resisters

[resisters]

Okada graffiti preserved at historic Nippon-kan Theater

The Okada signature survives! When I first came to Seattle in 1977, poet and playwright Garrett Hongo brought me backstage to the empty Nippon-kan Theater to show me a wall of graffiti with the name of a juvenile John Okada, painstaking inked into the stone. It was like touching a piece of history. Frank Chin used the space in the 1980s to direct the play Lady is Dying by Lonny Kaneko and Amy…

[resisters]

"The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration" published today as a Penguin Classic

The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration hits bookstore shelves today. You will finally be able to walk into a shop and buy a copy to take home. With their iconic black-and-white-and-orange covers, everyone has read or seen a Penguin Classic at some point in their lifetime. Whenever a character carries one in a movie, it’s a visual shorthand to signal the character is a scholar or book…

[resisters]

Video livestream: Short films on the Heart Mountain resisters

May 11, 2024 will be the 22nd anniversary of National JACL’s apology in 2002 to what Paul Tsuneishi liked to call the “resisters of conscience.” To mark the occasion, Kimiko Marr and Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages are producing a video livestream this Tuesday, May 14th, at 5:00 pm PDT/ 8:00 pm EDT that I’ve agreed to host.  The films to be livestreamed are: “United States of America vs.…

[resisters]

Mystery writers honor John Okada at Left Coast Crime convention

Mystery writers honor John Okada at Left Coast Crime convention

In addition to the presentation of awards for best new mysteries, the writers and fans at the annual Left Coast Crime convention. also recognize a “Ghost of Honor,” someone who is no longer with us who inspires them. For their 2024 Seattle Shakedown convention in Bellevue, the writers and fans recognized novelist John Okada in his centennial year as their Ghost of Honor. Okada’s acclaimed novel…

[resisters]

Audiobook and table of contents for Penguin anthology

The square artwork for the audiobook version of “The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration.” I could not believe there would be interest in an audiobook of our anthology of camp literature coming May 14, but as a Facebook friend pointed out, having a set of audio readings is not just entertainment for long road trips or jogging with earbuds, but an essential access for the visually…

[resisters]

Events for the Day of Remembrance 2024

pdates on the Event page SEATTLE, WA Monday, February 12, 2024, 6:00-8:00 pm UW Nikkei Student Union Day of Remembrance program HUB Lyceum Speaking on “Resistance, Redress, and the Day of Remembrance,” I will link the camp resistance in We Hereby Refuse to the constitutional stand for redress brought forward by the first Day of Remembrance, for the University of Washington Nikkei Student…

[resisters]

New animation puts drawings of "We Hereby Refuse" into motion

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[resisters]

Project to translate and republish the literary magazines of Tule Lake

Tule Lake is the final frontier for the study of Japanese American incarceration. After 80 years, the Segregation Center at Tule Lake remains the least-understood and most-avoided subject in polite Japanese American society. And the fiction and poetry written by the Issei and Kibei Nisei during this tumultuous period and published in the camp’s literary magazines has languished unread by those…

[resisters]

Evoking the Postwar Seattle Chinatown of John Okada

A slide from the presentation of Dr. Marie Rose Wong THERE ARE STORES on King Street, which is one block to the south of Jackson Street. Over the stores are hotels housed in ugly structures of brick more black than red with age and neglect. The stores are cafes and open-faced groceries and taverns and dry goods shops, and then there are the stores with plate glass windows painted green or covered…

[resisters]

From Page to Stage: Adapting NO-NO BOY for Today's Theater

Photo: Elaine Ikoma Ko Many thanks to Seattle Rep Literary Manager and Dramaturg Paul Adolphsen for so expertly leading the October 24 panel on our work to adapt John Okada’s No-No Boy for the theater. This was the second in the series of panels I’ve been curating for the Seattle Public Library on the occasion of the John Okada Centennial. Photo: Elaine Ikoma Ko To open the discussion with the…

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Full house for kickoff of the John Okada Centennial

John Okada never received the recognition he deserved in his lifetime. Since then, his work has earned him a place in world literature. I’d like to think Okada would have been pleased to see the turnout in his hometown on the occasion of his 100th birthday and the kickoff of the John Okada Centennial celebration. photo: Thanh Tan photo: Carmen Espanol By the day of the event on September 26, the…

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New adaptation of "NO-NO BOY" workshopped at Seattle Rep

One-hundred years ago today, John Okada was born in Seattle. It’s also a day on which I can finally share more about the script I’m developing for a new stage adaption of Okada’s landmark novel, No-No Boy. Noted stage directgor Desdemona Chiang For four days this week I’ve had the privilege of working with the Seattle Rep, our flagship regional theater, under the auspices of “The Other Season,”…

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Seattle Public Library celebrates the John Okada Centennial

Novelist John Okada would have been 100 years old had he lived to September 22, 2023. To celebrate his legacy and honor his work in writing the great Japanese American novel, The Seattle Public Library has engaged me to curate a series of programs around the John Okada Centennial. Here is their announcement: CELEBRATE THE CENTENNIAL OF THE BIRTH OF JOHN OKADA, AUTHOR OF ‘NO-NO BOY,’ THIS FALL…

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Coming May 2024: The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration

Floyd Cheung and I are pleased to announce that our new anthology, The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration, will be published as a Penguin Classic on May 14, 2024. You can now pre-order the book from your neighborhood independent bookstore, or from one of these online sellers: I am grateful to Floyd for inviting me on this journey six years ago. We kicked it around and settled on the…

[resisters]

In Memoriam: Martha Nakagawa, resistance storyteller

This is one of the hardest things I’ve had to contemplate writing. These In Memoriam posts have mostly been devoted to celebrating the lives and marking the passage of Nisei wartime resisters and those whose lives they’ve touched. I know I’m not alone in still being in a state of shock at having to memorialize the life of someone so young and vital as Martha Nakagawa of Los Angeles. With Martha…

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Finding the original location of the Tule Lake Stockade

The Tule Lake Stockade was “an instrument of terror in camp. You could be arrested with no hearing and no charge, just picked up. You didn’t know who you could talk to safely, or what to say. If you were picked up, what you said was the reason. And whoever heard that might be the inu who informed on you. This created real paranoia in camp.” That’s how Tule Lake Committee board president Hiroshi…

[resisters]

Putting John Okada on the Seattle Literary Map

Thanks to Seattle City of Literature, we’ve put John Okada on the map — the Seattle Literary Map.  It’s with good reason that Seattle is one of two U.S. cities to be designated as a UNESCO City of Literature. Besides our active literary scene, it was the birthplace or home to some of America’s most notable writers, including the author of No-No Boy. The Seattle Literary Map features over 90…