Her book is not yet available, but arrangements have been made so you can preorder the book. Before returning to her home, she will attend the Amache Internment Camp Pilgrimage on May 17 (
click here for Amache Pilgrimage flyer).
About Lily Yuriko Nakai Havey'a book
(from book overview on the Internet)
Gasa Gasa Girl Goes to Camp: A Nisei Youth Behind A World War II Fence
by Lily Yuriko Nakai Havey (Foreword by Cherstin Lyon)
Lily Nakai and her family lived in southern California, where sometimes she and a friend dreamt of climbing the Hollywood sign that lit the night. At age ten, after believing that her family was simply going on a “camping trip,” she found herself living in a tar-papered barrack, nightly gazing out instead at a searchlight. She wondered if anything would ever be normal again.
In this creative memoir, Lily Havey combines storytelling, watercolor, and personal photographs to recount her youth in two Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. In short vignettessnapshots of people, recreated scenes and eventsa ten-year-old girl develops into a teenager while confined. Vintage photographs reveal the historical, cultural, and familial contexts of that growth and of the Nakais’ dislocation. The paintings and her animated writing together pull us into a turbulent era when America disgracefully incarcerated, without due process, thousands of American citizens because of their race.
These stories of love, loss, and discovery recall a girl balancing precariously between childhood and adolescence. In turn wrenching, funny, touching, and biting but consistently engrossing, they elucidate the daily challenges of life in the camp and the internees’ many adaptations.
In an excerpt from an interview, Lily talks about the internment camp; 6 of her watercolors are featured.
Remembering and coping: Internment camp paintings are a catharsis for Salt Lake artist
By Joe Bauman, Deseret News
Published: Friday, Feb. 16 2007
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/660195869/Remembering-and-coping-Internment-camp-paintings-are-a-catharsis-for-Salt-Lake-artist.html?pg=all
Lily Havey’s program was coordinated by Japan-America Society of Southern Colorado (JASSC)'s Naomi Westcott, JASSC Special Speakers Program.
Prior to the event, visit the following websites:
Amache Preservation Society - Granada
www.amache.org
History Colorado Center - Denver
http://exhibits.historycolorado.org/amache/amache_home.html