Museum of Riverside

Day 2: THE HOUSE ON LEMON STREET PANEL DISCUSSION

Mark Rawitsch, author of The House on Lemon Street: Japanese Pioneers and the American Dream, is Dean of Instruction at Mendocino College and a founding member of the Harada House National Historic Landmark Ad-Hoc Advisory Council of the City of Riverside. Inspired by his time visiting with Sumi Harada and looking at family photograph albums with her at the Harada House, Mark will use images from the Harada Family Archival Collection and other sources to outline the Harada family story, describe some of the materials he used to research and write The House on Lemon Street, and offer selected readings from the book, with the assistance of Harada family members.

Dr. Lane Hirabayashi will moderate this program. Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, Ph.D., is Professor of Asian American Studies, and the first holder of the "George and Sakaye Aratani Professorship in Japanese American Incarceration, Redress and Community" at University of California, Los Angeles. Lane is author or editor of over thirty scholarly articles, as well as nine books and anthologies. His previous publications include Japanese American Resettlement Through the Lens: Hikaru Carl Iwasaki And the WRA’s Photographic Section, 1943-1945 with K. Shimada and he authored the afterword for The House on Lemon Street. Currently, Lane is completing, A Principled Stand that will be published by the University of Washington Press in 2013 based on his uncle, Gordon K. Hirabayashi's war-time diary and letters. In addition to his academic resume, Lane has actively sought ties to community-based organizations as one of the foundations to his academic work. Over the past thirty years he has worked with a wide range of groups including the National Historic Landmark Harada House Ad-Hoc Advisory Committee, Riverside Metropolitan Museum, Riverside; and the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles. He also serves as a board member and/or consultant with many other Japanese American community organizations.

Dr. Art Hansen will discuss "The Harada House of Riverside, California: A Milestone in Japanese American Resistance to Racist Oppression." His presentation will situate the resistance mounted by the Harada family to own their home in Riverside in the face of California's restrictive 1913 Alien Land Law within the ongoing tradition of Japanese American resistance to racism preceding, during, and after their World War II exclusion and incarceration experience. Art Hansen, Ph.D., is an emeritus professor of history and Asian American Studies at California State University, Fullerton, where he was the longtime director of its Center for Oral and Public History and its Japanese American Project. His professional positions have included being president for the regional Southwest Oral History Association and the national Oral History Association, as well as the editor of the OHA-sponsored ORAL HISTORY REVIEW; also, he served as the Senior Historian at the Japanese American National Museum, where he continues an active connection as a historical consultant.

Naomi Harada, the granddaughter of Ken and Jukichi Harada and niece of Sumi Harada, will share her memories and experiences of her family. Her father, Harold, was their youngest child. He was born in the first floor front bedroom of the Lemon Street house. Her parents were living in San Francisco when she was born and two years later they returned to Southern California and moved to Los Angeles. During her childhood, the family would visit her Auntie Sumi in Riverside. Decades ago, she helped to establish the Asian American Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She believes that “Perhaps, my family’s history influenced my interest in this program. Certainly, my endeavors in and passion for equality, social justice, compassion for others and health care were shaped by my family’s experience.” Naomi received both her Bachelors and Masters of Science degrees from the University of California, San Francisco. She presently works as a Nurse Practitioner in Surgery and for recreation she trains and enters competitions with her dogs for obedience, agility, herding and recently, for search and rescue.

Dr. Anthea Hartig will join us as co-chair of the Harada House Ad-Hoc Committee. Anthea M. Hartig, PhD, Executive Director, California Historical Society, was previously with the National Trust for Historic Preservation, where she directed the Trust’s Western Office and served the six continental far western states along with Hawai’i, Alaska and the Pacific Island Territories of Guam and Micronesia. Previously Dr. Hartig taught history and cultural studies at La Sierra University in Riverside and graduate courses in historic preservation at the University of California, Riverside from where she holds a Ph.D. and Master’s Degree. Dr. Hartig has served on many local, statewide and national history-related non-profit foundations’ boards of directors, including the California Preservation Foundation, the California Council for the Promotion of History and co-chairs the Harada House Ad-Hoc Advisory Committee, and has published in both academic and professional journals.

Donna Graves, consultant and Director of Preserving California Japantowns, will introduce participants to an abbreviated inaugural tour of Reading the Sites: The Japanese American Community in Riverside. Donna Graves received a B.A. in American Studies at UCSC, and M.A. in American Civilization from Brown University, and an M.A. in Urban Planning with a concentration on history and theory of the built environment from UCLA. She is widely known for her work documenting sites associated with Japanese American history and has developed historic context statements for San Francisco’s Japantown and the City of Richmond, California. In addition, she was the Project Consultant for the City of Riverside, Certified Local Government Grant 2010/2011, Japanese American Heritage and the Quest for Civil Rights in Riverside, California 1890s-1970s, Reading the Sites.

Dr. Catherine Gudis is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Public History Program at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of Buyways: Billboards, Automobiles, and the American Cultural Landscape and an editor of Cultures of Commerce: Business Culture in America as well as groundbreaking exhibition catalogues on contemporary art, including A Forest of Signs: Art in the Crisis of Representation and Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s. As a 2011-12 Getty Scholar, Dr. Gudis began work on her next book, Curating the City: The Framing of Los Angeles, which interweaves histories of public art, preservation, and urbanism in the Southland. She has worked for many years as a curator and preservationist, spearheading major educational initiatives at the Los Angeles Conservancy, contributing to such projects as SurveyLA and the City of Riverside’s historic contexts on Eastside and University Avenue, and working, in particular, on California-focused exhibitions, including one in progress for the Huntington Library. She received her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University and B.A. in Philosophy from Smith College.