Book talk: Gail Okawa: Remembering Our Grandfathers’ Exile

February 8, 4:00pm - 5:00pm
Mānoa Campus, In Person - Hamilton Library Room 306 or Zoom - Register below

51²è¹Ý Press 75th Anniversary Book Talk Series

Gail Y. Okawa is professor emerita of English at Youngstown State University, Ohio, and was a visiting scholar at the Center for Biographical Research, University of Hawai‘i at ²ÑÄå²Ô´Ç²¹.

Remembering Our Grandfathers’ Exile: US Imprisonment of Hawai’i’s Japanese in World War II is a composite chronicling of the Hawai‘i Japanese immigrant experience in mainland exile and internment during World War II, from pre-war climate to arrest to exile to return. Told through the eyes of a granddaughter and researcher born during the war, it is also a research narrative that reveals parallels between pre-WWII conditions and current twenty-first century anti-immigrant attitudes and heightened racism. The book introduces Okawa’s grandfather, Reverend Tamasaku Watanabe, a Protestant minister, and other Issei prisoners―all legal immigrants excluded by law from citizenship―in a collective biographical narrative that depicts their suffering, challenges, and survival as highly literate men faced with captivity in the little-known prison camps run by the U.S. Justice and War Departments.


Ticket Information
Register in advance for the zoom access to this meeting

Event Sponsor
51²è¹Ý Press and Hamilton Library, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Clem Guthro, 8089567205, guthroc@hawaii.edu

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