ArtBreak: Remembering World War II in Japanese Voices

Sociolinguist Noriko Sugimori has often worked with her students to collect oral histories from Japanese-speaking World War II survivors in Japan, South Korea, and the United States. Their testimonies reveal personal experiences that have often remained untold and show how the past continues to shape the present. Drawing on video excerpts from these interviews, Dr. Sugimori will explore the stories, silences, and meanings preserved in wartime memory. Dr. Sugimori is Professor of Japanese at Kalamazoo College. Her Mellon Foundation-funded Japanese-English oral history project was the first in using the bilingual Oral History Metadata Synchronizer. At Kalamazoo College, she teaches the Japanese language at all levels, as well as sociolinguistics.