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
Our favorite novel is getting more exposure in Europe.
I’m unexpectedly representing Seattle as a UNESCO City of Literature at the Scottish International Storytelling Festival. For the program on Thursday, October 21, I will virtually present two stories about John Okada and the writing of No-No Boy. Continue reading Bringing John Okada to the global stage
After nearly two years, it felt great to be able to share our new graphic novel with a live audience.
Continue reading First in-person book event for ‘WE HEREBY REFUSE”
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:
Continue reading First preview of our forthcoming anthology of camp literature
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.
Continue reading Back orders for “WE HEREBY REFUSE” now shipping
It’s not often a book gets four minutes of TV coverage, so check out this feature that aired tonight on KIRO7 News in Seattle by clicking on the image.
Continue reading “Western Washington Gets Real” about “WE HEREBY REFUSE”
There was no reason on earth for me to have been born in Cleveland, Ohio, other than the policy of the War Relocation Authority to disperse families released from camp to cities in the East and Midwest.
That’s the untapped history explored by Edgar Award-winning mystery novelist Naomi Hirahara in her groundbreaking new book CLARK AND DIVISION, centered on the postwar resettlement of Japanese Americans in Chicago. We had a delightful virtual conversation for the Elliott Bay Book Company on August 16:
Continue reading Postwar resettlement of Japanese Americans in Chicago explored in new mystery
“Seattle Now & Then” is a long-time fixture of Seattle media created by historian and photographer Paul Dorpat in 1982. The column is now produced by historian and photographer Jean Sherrard, who published the feature below on our graphic novel in the Seattle Times, online on August 5, 2021, and in the Pacific NW Magazine of the print Times on August 8, 2021. Jean also posted a 12-minute audio interview with Frank Abe on YouTube, shared below.
Continue reading “Seattle Now & Then” at King Street Station
