Okada at his desk in 1957 at the Chrysler Missile Operations plant in Sterling Township, Michigan (photo: the Yoshito Okada family)
The story of how John Okada migrated to Detroit in 1953 — where he wrote the great American novel, No-No Boy— is told in a new interview for the Detroit History Podcast.
Novelist John Okada would have been 98 years old today. This means that two years from today, we will be observing the 100th anniversary of his birth.
To celebrate his legacy and honor his work in writing the great Japanese American wartime novel, a number of institutional partners are being recruited for a series of events to observe 2023 as the John Okada Centennial Year in his native city of Seattle. Continue reading Coming in 2023: The John Okada Centennial Year→
Our graphic novel We Hereby Refuse weaves together the stories of three Nisei who refused to submit to imprisonment in American concentration camps without a fight. On Sept. 18 we got to meet three of their children and hear what they think about the book.
For three years, Floyd Cheung of Smith College and I have been gathering pieces and building the outline for a new anthology of camp literature commissioned by the publisher of Penguin Classics. On Sunday I presented a preview of our work on translations of Issei writing in camp in Japanese, part of what the late Yuji Ichioka called “our buried past.” This video screen is cued to the start of that discussion:
Our second printing has arrived from the printer! Books should be showing up at local bookstores, with backorders arriving in the mail. Thank you all for your interest and patience.
