The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration hits bookstore shelves today. You will finally be able to walk into a shop and buy a copy to take home. With their iconic black-and-white-and-orange covers, everyone has read or seen a Penguin Classic at some point in their lifetime. Whenever a character carries one in a movie, it’s a visual shorthand to signal the character is a scholar or book nerd. Continue reading “The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration” published today as a Penguin Classic
All posts by Frank Abe
Video livestream: Three short films on the Heart Mountain resisters
May 11, 2024 will be the 22nd anniversary of National JACL’s apology in 2002 to what Paul Tsuneishi liked to call the “resisters of conscience.” To mark the occasion, Kimiko Marr and Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages are producing a video livestream this Tuesday, May 14th, at 5:00 pm PDT/ 8:00 pm EDT that I’ve agreed to host. Continue reading Video livestream: Three short films on the Heart Mountain resisters
Mystery writers honor John Okada at Left Coast Crime convention
In addition to the presentation of awards for best new mysteries, the writers and fans at the annual Left Coast Crime convention. also recognize a “Ghost of Honor,” someone who is no longer with us who inspires them. For their 2024 Seattle Shakedown convention in Bellevue, the writers and fans recognized novelist John Okada in his centennial year as their Ghost of Honor. Continue reading Mystery writers honor John Okada at Left Coast Crime convention
Now online: the Fair Play Committee files from the National Archives
This year we observe the 80th anniversary of the trial of 63 members of the Fair Play Committee at Heart Mountain for draft resistance, and the subsequent trial of the FPC steering committee for conspiracy to counsel draft evasion. Now, thanks to six years of work by staff of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, we are able to view online the personal WRA files kept on those members of the largest organized resistance to incarceration, the story documented in our PBS film, Conscience and the Constitution. You can see the files by opening the box below:
Continue reading Now online: the Fair Play Committee files from the National Archives
Audiobook and table of contents for Penguin anthology
I could not believe there would be interest in an audiobook of our anthology of camp literature coming May 14, but as a Facebook friend pointed out, having a set of audio readings is not just entertainment for long road trips or jogging with earbuds, but an essential access for the visually impaired. Continue reading Audiobook and table of contents for Penguin anthology
Five Events for the 2024 Day of Remembrance
Who knew when we started the Day of Remembrance that I’d still be talking about it 45 years later. Nevertheless, here we are, hitting the road for five DOR events in 2024. For further updates as the month progresses, check the Events page.
Continue reading Five Events for the 2024 Day of Remembrance
New animation puts drawings of “We Hereby Refuse” into motion
After two years in the making, congratulations to Shannon Gee and her team at the Seattle Channel for producing this animation of the Jim Akutsu story from We Hereby Refuse.
The 14-minute video makes its cable-tv debut tonight at 7:00 pm as part of their award-winning “Community Stories” series. The animation very cleverly adds motion to the drawings of Ross Ishikawa in capturing just the first part of the Akutsu story from the arrest of his father up to the family’s arrival at the Puyallup Assembly Center, with a full rundown of the JACL collaboration that Jim detested.
Continue reading New animation puts drawings of “We Hereby Refuse” into motion
Project to translate and republish the literary magazines of Tule Lake
Tule Lake is the final frontier for the study of Japanese American incarceration. After 80 years, the Segregation Center at Tule Lake remains the least-understood and most-avoided subject in polite Japanese American society. And the fiction and poetry written by the Issei and Kibei Nisei during this tumultuous period and published in the camp’s literary magazines has languished unread by those who can’t read Japanese. A new project launched last month at the University of California at Berkeley promises to change that. Continue reading Project to translate and republish the literary magazines of Tule Lake
Evoking the Postwar Seattle Chinatown of John Okada
THERE ARE STORES on King Street, which is one block to the south of Jackson Street. Over the stores are hotels housed in ugly structures of brick more black than red with age and neglect. Continue reading Evoking the Postwar Seattle Chinatown of John Okada
From Page to Stage: Adapting NO-NO BOY for Today’s Theater
Many thanks to Seattle Rep Literary Manager and Dramaturg Paul Adolphsen for so expertly leading the October 24 panel on our work to adapt John Okada’s No-No Boy for the theater. This was the second in the series of panels I’ve been curating for the Seattle Public Library on the occasion of the John Okada Centennial.
Continue reading From Page to Stage: Adapting NO-NO BOY for Today’s Theater