Susan H. Kamei
Profile
Susan H. Kamei currently serves as the Strategic Advisor to the Founding Director of the Spatial Sciences Institute housed in the University of Southern California Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences (USC Dornsife). She previously served as the Institute’s managing director for the Institute’s strategic initiatives and its daily administration, including external relations and the development and operations of the Institute’s undergraduate and graduate academic programs.
Her expertise is in the creation, development and operations of innovative educational business models. At USC she has been...
Scholarship
Kamei is recognized today as one of our country’s most prominent and visible scholars on the Japanese American incarceration during World War II. Her book When Can I Go Back to America: Voices of Japanese American Incarceration During World War II (Simon & Schuster 2021) has received critical acclaim for its riveting, meticulously researched and comprehensive historical narrative of this tragic episode in our nation’s history. For her work’s influence on the study of political, social and Asian American history, she received a 2022 USC Phi Kappa Phi...
Articles
Righting a wrong, name by name–the Irei monument honors Japanese Americans imprisoned by the US government during World War II, The Conversation, January 2, 2025
Remember Korematsu?, California Litigation, California Lawyers Association, Vol. 37, Issue 3, December 2024
A family’s old steamer trunk holds links to a dark period in the nation’s history, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, February 15, 2022
Captives in our own country: The incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, Los Angeles Times, December 5, 2021
Education
J.D., Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
B.A., University of California, Irvine, Linguistics and Russian, summa cum laude