The Gate of Memory and Friends of Wadi Foquin present:
a virtual reading from A Chronicle of Our Land, intimate stories from the village of Wadi Foquin in the occupied West Bank, featuring the book's author*, alongside Kenji Kuramitsu (writer, priest, clinical social worker), Starr Sumie Miyata (poet, photographer, Gate of Memory contributor), and Michael Yoshii (Pastor Emeritus at Buena Vista United Methodist Church & Co-Chair Friends of Wadi Foquin). Hosted by Gate of Memory co-editor, Brandon Shimoda.
Read about A Chronicle of Our Land here. It was published by Communities of Memory, the publishing imprint of the Memory and Resistance Laboratory, UC Riverside. Friends of Wadi Foquin is a network of individuals and faith communities seeking to support the survival and thriving of a threatened West Bank village. Wadi Foquin is situated between a growing illegal Israeli settlement, the Apartheid Wall, and an Israeli town on the other side of the Green Line.
*for security reasons / for purposes of this announcement, we’re keeping the author’s name anonymous.
Kenji Kuramitsu (he/him) is a writer, and spiritual care and mental health professional living in Chicago. He works in university chaplaincy and studies Japanese American practical theology and ethics. His writing on Nikkei history has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Asian American Writers' Workshop. He has reported from the West Bank, written on Zionism and psychoanalysis, and written about Palestine for a Japanese American community newspaper the Pacific Citizen.
Starr Sumie Miyata (she/they) is a yonsei multiracial Japanese American based in Tokyo. She currently works in educational administration and her past research examined the newspapers produced in the WWII Japanese American incarceration camps as well as the relationship between the body, mourning and nationalism in Post-War Japan. Since October 2023, she has had the privilege of joining different communities in Japan in solidarity with Palestine calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza and the ongoing occupation.
Reverend Michael Yoshii is a co-chair for Friends of Wadi Foquin and a retired pastor of the Buena Vista United Methodist Church in Alameda, California. The church was founded in 1898 to minister to newly arriving immigrants from Japan and for many years was a center of activity for the Japanese American Christian community in Alameda. During World War II, Japanese Americans were directed to mass incarceration through Executive Order 9066 issued by President Roosevelt. Most Buena Vista church members were interned at Topaz, Utah, one of the ten concentration camps set up during the war to detain Japanese Americans. Worship services were suspended for the duration of the war. On August 10, 1988, the Civil Liberties Act was passed apologizing to Japanese Americans for the violation of their civil rights during the war.