The Oceanside Public Library, in partnership with the Japanese American Historical Society of San Diego (JAHSSD), will present an online panel discussion about this year’s selection of They Called Us Enemy, a graphic novel by George Takei for “One Book, One San Diego,” with the purpose of bringing community closer together through the shared experience of reading and discussing the same book.
In this one-hour online event on Tuesday, September 29 at 11:00 am., a brief history of San Diego’s Japanese American community will be followed by panelists’ personal stories, detailing and comparing their experiences with those described by the author in the book.
They Called Us Enemy is a memoir that tells the story of Takei and his family’s imprisonment in internment camps during World War II. There will be an opportunity to ask questions of the two panelists; Jack Kubota, who was interned in a camp at Poston, Arizona in 1942 at the age of 13, and later went on to graduate from University of California at Berkeley with a degree in Engineering; and Kay Ochi, whose parents were incarcerated at the Poston, Arizona camp. Ochi worked on the campaign for reparations with Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress (NCRR) and continues her involvement with this organization today. The panel will be moderated by Linda Canada, who served as archivist and past president of JAHSSD.
