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Officials of the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii (JCCH) in Honolulu will visit Hilo on Saturday, April 21, to unveil a new book — Family Torn Apart: The Internment Story of the Otokichi Muin Ozaki Family — that chronicles the gripping story of a Hawaii family’s World War II experience.

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Family Torn Apart will be introduced to the public at a special event from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at the University of Hawaii at Hilo Edwin H. Mookini Library. The program will include a roundtable discussion with Ozaki’s daughter, Lily Ozaki Arasato, as well as Jane Kurahara and Sheila Chun, JCCH volunteers who worked directly on the project. The session will be moderated by JCCH President/Executive Director Carole Hayashino.

The event will also include a showing of the short film “Honouliuli: Hawaii’s Hidden Internment Camp,” a film produced by the JCCH. This event is co-sponsored by the Hawaii Anthurium Industry Association, the Hawaii Japanese Center in Hilo, and the Mookini Library. The program is free and open to the public. Reservations are not required, but appreciated. Please contact Audrey Kaneko at (808) 945-7633, ext. 28, to make a reservation or for more information.

Otokichi Ozaki, a Japanese immigrant, was a Japanese language school teacher, tanka poet, anthurium grower and also a leader of the Japanese community in Hilo. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941, he was one of 1,800 community leaders of Japanese ancestry to be arrested and interned, beginning a long journey for Ozaki and his family.

Based on letters, poetry, and radio scripts in the JCCH collection, and translated therein for the first time, Family Torn Apart traces Ozaki’s incarceration at eight different detention camps, his family’s life in Hawaii without him, and their decision to “voluntarily” enter mainland concentration camps in the hopes of reuniting. “

I must confess that I was too young to remember details of our experiences recorded in these pages, but the letters, poems and memoirs stir my emotions as I recall bits and pieces of my early days. Indeed, my mother’s letters provided me with vivid pictures of my innocently growing up in concentration camps,” said Arasato, Ozaki’s youngest daughter. “This is still a great country, and I am proud to be one of its citizens, but we must never again treat families in such a discriminatory, impersonal and dehumanizing manner. Hopefully, our past will make all of us better human beings.”

“I want to thank the Ozaki family for publicly sharing their family story and their father’s collection of letters and poetry with us,” said Hayashino, of the JCCH. “Through the publication of this rare collection, future generations will have the opportunity to learn about the unique World War II experience of Japanese in Hawaii.”

The book was made possible thanks to the generosity of the Ozaki family. Eldest son Earl Ozaki donated his father’s papers to the JCCH Resource Center prior to 1994. Youngest daughter Arasato played an active role through the book project and shared family photos and memories of her father.

Ozaki’s story is the second in a trilogy of books about the internment experiences of first-generation Japanese in Hawaii involving the efforts of the resource center. The first book, Life behind Barbed Wire: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawaii Issei, a firsthand account by Yasutaro (Keiho) Soga, was produced and published in 2008 by the University of Hawaii Press.

The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii, a nonprofit organization, strives to strengthen Hawaii’s diverse community by educating present and future generations in the evolving Japanese American experience in Hawaii. Founded on May 28, 1987, the center is about to celebrate its 25th anniversary. The cultural center has 5,000 members and annually connects to more than 30,000 residents and visitors through its programs and events. It features an historical museum, an exhibition gallery, library/archive center, the Kenshikan martial arts dojo, a Japanese teahouse and a gift shop. For more information, call (808) 945-7633, email info@jcch.com or visit the website at www.jcch.com.