by Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura, Illustrated by Ross Ishikawa and Matt Sasaki
Chin Music
5/18/2021, paperback
SKU: 9781634059763
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.
About the Contributors:
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.
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.
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.
Matt Sasaki is the artist on Fighting for America: Nisei Soldiers. He lives with his wife and an old dog north of Seattle.