September 10: Strawberry Days: The Rise and Fall of a Japanese American Community

David Neiwert presents a history of immigration and detention

Thursday, September 10 |  7 pm |  Griffin Bay Bookstore | Friday Harbor

Friday Harbor-based author, David Neiwert, will lead a discussion of the history of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and how the current administration is repeating that atrocity on Thursday, September 10 at Griffin Bay Bookstore and Café at 7 pm.

Neiwert will briefly read from his 2005 book, Strawberry Days: The Rise and Fall of a Japanese American Community, and engage the audience in a broader discussion of immigration and incarceration, both in 1942 and today. The public is welcome.

Strawberry Days, which was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award for nonfiction in 2006, is the compelling and sometimes shocking true story of the founding of Bellevue, Washington, as a Japanese American farming community, and its destruction at the hands of hysterical bigots and wealthy white supremacists. Before World War II, Bellevue, the now-booming “edge city” suburb on the outskirts of Seattle, was a prosperous farm town renowned for its strawberries. Many of its farmers were recent Japanese immigrants who, despite being rejected by white society, were able to make a living cultivating the rich soil. Yet the lives they created for themselves through years of hard work vanished almost instantly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Neiwert combines compelling story-telling with first-hand interviews and newly uncovered documents to weave together the history of this community and the racist schemes that prevented the immigrants from reclaiming their land after the war. Ultimately, Strawberry Days (recently back in print after being unavailable for the past decade) represents more than one community’s story, reminding us that bigotry’s roots are deeply entwined in the very fiber of American society—and continue to thrive today.

Neiwert is a veteran Pacific Northwest journalist and the author of 10 books, including the International Latino Book Award-winning And Hell Followed With Her: Crossing the Dark Side of the American Border, and more recently, The Age of Insurrection: The Radical Right’s Assault on American Democracy. Neiwert is a fifth-generation Northwesterner who grew up in Idaho. At one time the news editor of the local Bellevue newspaper, the Journal-American, Neiwert was also a finalist for the Washington State Book Award for nonfiction for his book Of Orcas and Men: What Killer Whales Can Teach Us in 2016. Neiwert was a longtime investigative contributor for the Southern Poverty Law Center and now lives on San Juan Island.

Copies of the book will be available at Griffin Bay Bookstore. Neiwert will be happy to sign copies. Griffin Bay Bookstore is located at 155 Spring St., Friday Harbor, WA is an independent bookstore. When you shop locally and support your independent bookstore you nurture your own community.