Newspaper cover story

cover of Northwest Asian WeeklyI admit was floored when I saw the Northwest Asian Weekly put its review of our DVD on the front page this week. I mean, I was glad to talk to their correspondent, Andrew Hamlin, but not this. Editor Stacy Nguyen didn’t think so either, at first, but she read the piece and thought it was a great story. So she put it up there.

Regarding the reference in the piece to anti-war movements of the 1960s, I hope readers don’t come away with the notion that the Heart Mountain draft resisters were in any way pacifists or somehow reluctant to fight in WW2. These were guys who said they would be glad to fight – just as soon as their rights were first restored and their families released from camp. And the proof of that is that some of the guys who served time in prison for refusing to be drafted from inside a concentration camp, later gladly reported for duty, as free Americans, when drafted into service for the Korean War.

Incidentally, the DVD will be back in stock early this week at Kinokuniya Books at Uwajimaya in Seattle. Thanks for those who have asked for it there, it helps keep the bookstore interested in carrying Japanese American material. If you can’t make it there, it’s also available here.

Remembering David Ishii, Bookseller

David Ishii, BooksellerThanks for visiting from our tribute in Crosscut Public Media on the passing of David Ishii, Bookseller.

David put a public face on the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans for generations that passed through his store, read the exclusion order framed on the wall, looked through his shelves of Asian Americana and Pacific Northwest history, and stoipped to talk to him about redress, the resisters, or the nearby birthplaces of John Okada and Monica Sone. David was a friend of our film, and his passing leaves a deep hole not only in our hearts but in the life of the city he enriched with his passions for baseball, fly fishing, the opera and all the arts. He connected us all and built community.

See also our comments in The Seattle Times, “Longtime bookseller David Ishii was quite a story himself.”

Photo courtesy of Deb Todd