“A Celebration of Art Hansen” was the centerpiece of the first-ever Nichi Bei Book Fest in San Francisco Japantown on July 27. Art and wife Debbie caught Covid from a cruise the week before so had to join us by Zoom in the Koho Co-Creative Space in the Peace Plaza, but it was still a celebratory event with stories told, tributes made, and city proclamations presented. Continue reading REVIEW: “A Capstone Collection from a Beloved Historian”
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
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
We mourn the loss of the dean of Japanese American camp history. Roger Daniels passed away peacefully in Bellevue, Washington, on December 9, surrounded by family, a week after celebrating his 95th birthday.
Continue reading In Memoriam: Roger Daniels, the dean of incarceration camp history
Review of BEYOND THE BETRAYAL: The Memoir of a World War II Japanese American Draft Resister of Conscience by Yoshito Kuromiya, edited by Arthur A. Hansen.
University Press of Colorado. 234 pages. Hardcover, $34.95.
Reviewed by Frank Abe
Nichi Bei Weekly
July 21-August 3, 2022
Be sure to read the Endnotes to Yosh Kuromiya’s new posthumous memoir. They’re half the fun of reading this book.
Continue reading REVIEW: “Interrogating the memoir of a resister”
It’s been nearly fifty years since I graduated from Cowell College at the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1973. Organizers of the Class of ’72 reunion asked me to take part in their Alumni Week events and I will be glad to catch up with old friends.
Continue reading Interview: “(Nearly) Everything I Know about the Creative Process I Learned at Cowell College”
February was certainly a month dominated by speaking engagements around the Day of Remembrance and the 80th anniversary of the signing of EO 9066. My schedule for this spring and summer is lining up to be a season of professional development workshops to train the trainers, both educators and lawyers.
Continue reading A season of professional development workshops
In Seattle, the North American Post is the successor to the prewar Hokubei Jiji newspaper that Fuyo Tanagi helped edit, before she wrote the letter protesting the drafting of Nisei boys from camp for the Mothers Society of Minidoka. So it is an honor to be interviewed by Elaine Ikoma Ko in this wide-ranging exchange on No-No Boy, John Okada and We Hereby Refuse for the cover of the current issue of the Post.
Read the interview in the North American Post here.
Continue reading The North American Post interview
As a community we are grieving the loss of Holly Yasui, youngest daughter of Min Yasui and producer/director of the award-winning film, Never Give Up!: Minoru Yasui and the Fight for Justice.
When we staged the first Day of Remembrance 43 years ago, we had no idea how it would persist to become an invented tradition to be observed wherever Japanese Americans live. This year it’s a weekend more crowded than ever with five events at which I’ve been asked to speak. One consequence of pandemic isolation is the ability to be anywhere with Zoom, so I agreed to two events on Saturday and three on Sunday, covering all angles of resistance to wartime incarceration and the echoes to today:
SEATTLE, WA
Saturday, February 20, 2021, 11:00 am PT
Wing Luke Museum virtual tour of INS Building
A key scene in our graphic novel We Hereby Refuse takes place inside the U.S. Immigration Station, on the edge of Seattle’s Chinatown, where 100 immigrant Issei were held after their arrest by the FBI two months after Pearl Harbor. I’ll join the virtual tour as a guest speaker to show scenes from our book of the detention of Jim Akutsu’s father inside the Immigration Station, and also read from my father’s own memoir about his detention there in the 1930’s. Register here.
SEATTLE, WA
Saturday, February 20, 2021, 2:00 pm PT
Wing Luke Museum online book launch
Copies of our graphic novel won’t be ready for sale until March, but we’re going ahead with the Day of Remembrance launch of We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration. I’ll unpack how the structure of the book and its narrative arc upend the usual expectations around camp stories, Tamiko Nimura will read from a scene with her uncle Hiroshi Kashiwagi, and artists Ross Ishikawa and Matt Sasaki will break down their process. To get the Zoom link to watch, you’ll need to register here.
PUYALLUP, WA
Sunday, February 21, 2021, 1:00 pm PT
Tsuru for Solidary car caravan for Seattle’s Day of Remembrance
In advance of a Day of Remembrance car caravan from the Puyallup Fairgrounds to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, I’ve recorded a video greeting that links the first Day of Remembrance at the fairgrounds in 1978 to the ongoing need to press for release of asylum-seekers still held at the GEO Group private prison operated on behalf of ICE. “Another Time, Another Place” is sponsored by Tsuru for Solidarity, La Resistencia, Densho, the Minidoka Pilgrimage Planning Committee, Seattle JACL, and Puyallup Valley JACL.
[UPDATE: Here’s the four-minute video greeting from the blog’s YouTube channel]
MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL, MN
Sunday, Feb. 21, 2021, 4:00 – 6:00 pm CT
Twin Cities JACL Day of Remembrance
A Twin Cities coalition is screening Conscience and the Constitution for its Day of Remembrance, after which I’ll join an online discussion with Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and Japanese American and Muslim students from the University of Minnesota. Moderated by Twin Cities JACL chapter president Vinicius Taguchi.
[UPDATE: Watch my opening comments and the post-screening discussion, courtesy of the East Freedom Library YouTube channel]
SAN JOSE, CA
Sunday, February 21, 2021, 6:00 pm PT
45th anniversary screening of Farewell to Manzanar
West Wind Capitol Drive-in Theater
3630 Hillcap Avenue
Saving the fun one for last: I was a featured actor in the 1976 TV-movie, Farewell to Manzanar, and was prevailed upon by publisher Kenji Taguma to organize and moderate a virtual cast and crew reunion prior to the COVID-safe screening of the film at a San Jose drive-in theater. We just recorded the Zoom gathering and those in their cars at the screening will hear some truly great stories. It’s sponsored by the Nichi Bei Foundation as the closing night event of its 10th anniversary Films of Remembrance series. Read the Nichi Bei Weekly article about it.
[UPDATE: For the live audience at the drive-in, a 20-minute video was screened. Here is the 28-minute “director’s cut,” produced and edited by Greg Viloria, courtesy of the Nichi Bei Foundation YouTube channel]
