The Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium has appointed Rob Buscher as the new executive director of the JACSC.
Rob Buscher
“We have found in Rob a leader who brings considerable experience in the leadership of nonprofit arts organizations. As a scholar, curator and filmmaker, he is a consummate storyteller who is passionately committed to telling the stories and preserving the history of Japanese Americans. He comes to us with a vision for the future of JACSC that has resonated strongly with us,” said Ann Burroughs, chair of JACSC. Buscher will take up his new role on Nov. 6.
“I am honored and humbled to take on this position at what I see as a critical juncture in our community’s story. In the coming decade, we will likely lose the majority of our remaining incarceration survivors, whose lived experiences and personal testimonies have been the foundation of the pilgrimage movement and other efforts to memorialize the wartime incarceration. We must continue to educate future generations about the grave injustices endured by our Japanese American community during the wartime and the tremendous resilience demonstrated by our success in the postwar era,” said Rob Buscher. “To do this work effectively, we will need to find new ways to tell these stories in the absence of our survivors, so that their legacy can be preserved and shared with Americans of all backgrounds. As we navigate this next difficult chapter, I believe JACSC can play an important role in convening its member organizations around a shared vision for how to take this work forward.”
The JACSC is comprised of organizations committed to collectively preserving, protecting and interpreting the history of the World War II experiences of Japanese Americans and elevating the related social justice lessons that inform current issues today. Members include War Relocation Authority confinement sites, as well as historical organizations, endowments, museums, commissions, educational institutions and individuals.
A mixed-race Yonsei based in Philadelphia, Buscher is deeply embedded in the East Coast Japanese American and broader Asian American and Pacific Islander communities where he has lived and worked since 2010. Born and raised in rural/suburban Connecticut, Buscher moved to Philadelphia after five years abroad in the United Kingdom and Japan, where he completed his B.A. in communications at Richmond the American International University in London and M.A. in Japan Studies at the University of London.
Joining the board of the Philadelphia chapter of the JACL in 2012, he has served as chapter president since 2018 and held other positions in the JACL National Council, including editorial board chair of the Pacific Citizen newspaper from 2019-22.
As a film and media specialist, Buscher has held leadership positions in nonprofit arts organizations for over a decade, including the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival that he helmed for six seasons as festival director. He has also pursued a secondary career in academia that he started in 2012 as a part-time lecturer in Japan Studies at Arcadia University.
In 2017, Buscher joined the faculty of University of Pennsylvania’s Asian American Studies Program, where he currently teaches courses on Asian American Cinema and Asian American Activism. His recent research focuses largely on the postwar resettlement of Japanese Americans into the Greater Philadelphia region, and the role that arts and culture have played in historic Japanese American community movements.
Buscher’s family was forcibly removed from their farm and home in current-day Gardena/Torrance, Calif., in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Choosing to self-relocate during the so-called “voluntary evacuation,” his great-grandparents, Obaachan and her siblings were spared from the indignity of wartime incarceration.
However, losing everything they worked to establish over several decades, they were forced to rebuild their lives in the outer suburbs of Ogden, Utah, like so many other families during the postwar era. Through extended family who were incarcerated during the war, Buscher has personal ties to Rohwer, Minidoka and Crystal City.
Buscher has curated several public exhibitions related to Japanese and Asian American history, including the “American Peril” exhibit (2018, 2020) of anti-Asian racial propaganda, “The Third Space” virtual photo exhibition (2021) juxtaposing WRA propaganda with the lived experiences of Japanese Americans and “Okaeri (Welcome Home): The Nisei Legacy at Shofuso” (2023). Some of his recent multimedia productions include Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation’s 13-episode podcast “Look Toward the Mountain” (2021) and PBS WHYY’s six-episode TV talk series “Asian Americans & Pacific Islanders: A Philadelphia Story” (2022).
For more information about the JACSC, visit www.jacsc.org/whoweare.
