Art of Don Hata

        Don Teruo Hata, PhD, was born in East Los Angeles in 1939.  At age three years old, he was arrested with his parents and sent to a concentration camp at Gila, Arizona, pursuant to the round-up of over 110,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.  He and his family were periodically released for migrant farm labor during their incarceration. They were later transferred to the U.S. Army Ordnance Depot at Tooele, Utah, for the remainder of World War II.

            Hata earned his M.A. in Asian Studies and PhD in History at the University of Southern California.  During a year of doctoral research in Japan (1965-1966), Hata was the katei-kyoshi (tutor in residence) to iconic cinema actor Toshiro Mifune (Rashomon, Seven Samurai) and his family, teaching American English and U.S. history and culture.

            His PhD dissertation, on nativist, racist, and xenophobic opposition to Japanese immigration to the United States, was later published by the New York Times-Arno Press (1978) as “Undesirables:  Early Immigrants and the Anti-Japanese Movement in San Francisco, 1892-1893.” 

            He taught history for over 30 years (1970-2003) at California State University, Dominguez Hills, where he was the recipient of the CSUDH Lyle Gibson Distinguished Teaching Award, the CSUDH Outstanding Professor Award, and the CSU Board of Trustees’ System-wide Outstanding Professor Award.

            He is co-author of the book, Japanese Americans and World War II:  Mass Removal, Imprisonment, and Redress, 4^th Edition (2011), and a book of his paintings, entitled Nikkei Gulag:  Japanese American (Nikkei) Political Prisoners and U.S. Concentration Camps in World War II (2024).

                A full interview of Don Hata will appear in the next issue of Headwind.