Author reflects on family’s WWII ordeal

Professor Gail Okawa will give an illustrated talk about her grandfather’s incarceration during World War II, when Hawaii’s Japanese immigrants were exiled to mainland prison camps, at 11 a.m. Saturday at Hawaii’s Plantation Village in Waipahu.

She will share stories from her book, “Remembering Our Grandfathers’ Exile: US Imprisonment of Hawaii’s Japanese in World War II,” published in 2020 by the University of Hawai‘i Press.

Her book describes the suffering, challenges and survival of her grandfather the Rev. Tamasaku Watanabe, a Protestant minister on the Big Island, and other issei (first-generation) legal immigrants, who were arrested by the U.S. Justice and War departments after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Her sources include internees’ firsthand accounts, letters, poetry and other documents.

Okawa, a retired English professor at Youngstown State University in Ohio, was a visiting scholar at the University of Hawaii’s Center for Biographical Research from 2003 to 2019. A limited number of books will be available for $26.

For information, call 808-677-0110 or email waipahu.hpv@gmail.com. The village is at 94-695 Waipahu St.