The remarkable life and career of Takashi Hoshizaki will be the focus of “The Importance of Telling the Japanese American Resisters’ Story,” an April 27 panel at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles led by the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation and the Mineta-Simpson Institute.

Hoshizaki, 98, is one of the few surviving draft resisters from the camps that held more than 125,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. He was convicted of draft resistance during a trial of 63 men from Heart Mountain in 1944 and spent two years in federal prison. 

He was pardoned by President Harry Truman on Dec. 24, 1947, and became an eminent botanist whose research into circadian rhythms took him to Antarctica and a career at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Hoshizaki will receive the Foundation’s Douglas W. Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award for his work building the Foundation and leading the effort to ensure that the principled resistance to the draft for men unjustly imprisoned is remembered.

The 4 p.m. event April 27 at JANM’s Tateuchi Democracy Forum at 100 N. Central Ave. in Los Angeles will also feature Hoshizaki, Shirley Ann Higuchi and Douglas Nelson, the Foundation’s chair and vice chair, and Aura Sunada Newlin, the Foundation's executive director. It will be hosted by documentarian and newscaster David Ono.

"Takashi's service on the Foundation helped build the organization to lead the education about the Japanese American incarceration,” Higuchi said. “His energy and guidance helped raise the resources that made our museum possible. His example has provided a beacon for all of us to follow." 

The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation preserves the site where some 14,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated in Wyoming from 1942 through 1945. Their stories are told within the foundation’s museum, Heart Mountain Interpretive Center, located between Cody and Powell. For more information, call the center at (307) 754-8000 or email info@heartmountain.org.

About the Japanese American National Museum (JANM)

Established in 1985, JANM promotes understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience. Located in the historic Little Tokyo district of downtown Los Angeles, JANM is a center for civil rights, ensuring that the hard-fought lessons of the World War II incarceration are not forgotten. A Smithsonian Affiliate and one of America’s Cultural Treasures, JANM is a hybrid institution that straddles traditional museum categories. JANM is a center for the arts as well as history. It provides a voice for Japanese Americans and a forum that enables all people to explore their own heritage and culture. Since opening to the public in 1992, JANM has presented over 100 exhibitions onsite while traveling 40 exhibits to venues such as the Smithsonian Institution and the Ellis Island Museum in the United States, and to several leading cultural museums in Japan and South America. JANM is open on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday–Sunday from 11 a.m.–5 p.m. and on Thursday from noon–8 p.m. JANM is free every third Thursday of the month. On all other Thursdays, JANM is free from 5–8 p.m. For more information, visit janm.org or follow us on social media @jamuseum.