Speaking with ‘Authority’

Mira Shimabukuro (second from right), a lecturer in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at University of Washington, Bothell, visited the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo on May 13 to discuss her new book, “Relocating Authority: Japanese Americans Writing to Redress Mass Incarceration” (University Press of Colorado), which shows how writing was used privately and publicly to individually survive and collectively resist the conditions of the wartime confinement. The talk was moderated by Dr. Thomas Fujita-Rony (left), associate professor of Asian American studies at CSU Fullerton. Shimabukuro thanked her mentors and advisors who attended the reading: Professor Lane Hirabayashi (back row, left) of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, archival researcher Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga (front row, second from left), mystery and nonfiction writer Naomi Hirahara (center), and author, filmmaker and curator Karen Ishizuka (right). (J.K. YAMAMOTO/Rafu Shimpo)