Sam Mihara

MS in Engineering, UCLA; retired rocket scientist, The Boeing Company. He is a second-generation Japanese American (Nisei) born and raised in San Francisco. When World War II broke out, the United States government used armed military guards to force nine-year-old Sam and his family to move to the Heart Mountain, Wyoming prison camp. It was one of 10 such camps in the country that together housed over 120,000 West Coast residents of Japanese ancestry, most of them U.S.-born American citizens. Sam and his family lived in one room, 20 by 20 feet square in a barrack for three years.

After the war ended, the family returned home to San Francisco. Sam attended Lick Wilmerding High School, U.C. Berkeley undergraduate and UCLA graduate schools, where he earned engineering degrees. He became a rocket scientist and joined the Boeing Company where he became an executive on space programs. Following retirement, Sam changed careers - he became a national speaker on the topic of mass imprisonment in the U.S. He has visited many federal prisons including today’s detention facilities for undocumented immigrants. Sam helped in the education and preservation of the Heart Mountain historic prison site in Northwest Wyoming. Since 2014, he is a board member of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, the non-profit organization that oversees the National Historic Landmark site. The site today includes an award-winning museum / school with original camp structures.

Sam speaks to educators, schools, colleges, libraries, museums, government attorneys, law schools, law firms and other interested organizations about his wartime experience and today’s prisons. The program has been seen and rated very highly by all of his audiences. Sam has had repeat performances at National History Conferences, U.C. Berkeley, UCLA, Harvard Law School and the U.S. Department of Justice. He has spoken to over 60,000 teachers and students in the last few years. In February 2018, Sam was selected as keynote speaker for the National Council for History Education (NCHE) Conference which was held in San Antonio, Texas, in April, 2018. During the conference, Sam was awarded the prestigious Paul Gagnon Prize as the history educator of the year – the first time to a Japanese American and a first Californian. With approximately 100,000 history teachers in the U.S., this top award is a special honor. And Sam usually ends his presentations with a discussion of the lessons learned from this injustice and how the lessons apply to today’s problems such as immigration and racial or religious issues. In March 2019, Sam gave speeches to Congressional members and staff on the lessons learned from the prison experience that apply to today’s issues including immigration and the need to support funding for education.