Strawberry Days

David Niewert's book, Strawberry Days will be the topic of Firedoglake's Sunday book salon August 6th. The host will be blogger Rev from The Woodshed whom regular readers will recognize from the comments section of various posts here at TGB.

David, who runs the great blog, Orcinus, wrote Strawberry Days, the story of the internment of Japanese-Americans in the Bellevue, Washington area, from interviews with internees and their descendants. I haven't yet read it but Rev has done a review which I would highly recommend - then go and buy the book.

The Rev summarizes:

Strawberry Days is an extreme close up of the effect the internment had on the Bellevue, Washington area, David's journalistic home turf more or less. He started out interviewing internees and their descendants back when he was in the newspaper biz and the book grew out of that. It is insightful, exceptionally well sourced and researched and damn compelling read.

Given the times and the fact that Canada enacted the same process in locking up citizens of Japanese origin, the story could easily be transferred from Bellevue to a place like Steveston, British Columbia, where another vibrant and thriving community was destroyed.

So, join the Rev at Firedoglake, Sunday, August 6th at 5pm Eastern/2pm Pacific for what should be a lively and interesting live-hosted event. As Rev says, you can expect there will be a lot of talking "about the abuse of executive powers during wartime, illegal suspension of civil liberties, racism and xenophobia".