Mai Hasegawa

Overall, I had a lot of fun participating in this project. In the beginning, I did not even know if I knew about Japanese American history in the US, and I turned out not to know almost anything other than about World War II and its consequences afterward. This definitely made me feel embarrassed, since I am Japanese. Therefore, I made such a smart choice to take a great opportunity and joined this program and learn about Japanese American history.

The best parts of this program were the field trips to Chicago and Urbana−Champaign for sure.

As I did some reseaches on what happened to Japanese Americans in the US and particularly Chicago before all the field trips, I was honestly just very happy to know the strong bond among Japanese Americans even in hardship. It’s because as an international student myself, I know how important it is to have a community of our own race especially in an unfamiliar environment. And so I was very pleasant to know that their bond still stays strong. Their hospitality towards people from the outside of their community was phenomenal, too. Everyone kindly welcomed us (and of course as well as other people who want to learn from them), and engaged with a lot of conversations with us. Their personal stories and experiences we heard were different depending on their backgrounds, therefore they were very meaning and informative as well. I am so grateful that I was able to learn from something that is "alive", not only from looking at the literature or other historical materials, such as photos. I incredibly appreciate every single person who warmly helped us through the field trip we had in Chicago.

At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, we were able to visit the Nikkeijin Illinois Spurlock exhibition. The curator Mr. Jason Finkelman did an extremely great job organizing historical facts, materials, artifacts, and literature, and I thought it would be very informative and straightforward to people who are already interested in the topic but also for people who do not know anything about the topic. Thus, this exhibition we saw inspired me a lot to create this online exhibition website. I feel so grateful that I was able to visit the exhibition. 

We would not be able to see the historical sites, things, and meet people without the field trips, and everything that happened during the trips motivated me a lot to create our website.

I really appreciate everyone (that I cannot even count because there were so many sweet people we met!) who kindly interacted with us. Thank you so much. I cannot wait to show the website we will create to the people who helped us.

Again, thank you so much for creating this wholesome opportunity to explore the topic of Japanese American history particularly in Chicago. I hope that our project will be the gateway for people of every generation to learn more about the history for themselves as well as the future.

ありがとうございました！

Mai Hasegawa - Class of 2025
Psychology Major
Timeline and Preservation of History Page

Mai (she/her) is a student from Osaka, Japan. She is passionate about studying about children's development and well-being. During her free time, Mai loves playing tennis, playing the trombone, and watching random clips on YouTube. She wants to be a psychology researcher in the future.