Sam Mihara Named the 2024 Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities 

Sam Mihara, public speaker, historian, and educator, will deliver the 2024 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities. 

NEH’s Jefferson Lecture is the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities. 

Mihara will deliver his lecture “Memories of Injustice” at 6 p.m. PST on January 15, 2025, in Los Angeles, hosted at the Japanese American National Museum and the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center in Little Tokyo. The lecture is free and open to the public and will stream online at neh.gov. Mihara will speak about the history of Japanese American incarceration during World War II and his personal experiences as a prisoner at a U.S. relocation camp near Heart Mountain, Wyoming.

“Sam Mihara has made it a personal mission to educate people across the world about this painful chapter of American history. Through research and reflection on his own experience, Sam shares personal insight on how to learn from history and find unity,” said NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo). “His dedication stands as a powerful reminder of the resilience of the human spirit and the courage of all those who endured suffering and injustice. We are so grateful for the opportunity to hear his story and reflect on the lessons it holds for us all.” 

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), an independent federal grantmaking agency, selects the lecturer through a formal process that includes nominations from the public. NEH awards more than $125 million annually in grants that support understanding and appreciation of humanities subjects, including history, ethics, languages, literature, art history, philosophy, religion and others. The Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities is the agency’s signature event. 

“I am truly honored to be designated as the 2024 Jefferson Lecturer,” said Mihara. “As the first Japanese American to be selected, the award is very meaningful to me and to the large audiences that learned the truth about a major American injustice against a race.” 

Sam Mihara is a second-generation Japanese American (Nisei), born and raised in San Francisco. When World War II broke out, the U.S. government forced Sam, age nine, and his family to move to the Heart Mountain War Relocation Camp in Wyoming—one of ten prison camps across the country used for the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans evicted from their homes following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Mihara lived with his family in a one-room Heart Mountain barrack for three years, held captive against their will by barbed wire fences and armed sentries. 

After the war ended, Mihara’s family returned home to San Francisco. He went on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Los Angeles, and worked for more than four decades as a rocket scientist, including as an executive on space programs for the Boeing Company. 

Following retirement, Mihara chose to become active in public education about Japanese American relocation and internment and in the preservation of the Heart Mountain historic prison site where he and his family were incarcerated. He has spoken to over 120,000 students of all ages in the U.S., Asia, and Europe about his experiences, and he tours nationally to speak to educators, schools, historians, law firms, law schools, and government agencies. Mihara is a frequent guest lecturer at national history conferences, U.C. Berkeley, UCLA, Harvard and Columbia University Law Schools, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Congress. He has been awarded the Paul Gagnon Prize as history educator of the year from the National Council for History Education (NCHE) and the Biennium Award for Education from the Japanese American Citizens League. Mihara has been a board member of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, the nonprofit organization that oversees the National Historic Landmark site, since 2014, and has served as a faculty member at NEH-supported Landmarks of American History and Culture workshops for educators at Heart Mountain. 

NEH’s Jefferson Lecture is the Endowment’s most widely attended public event. Past Jefferson Lecturers include Ruth J. Simmons, Andrew Delbanco, Father Columba Stewart, Rita Charon, Martha C. Nussbaum, Ken Burns, Walter Isaacson, Martin Scorsese, Wendell Berry, Drew Gilpin Faust, John Updike, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Toni Morrison, Barbara Tuchman, and Robert Penn Warren. The lectureship carries a $10,000 honorarium, set by statute. The 2024 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities is partially funded by the Mellon Foundation. 

Tickets to the lecture are free of charge and distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Reserve a ticket online to attend NEH’s 2024 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities.  
 

National Endowment for the Humanities:
Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at www.neh.gov.