“The Pine and the Cherry,” a tale of one family’s 100-year history and its involvement in the Japanese-American internment during World War II, will be presented at Clallam County libraries this weekend.
Humanities Washington speaker Mayumi Tsutakawa, a writer and curator, will speak at the Clallam Bay Library, 16990 state Highway 112, at 5 tonight.
She will make her presentation at the Forks Library, 171 S. Forks Ave., at noon Saturday.
Tsutakawa will talk at the Port Angeles Library, 2210 S. Peabody St., at 4 p.m. Saturday.
She presented her lecture at the Sequim Library on Thursday.
Admission is free.
In Port Angeles, her story will be presented against the backdrop of a traveling exhibit, “The Tragedy of War: Japanese-American Internment,” which will be on display at the library through April 27.
This year is the 75th anniversary of Japanese-American internment in concentration camps during World War II.
Tsutakawa also will speak at the Jefferson County Library, 620 Cedar Ave. in Port Hadlock, at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 19. Her presentation will be the library’s final 2017 Inquiring Mind Lecture. Admission is free. Seating is limited.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on Feb. 19, 1942, following the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, that propelled the U.S. into the war.
The order, supported by Congress and the Supreme Court, forced those born in Japan, as well as their American-citizen offspring, to be sent to concentration camps. On the West Coast, 120,000 Japanese, two-thirds of them American citizens, were forced into camps to live under armed guard. When they returned, most had lost everything.
“The Tragedy of War” exhibit asks the question: At what point should the rights of citizens be limited or denied to ensure the nation is secure?
The exhibit is provided by Kennesaw State University’s Museum of History and Holocaust Education.
Additional information about the exhibit, including study guides, can be found at http://tinyurl.com/PDN-tragedyofwar.
Tsutakawa, whose father was sculptor George Tsutakawa, co-edited “The Forbidden Stitch: Asian American Women’s Literary Anthology,” which received the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award.
She also edited two books on pioneer Asian-American artists: “They Painted from Their Hearts” and “Turning Shadows into Light.”
For more information about the North Olympic Library System presentations in Clallam County, see www.nols.org.
For more about the Jefferson County Library program, see www.jclibrary.info or call 360-385-6544.
