C. Gomez, Santa Clara University
Comment: Yuichiro Onishi, University of Minnesota

This is an online event.

This paper tells the story of childhood friends—Mollie Wilson, Lillian Igasaki, and Sandie Saito—who grew up in the multiracial neighborhood of Boyle Heights, just east of downtown Los Angeles. After President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 in 1942 mandating the forcible removal and incarceration of all West Coast residents of Japanese descent, the girls' world was forever altered. Lillian and Sandie were sent to concentration camps located in the interior west along with approximately 120,000 other Japanese Americans. Throughout World War II, Mollie, Lillian, and Sandie—as well as others in their friend group—remained connected through letters. Gomez argues that their letter writing was a praxis for maintaining interracial solidarity and an expression of resistance. The simple act of friendship across barbed wire and racial lines is a testament to the enduring power of female friendship.

Join the conversation at the African American History Seminar. Seminars bring together a diverse group of scholars and interested members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated paper. Learn more.

Purchasing the $25 seminar subscription gives you advance access to the seminar papers of all seven seminar series for the current academic year. Subscribe at www.masshist.org/research/seminars. Subscribers for the current year may login to view currently available essays.

Register to attend online

Online Event

The virtual seminar begins at 5:00 PM and will be hosted on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive a confirmation message with attendance information.

Upcoming Events

Social Reform and Identity Formation in the 17th Century - A Panel Discussion
Social Reform and Identity Formation in the 17th Century - A Panel Discussion
Hybrid / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Tuesday, April 1, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM EST
This panel investigates forms of social control in 17th century New England. Arthur George Kamya’s paper examines the regulation of distilled liquor in 17th century Massachusetts Bay Colony, exploring how authorities navigated competing moral, economic, and security imperatives. Initially targeting a cross-section of colonists, liquor laws evolved to focus on servants, Native Americans, and eventually African Americans. The colony's approach shifted from moral censure to pragmatic revenue generation, with officials using fines and licenses to fund government operations. Kamya’s study illuminates how alcohol regulation became a tool of social control, state-building, and the construction of racial hierarchies in colonial New England, offering insights into the complex interplay between commerce, governance, and identity formation in early America. As discussed in Alice King’s work, Connecticut adopted a notable strategy towards certain Indigenous populations during the initial decades of settlement, attempting to control and exploit Native communities by turning them into colonial tributaries who would provide essential supplies, wampum, and military aid. King’s paper considers the evolution of tributary politics at the end of the seventeenth century after the Dominion of New England and Glorious Revolution had destabilized colonial authority and left colonists vulnerable to attack by French and Native forces, including the Wabanaki Confederacy during King William’s War, 1689-1697, when Connecticut leaders sought to raise soldiers for New England’s defense from these historic tributary communities.
see all events

The Latest

Blog
Video
Podcast