Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II
About this episode
Evelyn Iritani discusses her book 'Safe Passage', detailing the rescue of Allied civilians during World War II.
In her new book Safe Passage, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Evelyn Iritani reveals one of World War II’s little-known diplomatic triumphs—the rescue of nearly 3,000 Allied civilians held by Japan in two exchanges at sea—and the high price that was paid by the thousands of innocent men, women and children, mostly of Japanese descent, who were traded to a country that was no longer, and may never have been, their home. Sojourners and immigrants, diplomats and thrill-seekers, storytellers and proselytizers. Uprooted by a conflict of someone else’s making, this eclectic mix of humanity from both sides of the Pacific found themselves on a voyage across war-torn waters that would transform them in surprising, often tragic, and sometimes inexplicable ways. In the fall of 1943, during some of the Pacific theater’s bloodiest battles, the United States and Japan pulled off a diplomatic coup: the exchange of civilians caught on the wrong side of the battlefield after Pearl Harbor. Nearly 1,500 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…
People in this episode
Host: Commonwealth Club of California
Guest: Evelyn Iritani
Topics covered
- diplomatic history
- World War II
- civilian exchange
- Japanese Americans
- rescue operations
- historical narrative
Keywords
- diplomatic intrigue
- American civilians
- Japanese civilians
- Pearl Harbor
- wartime exchanges
- Evelyn Iritani
- James Keeley
- historical events
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: Safe Passage
Places: Japan, United States, Indian port city
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