Author and lawyer Susan H. Kamei will discuss her book, “When Can We Go Back to America?” on “Vroman’s Live” at 6 p.m. Tuesday.
“Vroman’s Live” is Vroman’s Bookstore’s online discussion series where authors and their works are introduced.
On Tuesday, Kamei converses with Teresa Watanabe, staff writer at the Los Angeles Times.
In the book, a dramatic and page-turning narrative history of Japanese Americans before, during, and after their World War II incarceration, Kamei weaves the voices of over 130 individuals who lived through the episode, most of them as young adults.
After the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941, the U.S. Government decided to forcibly remove more than 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from the Pacific Coast and put them in detention camps just because of their race.
Described by former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Norman Y. Mineta as a “landmark book,” “When Can We Go Back to America?” tells how he and others lived through the harrowing experience and the long-term impact of this dark period in American history.
The book is published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
Kamei received her JD from the Georgetown University Law Center. She teaches at USC on the legal ramifications of the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and how they apply to constitutional issues, civil liberties, and national security considerations today.
A granddaughter of Japanese immigrants, Kamei’s maternal grandparents were part of the Japanese classical music community in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, and her paternal grandparents were vegetable farmers in Orange County.
During World War II, her mother and her parents were incarcerated at the Santa Anita Assembly Center in Arcadia and at the War Relocation Authority camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Her father, together with his grandparents, parents, and siblings, were detained at a camp known as Poston II in Arizona.
Kamei graduated from UC Irvine with bachelor degrees in Russian and Linguistics, summa cum laude, and received her JD from the Georgetown University Law Center, where she was an editor of the Georgetown Law Journal.
From the time she was in law school in Washington, D.C. and while she practiced corporate law, Kamei was a member of the legislative strategy team for the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) in the successful passage of federal legislation that provided redress to Japanese Americans for their wartime incarceration.
Joining the online discussion on Tuesday is free. Just register early on Crowdcast, www.crowdcast.io/e/an51m2pv, to save your space.
For more information, call (626) 449-5320 or visit www.vromansbookstore.com.
