BOOK TALK: American Sutra: Buddhism and the Incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII

Date: 

Friday, February 22, 2019, 4:15pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

S020, Belfer Case Study Room, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge St., Cambridge, MA
SPEAKER: DUNCAN RYŪKEN WILLIAMS
Professor of Religion and East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Southern California
 
DISCUSSANT: DIANA L. ECK
Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies, Harvard Divinity School
Fredric Wertham Professor of Law and Psychiatry in Society in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Founder and Director, Pluralism Project
 
DISCUSSANT: STEPHEN PROTHERO
C. Allyn and Elizabeth V. Russell Professor of Religion, Boston University
 
MODERATOR: HELEN HARDACRE
Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions and Society, Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
 
Sponsor: Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies
 
Co-sponsors: Japan Society of Boston, New England Japanese American Citizens League , Harvard Buddhist Studies Forum, Harvard Divinity School Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Pluralism Project, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations
 
Book Signing takes place from 6pm - 7pm.
 
Duncan Ryūken Williams will discuss his new book American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom During the Second World War (Harvard University Press, Feb. 2019) which emphasizes the prominent role of Buddhism in the WWII internment of Japanese Americans. Largely due to the Buddhist values shared by the majority of Japanese Americans, nearly 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, were targeted for forcible removal from the Pacific Coast states and incarceration in remote concentration camps surrounded by barbed wire. Ironically, Buddhism was also what helped the Japanese American community endure and persist at a time of dislocation, loss, and uncertainty. Based on newly translated Japanese-language diaries of Buddhist priests from the camps, extensive interviews with survivors of the camps, and newly declassified government documents condemning Buddhism as a national security threat, Williams argues that Japanese American Buddhists launched one of the most inspiring defenses of religious freedom in U.S. history.