This program is presented by the Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle Public Library Foundation, The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience and Densho and will be (virtually) hosted by Seattle Public Library as a Zoom webinar. Registration is required and is free. While we have sold out of tickets that include a copy of the book signed by Frank Abe, it is still possible to order signed copies of the book from Elliott Bay Book Company (see blue link below).

Zoom links will be sent out via Eventbrite one day before the event.

Tonight we look forward to a program featuring the writers and illustrator of We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration, published by Seattle's Chin Music Press. Frank Abe, Tamiko Namura and Ross Ishikawa will appear in conversation with Tom Ikeda, Executive Director of Densho.

About We Hereby Refuse:

Three voices. Three acts of defiance. One mass injustice. The story of camp as you’ve never seen it before. Japanese Americans complied when evicted from their homes in World War II -- but many refused to submit to imprisonment in American concentration camps without a fight. In this groundbreaking graphic novel, meet JIM AKUTSU, the inspiration for John Okada’s No-No Boy, who refuses to be drafted from the camp at Minidoka when classified as a non-citizen, an enemy alien; HIROSHI KASHIWAGI, who resists government pressure to sign a loyalty oath at Tule Lake, but yields to family pressure to renounce his U.S. citizenship; and MITSUYE ENDO, a reluctant recruit to a lawsuit contesting her imprisonment, who refuses a chance to leave the camp at Topaz so that her case could reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Based upon painstaking research, We Hereby Refuse presents an original vision of America’s past with disturbing links to the American present.

Frank Abe is writer/director of the film on the largest organized resistance to incarceration, Conscience and the Constitution (PBS), and co-editor of JOHN OKADA: The Life and Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy (University of Washington Press). He has gathered the stories of camp resistance ever since playing a JACL leader in the 1976 NBC-TV movie, Farewell to Manzanar. He blogs at resisters.com.

Tamiko Nimura is an Asian American (Sansei/Pinay) writer living in Tacoma, Washington. Her training in literature and American ethnic studies (MA, PhD, University of Washington) prepared her to research, document, and tell the stories of people of color. She can be found at http://www.tamikonimura.net.

Ross Ishikawa is a cartoonist and animator living in Seattle. In addition to his work on We Hereby Refuse, he is working on a graphic novel about his parents and their coming of age during World War II. His work is online at rossishikawa.com.

Tom Ikeda, the founding Executive Director of Densho, is a sansei (third generation Japanese American) who was born and raised in Seattle. Tom’s parents and grandparents were incarcerated during World War II at Minidoka, Idaho.