San Jose Booksigning Unforgettable

 

                                                                           

                  Tsuyako Suzuki Miyagishima, John McReynolds, Jean Yayoi Suzuki Handa
                                       and Midori Suzuki Satow in San Jose on Saturday

THIS POST WAS PREPARED ON OCT. 18, BUT WAS NOT POSTED. MY APOLOGIES.

The San Jose presentation of Vanished last Saturday was unforgettable.

Like all of the earlier presentations, from Lompoc to Montrose to Livermore, to Los Angeles, to Reno to San Jose, and I’m probably leaving one out, it was less academic and literary than it was family reunion and celebration.

Fifty people filled the conference room of the Japanese American Museum-San Jose. Arrangements were wonderful with overhead projector and chairs close enough to feel the connection between speaker and audience. Over half the crowd had read the book, thanks to a book study earlier in the year.

Aki Iwata and his wife Jane, who attended the very first book signing event one year ago in Lompoc, were there. “I always knew the wartime as a child,” Iwata told the group. “Now I know it as an adult.”

Mr. and Mrs. Tom Nishikawa, who live part of the year in San Luis Obispo County, were present after having attended the SLO Obon where Vanished was featured. “We need to work to see that the events of the book never happen again, to anyone,” Mr. Nishikawa said.

Rich Endo, who helped organize the Fourth of July Iwamoto-Tachiki-Endo Family Reunion presentation of Vanished in Reno, was there to help share details of that event.

Margaret Nakamura Cooper and her brother David, were present to bestow upon the museum a copy of a biography of their mother who passed away only a year ago at the age of 107. Their mother was a resident of nearby Los Altos. Margaret was born in San Jose.

Nikkei West sent reporter John Sammon, who asked good questions and followed up later to double check accuracy.

But the highlight was the unexpected. All three Suzuki sisters, all of whom played a role in the book, were present.

“I am 91 and I’ve never spoken to a group this size,” said Tsuyako Suzuki Miyagishima, author of four segments of Vanished.  They were written as an assignment in her memoir class in Fairfield, California.

She was joined by her elder sister Midori Suzuki Satow who appears on the cover of Vanished shepherding the little girls in the Guadalupe Buddhist Temple parade, the photograph of which was first believed to have been snapped in Lompoc.

Also present was Jean Yayoi Suzuki Handa, who first told the story on page 87 of hurrying with her sister to take winter clothes to her father who had been arrested by the FBI in February of 1942. She also appears in the basketball team photo on page 220.

The three sisters were accompanied by an entourage of a dozen or more family members, all of whom came wielding cameras. To a small-town ex-newspaper reporter, it felt like the paparazzi on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Thank you, Aggie, Eva and Joe of the museum. You made us feel completely at home.