In a quiet lecture room, a story spanning generations, war and science unfolded as a local botanist traced parallels between his life and his family’s roots to a scientific breakthrough born behind barbed wire.
Arthur Nonomura, a Litchfield Park resident and adjunct professor at Northern Arizona University, delivered a recent talk for the P.W. Litchfield Heritage Center, connecting his professional work in plant science to his family’s experience during the incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II.
Nonomura’s lecture also traced an intellectual lineage back to Ralph Waldo Emerson, the 19th-century philosopher whose ideas about purpose and human potential influenced generations of scientists.
