Professor’s career focus was JA incarceration experience.
By P.C. Staff
Arthur Hansen (Pacific Citizen File Photo)
Dr. Arthur August Hansen, whose teaching career as a history and Asian American Studies professor spanned more than 40 years, has died. He was 87.
An academic whose focus was the Japanese American incarceration experience, especially in the area of resistance, Hansen died following a long illness at his Los Osos, Calif., home on Oct. 29.
Born in Hoboken, N.J., in 1938, Hansen spent the first 10 years of his life there until his family relocated to Santa Barbara, Calif. He attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees, as well as a doctorate in history.
Hansen’s career in higher education began in 1966, when he was hired as a history professor at California State University, Fullerton, until his retirement in 2008.
Although he was a prolific writer, having served as an author/editor of a dozen books, including such titles as “Manzanar Martyr: An Interview with Harry Y. Ueno,” “Manzanar Mosaic: Essays and Oral Histories on America’s First World War II Japanese American Concentration Camp” and “A Nikkei Harvest: Reviewing the Japanese American Historical Experience and Its Legacy,” Hansen may best be remembered as the founding director of the Japanese American Oral History Project at CSUF in 1972, where he had recorded nearly 200 interviews.
Included among Hansen’s many honors, accomplishments and accolades: being named as CSUF’s Outstanding Faculty Member, College of Humanities & Social Sciences, 2007’s Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Asian American Studies, serving as the senior historian at the Japanese American National Museum from 2001-05 and in 2014, being the co-recipient (with Mas Okui) of the Sue Kunitomi Embrey Legacy Award.
Hansen is survived by his wife, Debbie. A memorial service is planned for January 2026, to take place at CSUF.