Dr. Gail Okawa, granddaughter of a Japanese Christian minister from Hawai‘i who was imprisoned in U.S.
internment camps during World War II, will present an illustrated talk based on her 18-year book project,
Remembering Our Grandfathers’ Exile: U.S. Imprisonment of Hawai‘i’s Japanese in World War II.
Her presentation will recount her personal journey of discovery—learning what happened to her maternal
grandfather, Rev. Tamasaku Watanabe, who was arrested immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Along with hundreds of other Japanese from Hawai‘i, he was exiled from the islands and sent to U.S.
Justice and War Department camps in Louisiana, Montana, and New Mexico. Others were imprisoned at
Honouliuli Internment Camp on O‘ahu.

Dr. Okawa also uncovered stories of fathers held in these camps whose sons served in the highly decorated Nisei units—the 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate), 442nd Regimental Combat Team, and Military Intelligence Service. Some of these sons visited their interned fathers before fighting—and in some cases dying—in Italy during the Rome-Arno Campaign and the breach of the Gothic Line, in France during the rescue of the Lost Battalion, and in New Guinea in the Pacific. In 2019, inspired by these stories, Dr. Okawa traveled to sites in Europe where the Nisei had fought. There, she discovered that the people of liberated villages in Italy and France still remember the sacrifices of these soldiers decades later. Her talk will interweave these wartime histories with present-day remembrances.