SAN FRANCISCO — The Japanese American National Library will present “Who Was S. I. Hayakawa? A New Look” on Saturday, May 5, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at the Union Bank Hospitality Room, 1675 Post St. (at Buchanan) in San Francisco Japantown.
The room is located in the Japan Center’s East Mall. Enter from Peace Plaza.
S.I. Hayakawa (1906-1992), semanticist and author of “Language in Thought and Action,” president of San Francisco State University during the Third World Strike in the late 1960s, and Republican U.S. senator from California from 1977 to 1983, was a complex figure, according to his biographers.
An influential academic, Hayakawa supported ethnic studies programs, but not the student tactics employed to win them. He also ruffled feathers by calling the Japanese American internment “an adventure.” Hayakawa lived in Chicago during the war and was not interned.
The panel includes Gerald W. and Janice E. Haslam, authors of “In Thought and Action: The Enigmatic Life of S.I. Hayakawa,” and Wynne Hayakawa, the former senator’s daughter. Rita Takahashi of the Japanese American National Library will moderate.
For more information, contact Takahashi at ritatak@sfsu.edu or Karl Matsushita at karlmatsu9@gmail.com or (415) 567-5006.