Category Archives: “We Hereby Refuse”

New Educators Guide for “WE HEREBY REFUSE,” with online historical timeline

Educators Guide cover
Click on the image to open the new Educators Guide for WE HEREBY REFUSE

Just in time for the NCORE Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education this Friday in Portland, we are pleased to launch publication of the Educators Guide for We Hereby Refuse.

Produced for the Wing Luke Museum of Seattle, this free online guide is suitable for teachers in grades 6-12. Continue reading New Educators Guide for “WE HEREBY REFUSE,” with online historical timeline

AKCHO Award for outstanding original research

Many thanks to AKCHO: The Association of King County Historical Organizations for honoring our book with the Virginia Marie Folkins Award for Outstanding Historical Publication. It’s our first juried award and it’s especially meaningful as the Folkens Award recognizes works that demonstrate “outstanding original research.”
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Interview: “(Nearly) Everything I Know about the Creative Process I Learned at Cowell College”

Alumni Week logoIt’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”

A season of professional development workshops

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.
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National Day of Remembrance tops February events

As the month for the annual Day of Remembrance, February is always the busiest time of year for speaking requests. This year being the 80th anniversary of EO 9066, A friend counted 33 DOR events nationwide. I have nine on the books myself, a personal record, including four on February 19th.
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The North American Post interview

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

In Memoriam: Holly Yasui

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.

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The Alien Enemy Hearing Boards at Fort Missoula

drawing of FBI interrogation
from “We Hereby Refuse,” Chin Music Press, artwork by Ross Ishikawa

At this weekend’s education conference for the Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium, we’ll get a  virtual tour of the restored courtroom at Fort Missoula, and I’ll show how we used a transcript of a hearing inside that courtroom for a key scene in our graphic novel, We Hereby Refuse.

Continue reading The Alien Enemy Hearing Boards at Fort Missoula