Featuring Mrs. Tsuchino Forrester, Dr. Rika Houston, Dr. Velina Hasu Houston, Dr. Regina F. Lark, Mrs. Kazuko Umezu Stout, Dr. Michael Thorton, and Dr. Teresa Williams Leon

Japanese women who married American GIs after World War II are known today as international brides but were historically referred to as “war brides.”

This program will tell the story of these courageous women who left their homeland, who risked the anger of their Japanese parents, who came face-to-face with their new American in-laws, and who navigated through the American mainstream with little English language skills. The panel will explore, from varying perspectives, the issues associated with their marriage to American GIs in post-war Japan and the United States, immigration, assimilation, and the experiences of their children in American society.

Although more than 30,000 Japanese women immigrated to the United States between 1947 and 1959, they have remained invisible to not only other Japanese Americans, but to studies that include Japanese/Asian immigration, Asian American women’s history, and the history of women in the United States.