Irene Hirano Inouye died Tuesday in Los Angeles. The name won’t be familiar to many in Arkansas, but she left a lasting mark here.
Dr. Johanna Miller Lewis, a history professor at UA Little Rock, explains in this tribute.
REMEMBERING IRENE HIRANO INOUYE
(October 7, 1948-April 7, 2020)
“From 2000 to 2004 I had the privilege of working with Irene Hirano Inouye while coordinating the Life Interrupted Project in Arkansas.
Life Interrupted, a project co-sponosred by the UA Little Rock Public History Program and the Japanese American National Museum and funded by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, helped educate Arkansans and Americans about the two Japanese American Concentration Camps located in Rohwer and Jerome Arkansas during World War II.
At the time, Irene was chief executive officer of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles and had a special bond with Arkansas because her grandfather had been interned in Arkansas during the war. She came to our state on several occasions.
More than anyone she raised the awareness of the atrocities inflicted upon Japanese-Americans in World War II at eleven concentration camps including the two in Arkansas.”
According to Miller-Lewis, with Inouye’s advocacy and support, the efforts begun through the Life Interrupted project have resulted in:
*the restoration of the Japanese American cemetery at Rohwer.
*the placement of Life Interrupted’s central exhibit “Against Their Will” in the World War II Japanese American Internment Museum located in the restored train station at McGehee Arkansas, near Rohwer and Jerome.
* the collection of camp art teacher Jamie Vogel, saved by former McGehee Mayor Rosalie Gould, now preserved at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little Rock.
(In 2008 Irene Hirano married the late United States Senator Daniel Inouye. Senator Inouye died in 2012. In 2009 she founded the US-Japan Council.)