Remembering Our Grandfathers?ÇÖ Exile: US Imprisonment of Hawai?Çÿi?ÇÖs Japanese in World War II
University of Hawaii Press
ISBN13:
9780824881207
$82.17
When author Gail Okawa was in high school, a neighbor mentioned that her maternal grandfather had been imprisoned in a World War II concentration camp on the mainland United States. Questioning her parents, she learned only that he came back a changed man. Years later, as an adult salvaging that grandfathers documents and memorabilia, she found a mysterious photo of a group of Japanese men standing in front of an adobe building with the sign Liaison Office. Not until she was the same age that her grandfather was at his arrest did she embark on a project to learn what happened to him. Remembering Our Grandfathers Exile: US Imprisonment of Hawaiis Japanese in World War II is a composite chronicling of the Hawaii Japanese immigrant experience in mainland exile and internment during WWIIfrom pre-war climate to arrest to exile to return. Told through the eyes of a granddaughter and researcher born during that war, it is also a research narrative that reveals parallels between pre-WWII conditions and current 21st century anti-immigrant attitudes and heightened racism. It includes an introduction of Okawas grandfather, Reverend Tamasaku Watanabe, a Protestant minister, and other Issei prisonersall legal immigrants excluded by law from citizenshipin 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. Okawa interweaves documents, personal and official, and internees first-hand accounts, letters, and poetry to create a narrative that not only conveys their experience but, equally important, exemplifies their literacy as ironic and deliberate acts of resistance to oppressive conditions. Her research also revealed that the Hawaii Issei/immigrants who had sons in military service were eventually distinguished from the main group; the narrative relates visits of some of those sons to their imprisoned fathers in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and elsewhere, as well as the deaths of sons killed in action in Europe and the Pacific. Documents demonstrate the high degree of literacy and advocacy among some of the internees, as well as the inherent injustice of the governments policies. Okawas project also expanded to include New Mexico residents having memories of the Santa Fe Internment Camp, witnesses who provide rare views of the wartime reality. This book is not intended to be a traditional history with historical analysis, nor is it an exhaustive or conclusive study. Rather it is a multivocal, multigenerational narrative that opens windows into a more complete understanding of the larger less-known Justice/War department internment story. Apart from internee memoirs, this is unique as a book-length study of the American internment of Hawaii Japanese immigrants that culminated in New Mexico.
- | Author: Gail Y. Okawa
- | Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
- | Publication Date: August 31, 2020
- | Number of Pages: 272 pages
- | Language: English
- | Binding: Hardcover
- | ISBN-10: 0824881206
- | ISBN-13: 9780824881207
- Author:
- Gail Y. Okawa
- Publisher:
- University of Hawaii Press
- Publication Date:
- August 31, 2020
- Number of pages:
- 272 pages
- Language:
- English
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- ISBN-10:
- 0824881206
- ISBN-13:
- 9780824881207