Join us for a conversation between journalist and author Evelyn Iritani and Densho Content Director Brian Niiya for a discussion of Iritani’s new book, Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians By Sea During World War II.
Applauded for expanding our understanding of “the hidden cost of wartime mercy—and the kinds of impossible choices that haunt us still” (writer and journalist Vanessa Hua), and described as “a stunning story of diplomatic intrigue, wartime racism, and moral compromise” (historian and academic Gary Bass), Safe Passage explores the exchange of civilians caught on the wrong side of the battlefield after Pearl Harbor.
Nearly fifteen hundred Allied civilians trapped in Asia, mostly Americans, sailed through dangerous waters to an Indian port city where they were traded for an equivalent number of Japanese immigrants and their families sent from the Americas. Faced with too few bodies to trade, and desperate to free Americans from perilous conditions, the United States rounded up Japanese from Latin America, often against their will, while Japanese held in U.S. camps and prisons, many of them American citizens, were forced to choose between expulsion to a war zone or an uncertain future behind barbed wire. The lessons of this little-known chapter in World War II history could not be more timely, given the striking parallels between this historical period and the events unfolding today on the streets and in the courtrooms of America.
Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians By Sea During World War II can be purchased from your local, independent bookseller or online here.
Evelyn Iritani is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians By Sea During World War II (March 2026 FSG). Publisher’s Weekly called Safe Passage “gripping and immersive” and historian/author Frank Abe described it as a “meticulously researched page-turner” and a “missing piece of the Japanese American experience.” Her previous book, An Ocean Between Us: The Changing Relationship of Japan and the United States Told in Four Stories From the Life of An American Town, won a Washington Governor’s Writers Day Award. A graduate of the University of Washington, Iritani began her career at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and moved to the Los Angeles Times in 1995 to cover international economics. Her reporting garnered numerous awards, including the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting and the George Polk Award for Economics Reporting for a series she co-authored on Wal-Mart. Her work allowed her to indulge in some of her favorite pastimes: exploring street markets, eating rich foods and getting lost – and hopefully found – in new places. For more, please visit www.evelyniritani.com.
Brian Niiya is a graduate of Harvey Mudd College and holds an M.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA. His professional life has been dedicated to Japanese American public history and information management, having held various positions with the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, the Japanese American National Museum, and the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai’i that have involved managing collections, curating exhibitions, developing public programs, and producing videos, books, and websites. He has published many articles on Japanese American history in a variety of academic and mainstream publications and is the editor of the online Densho Encyclopedia, which draws on his prior Encyclopedia of Japanese American History, published in 1993 with a second edition in 2000.
Support for this event was provided, in part, by 4Culture and the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture.
