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

UH 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
UH Press and Hamilton Library, Mānoa Campus

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

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