One of the most important stories from World War II was lost to history—until today, that is, thanks to former The Daily reporter-turned-Pulitzer-Prize-winner Evelyn Iritani, ’78.
A former Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Los Angeles Times reporter, Iritani grew up in Pullman and wanted to escape to the big city. So she came to the UW, where she was pleased to discover a feisty university newspaper and a large Asian American community.
Iritani spent a dozen years at the Los Angeles Times and was part of the team that won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for a series called “The Walmart Effect.” She started working on her new book, “Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II” in L.A. and completed the writing after she moved back to Seattle. In exquisite detail, she chronicles how the United States and Japan engaged in an unheard-of diplomatic effort to trade American civilians in Japan for Japanese civilians in America, all while both nations were engaged in a bloody war in the Pacific Theater in the early 1940s.
Read the full article in the University of Washington Magazine.