JAPANESE AMERICANS AT HEART MOUNTAIN: Networks, Power, and Everyday Life By Saara Kekki (Norman, Okla.: University of Oklahoma Press, 2022, 246 pp., $39.95, hardcover) Having read in Saara Kekki’s Acknowledgements within the book under review that its contents had been favorably vetted by three historians of the Japanese American World War II experience that I […]
Interrogating the memoir of a resister
July 21, 2022 by Leave a Comment
BEYOND THE BETRAYAL: The Memoir of a World War II Japanese American Draft Resister of Conscience By Yoshito Kuromiya, edited by Arthur A. Hansen (Louisville, Colo.: University Press of Colorado, 2022, 234 pp. $34.95 hard cover) Be sure to read the Endnotes to Yosh Kuromiya’s new posthumous memoir. They’re half the fun of reading this […]
A classroom favorite and must-have for families
January 1, 2022 by Leave a Comment
Hello Maggie! Revised 2nd Edition By Shigeru Yabu, illustrated by Willie Ito (Camarillo, Calif.: Yabitoon Books, 2021, 42 pp., $19.95, paperback) “Hello Maggie!” is the true childhood story of author Shig Yabu and his best friend, a magpie named Maggie. It is also a chronicle of Shig and his family’s forced removal from their life […]
Book on Heart Mountain football team achieves brilliance
July 22, 2021 by Leave a Comment
THE EAGLES OF HEART MOUNTAIN: A TRUE STORY OF FOOTBALL, INCARCERATION, AND RESISTANCE IN WORLD WAR II AMERICA By Bradford Pearson (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021, 400 pp., $28, hard cover) For a number of years I have been working on a sports and society book treating the social and cultural transformation of Southern California in the early Cold War period through the lens of prep football as epitomized by a Dec. 14, 1956, California Interscholastic Federation championship game between Downey High School […]
Film uncovers little-known story of music in camp by incarcerated Nikkei
February 18, 2020 by Leave a Comment
“For Joy,†a film by Julian Saporiti and the No-No Boy project, tells the little-known story of a Nikkei teenager who sang with a jazz band formed in the World War II concentration camp for Japanese Americans at Heart Mountain, Wyo. The story also sheds light on a hidden history — the music played during […]
Yosh Kuromiya, who resisted wartime draft from Heart Mountain camp, dies
August 2, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Yoshito “Yosh” Kuromiya, an artist, landscape architect and World War II draft resister living in Alhambra, Calif., passed away on July 24, 2018 in Los Angeles. He was 95. He was the fifth of six children born to Hisamitsu and Hana Tada Kuromiya, both from Okayama Prefecture, Japan. When World War II broke out, the […]
‘Jewel’ of a tribute to Heart Mountain
July 19, 2018 by Leave a Comment
MOVING WALLS: THE BARRACKS OF AMERICA’S CONCENTRATION CAMPS By Sharon Yamato (Washington: National Park Service, 2017, 64 pp., $19.95, paperback) Sharon Yamato is truly a lovely person. She is also a lyrical writer, a seasoned journalist, a capable historian, a skilled interviewer, an accomplished curator and a talented filmmaker. The daughter of parents who were […]
Nikkei honored for donating photo collection
June 6, 2018 by Leave a Comment
Patti Hirahara of Anaheim, Calif., who donated her family’s concentration camp photo collection to Washington State University Libraries’ Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections Department, received the Honorary Alumna Award from the WSU Alumni Association in April. Hirahara was also honored for educating the public about the Japanese American wartime incarceration experience. She is the first […]
A case study of Heart Mountain’s draft resisters and military service
January 1, 2018 by Leave a Comment
WYOMING SAMURAI: THE WORLD WAR II WARRIORS OF HEART MOUNTAIN By Mike Mackey (Cody, Wyo.: Western History Publications, 2015, 181 pp., $18.95, paperback) This is Mike Mackey’s fifth and, apparently, final book centered on the World War II experience of the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in northwest Wyoming. Mackey, who has made his home in […]
Little Tokyo community discusses concerns and fears about Trump
November 17, 2016 by Leave a Comment
LOS ANGELES — Japanese Americans and friends gathered for a meeting held at the Japanese American National Museum Nov. 13 to discuss their concerns and fears about how President-elect Donald Trump and his administration might affect the nation and this community. Bill Watanabe, retired executive director of the Little Tokyo Service Center, revealed to the […]
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