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Remembering Our Grandfathers’ Exile – from Hawaii
Remembering Our Grandfathers’ Exile: The Imprisonment of Hawai`i’s Japanese in World War II, a book talk presented by Gail Okawa.
Sat. April 17, 1 to 2 p.m. via Zoom. Co-sponsored by the National Japanese American Historical Society and the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation
Join us for an illustrated talk and a live Q and A by Gail Okawa, who was inspired by her grandfather Reverend Tamasaku Watanabe’s arrest and internment by the Department of Justice to embark on an 18-year journey to research the story of the over 600 Japanese internees from Hawai`i sent to the U.S. continent. Her story presents their arrest in Hawai`i, arrival at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, and odyssey of detention across the American West. Okawa uses poetry, letters, and photographs to show the ordeals these men lived through, including loss of sons in the U.S. Army. Author and scholar Gary Okihiro calls the book “remarkable and moving.”
Gail Y. Okawa is professor emerita of English at Youngstown State University, Ohio, and a visiting scholar at the Center for Biographical Research, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
