Leanne P. Day, an Assistant Professor of English at UH Hilo and a research affiliate in the CSS Department of Ethnic Studies, was the inaugural DKI faculty research fellow in 2020 -2021. Day’s research project was titled, “Gestures of Apology, Reparations, and Comparative Racial Formations in Senator Daniel K. Inouye’s Congressional Papers.”

“My research focused on the still unresolved issue of 2,300 Latin American Japanese who were forcibly deported and incarcerated in U.S. detention centers under suspicion of being Japanese spies, and Filipino veterans who served in World War II and did not receive full veterans’ benefits,” said Day. “My most exciting research findings were the fascinating declassified intelligence documents from World War II that articulated the strategic moves to forcibly deport Latin American Japanese, and how the Senator referenced these documents as ‘an extraordinary effort by the U.S. government’ to relocate, intern and deport them.”