March 31, 2015/ 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM

UCLA Young Research Library Room TBA

A political biography of Tosiwo Nakayama

Presentation by David Hanlon (University of Hawai'i at Manoa) and Duncan Ryuken Williams (USC)

In this event, David Hanlon will discuss his new book, Making Micronesia: A Political Biography of Tosiwo Nakayama. In particular, he will examine how and why Tosiwo Nakayama, a person of Chuukese and Japanese ancestry, entered the worlds of public administration and electoral politics; first with the United States-administered Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (under the United Nations) and later as the president of the Federated States of Micronesia. Duncan Ryuken Williams will then provide a response to Mr. Hanlon's talk. The goal is to generate an interdisciplinary and international discussion about Japanese colonial governance, the United nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, U.S. cold war politics, and mixed-roots/mixed-race identities in the late twentieth century Asia-Pacific.

David Hanlon is Professor and Department Chair of history at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. His research interests include Micronesia, missionization, development, Pacific historiography, cross-cultural encounters. He is the author of Making Micronesia: A Political Biography of Tosiwo Nakayama.

Duncan Ryuken Williams is Associate Professor of Religion and Director of the USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. In 1993 he was ordained as a Buddhist priest in the Soto Zen tradition, and served as a Buddhist chaplain at Harvard University from 1994-1996. 

Free and open to the public.

Sponsor(s): Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, Asian American Studies Department