Evelyn Iritani, "Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II" (FSG, 2026)

Evelyn Iritani, "Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II" (FSG, 2026)

From Asian Review of Books by New Books Network

May 21, 2026 · 53 min

About this episode

Evelyn Iritani discusses her book on the exchange of American and Japanese civilians during World War II.

In October 1943, the Gripsholm—a Swedish ocean liner—and the Teia Maru—a Japanese troop ship—sat in Mormugao, a port in Portuguese India. There, the two ships exchanged their passengers: Allied civilians stuck in Japanese territory after Pearl Harbor , and an assortment of Japanese, Japanese-American, and other Japanese-ethnic people from the Americas. The trade capped a long and fraught diplomatic exchange between the U.S. and Japan, two countries at war. Evelyn Iritani’s book Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026) tells the story of how this exchange came about: How U.S. civilians tried to survive in Japan or occupied Hong Kong, or how the U.S. government pressured Japanese Americans, housed in internment camps, to accept repatriation to Japan, a country many had never known. Evelyn is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. 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 (William Morrow and Company: 1994), won a Washington Governor’s Writers…

People in this episode

Guest: Evelyn Iritani

Topics covered

  • diplomatic history
  • World War II
  • Japanese-American relations
  • civilian exchange
  • internment camps
  • journalism

Keywords

  • diplomatic intrigue
  • civilian exchange
  • World War II
  • Evelyn Iritani
  • Japanese Americans
  • internment camps
  • Gripsholm
  • Teia Maru

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Los Angeles Times, U.S. government

Books & works: Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II, An Ocean Between Us: The Changing Relationship of Japan and the United States Told in Four Stories From the Life of An American Town

Places: Mormugao, Japan, Hong Kong, Portuguese India

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