"An Internment Odyssey: Haisho Tenten" Book Launch

Book Launch Party at JCCH!

An Internment Odyssey: Haisho Tenten

By Suikei Furuya

Translated by Tatsumi Hayashi

Published by the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii

The long awaited release of An Internment Odyssey: Haisho Tenten by Suikei Furuya, translated by Tatsumi Hayashi with a Foreword by Gary Y. Okihiro will be released by the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii on Saturday, February 18, 2017—75 years after Mr. Furuya was transferred from the Sand Island Internment Camp to the INS Immigration Station and before being sent from Hawai‘i to the mainland concentration camps. 

From the icy plains of Montana to the blistering deserts of New Mexico, the Honolulu businessman and poet Suikei Furuya would embark  on an internment odyssey which zigzagged through seven states and across eleven thousand miles. Mr. Furuya chronicled his World War II imprisonment and published his memoirs in Japan fifty years ago.  It took JCCH Resource Center volunteer Tatsumi Hayashi ten years to translate Mr. Furuya’s book. Now, for the first time, Haisho Tenten: An Internment Odyssey is available in English. Laced throughout with poems from Furuya’s exile, it depicts the efforts of internees to bring dignity and joy to their lives under imprisonment. An Internment Odyssey poses questions still relevant today about the roles that race and ethnicity play in defining what it means to be loyal to our nation.

The program will include a panel discussion with Tatsumi Hayashi, Sheila Chun, Brian Niiya and a member of the Furuya family.  

For more information or to RSVP please call (808) 945-7633 or email programs@jcch.com.