Three films will be available to screen virtually from Feb. 25 through March 12 at www.filmsofremembrance.org. In this program: “Enduring Democracy: The Monterey Petition” (2022, 67 min.) by David Schendel. The film examines how Monterey, Calif. was one of the only communities that publicly welcomed their Japanese neighbors back from the incarceration centers after WWII. […]
‘Before They Take Us Away’ tells the story of JAs during WWII that you may not be familiar with
February 16, 2023 by Leave a Comment
The history of Japanese American incarceration isn’t as unknown or forgotten as it used to be. Many more people today know about how more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry were sent to 10 concentration camps hastily built in inhospitable places in the American interior, away from their homes along the West Coast, during World […]
‘When You Leave’ explores the separation of friends and family in camps
February 16, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Writer-director Jason Yamamoto’s short film “When You Leave” focuses on Japanese American incarceration from a different perspective, exploring the emotional bonds that break when family members and friends take divergent paths from the close confinement of camp life. The film opens with a young man, Yukio, working as a farm laborer for two weeks. Then […]
Films of Remembrance, returns to S.F., S.J. Feb. 25-26
February 16, 2023 by Leave a Comment
The Nichi Bei Foundation presents the 12th annual Films of Remembrance, a showcase of films on the forced removal and incarceration of the Japanese American community in wartime concentration camps, on Saturday, Feb. 25 at the AMC Kabuki 8 in San Francisco’s Japantown and Sunday, Feb. 26 at the San Jose Betsuin Buddhist Church in […]
From Peru to California, a community remembers Japanese Latin American activist
February 2, 2023 by Leave a Comment
On her 87th birthday, Libia Hideko Yamamoto passed away after a long bout with illness. Born Dec. 3, 1935 in Chiclayo, Peru, she was one of more than 2,264 Japanese Latin American men, women and children the United States used in prisoner exchanges with Japan during World War II. Friends and family gathered at the […]
Drawing The True Tokyo Rose: Iva Toguri, an American
January 1, 2023 by Leave a Comment
TOKYO ROSE — ZERO HOUR By Andre Frattino and illustrated by Kate Kasenow. (North Clarendon, Vt., Tuttle Publishing, 2022, 128 pp., $16.99, hardcover) “Tokyo Rose — Zero Hour” is a graphic novel about Iva Toguri, a Japanese American woman who was trapped in Japan during World War II. Pressured to give up her U.S. citizenship, […]
Recollections from Jerome and Rohwer
January 1, 2023 by Leave a Comment
JEROME AND ROHWER: MEMORIES OF JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNMENT IN WORLD WAR II ARKANSAS Edited by Waltar M. Imahara and David E. Meltzer (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2022, 256 pp., $29.95, hardcover) In 2002-2004, I was honored to serve with two distinguished historical colleagues, Roger Daniels and the late Franklin Odo, as a co-consultant for […]
‘A heuristic model’ for historians to emulate with other camps
January 1, 2023 by Leave a Comment
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 […]
Roger Daniels, historian of the Nikkei experience, dies
December 22, 2022 by Leave a Comment
Historian Roger Daniels, whose early works documented and gave a respected voice to the Japanese American incarceration experience, died Dec. 9, 2022 in Bellevue, Wash., sources said, a week after celebrating his 95th birthday. Among Daniels’ iconic works was the groundbreaking “Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II,” which was published in 1972. […]
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Remembering Roger
The first book I read about Japanese American history was Roger Daniels’ book, “The Politics of Prejudice.” It was 1966, and in my research as a college freshman, it was the rare book on Japanese American history, one that began Roger’s long and illustrious career as a historian documenting the story of Japanese Americans and […]