Facing the Mountain grew out of conversations Daniel James Brown had with Tom Ikeda, Executive Director of Densho in 2015. Densho is a Seattle-based nonprofit organization originally dedicated to collecting and preserving the oral histories of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. In the twenty-five years since its inception, Densho’s mission has expanded to include educating the public more broadly about the Japanese American experience and to inspire action for social and racial equity.
Daniel James Brown grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended the University of California at Berkeley. He taught writing at San Jose State University and Stanford before becoming a technical writer and editor, first in Silicon Valley and later at Microsoft. He now writes narrative nonfiction books full-time. His primary interest as a writer is in bringing compelling historical events to life as vividly and accurately as he can.
He lives in the country outside of Seattle, Washington with his wife, two daughters, and an assortment of cats, dogs, chickens, and honeybees. When he is not writing, he is likely to be birding, gardening, fly fishing, reading American history, or chasing bears away from the bee hives.
Tom Ikeda, our moderator for the evening, is the founding Executive Director of Densho, a non-profit organization started in 1996. Densho’s mission is to preserve and share the history of the WWII Japanese American incarceration to promote justice and equity today. Tom is a sansei (third generation Japanese American) who was born and raised in Seattle. Tom has conducted over 250 video-recorded, oral history interviews with Japanese Americans. Prior to working at Densho, Tom was a General Manager at Microsoft Corporation in the Multimedia Publishing Group. Tom has received numerous awards for his community and historical contributions, including the Humanities Washington Award for outstanding achievement in the public humanities, the National JACL Japanese American of the Biennium Award, the Microsoft Alumni Integral Fellows Award, the Japanese American National Museum Founder’s Award, and the Robert Gray Medal from the Washington State Historical Society.
