Kaoru Ueda is curator of the Japanese Diaspora Collection of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, where she manages the Japanese Diaspora Initiative and the Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection. Ueda is also the editor of On a Collision Course: The Dawn of Japanese Migration in the Nineteenth Century, a new collection of essays by Yasuo Sakata published by Hoover Institution Press. In this interview, Ueda discusses the history of Japan’s open-door policy to the West, the aspirations of Japanese migrant workers living in the United States, and how these issues impacted US immigration policy.