Its the statists largest inland city and serves as a major hub for agricultural production. Theyre flying me back the Mexican Border it comes from Woody Guthries lyrics. It story goes when the plane crash happened in 1948 and the news reports went across it country Woody Guthrie was in nuvg at the time and of course one of the great sort of rebellious folk icons that he is, he heard the news reports and he really was upset at the omission of the names. He himself had traveled to the valley, so he was familiar with the plight of migrant farm works at the time. And he was upset by the omission of the names. He said thats no way to treat our brothers and sisters, and so he wrote a poem about it. And in his poem he attempts to restore the dignity of those anonymous passengers by giving them fake names, assigning them names. And he says in his poem, goodbye to my juan, goodbye, rose litta, you wont have a name, all they will call you will be deportee. That really caught my attention, and is that all they will call us . I come from a family of migrant farms, so who is they . Who is all, and what will they call you . To me that was such a poetic piece of that lyric, so i use that for the book. There were talks between the president s at the time. This was the early 40s, and the basis of the conversation was how can mexico be an ally to the u. S. During its time of need. And the result of that was what they called a settle problem, from the word brazos meaning arms, in this case workers arms. They looked to their brothers and sisters in the south here, mexico, and they began this program that started to literally bus and train people, mexican workers in. The first series of that the first sort of i guess you would say the pilot program, they imported about 4,000 workers here to the Central Valley to the town of stouktckton. It was such a success the farmers said bring more, bring more. So then within the next couple of years they had upwards of 40, 50,000 workers coming in. And now they werent only being used for the Agricultural Labor but the railroads and all kinds of things across the country of course during world war ii and while our country was off at war. So after the war is over, what do we do with all the brothers and sisters we invited to work with us and gave these work visas to . Well, its time to send them back was the idea. And in fact some of the politicians here in the Central Valley at the time would come out and state that, the kind of worker specifically that were looking for is the kind of working does great job here, doesnt look for trouble and then we can send them back when were done. They would say that publicly. And now here in 1948, a few years after the war has ended actually, in 47 they start sending back, doing mass deportations. You know, in some cases the workers contracts were up. In some cases they were here without papers, and in some cases, you know, they were just rounded up as, you know, a part of the round up. And in manies of the cases even tlut history from the 30s, 40s, and even into the 50s some of them were american citizen they were sending back. The dragnet was so wide they just rounded up people who liked like mexicans. And thats what happened in 1948. They had rounded up a group of workers and sending them back, deporting them. At this time they had just started to use the douglas dc3 airplanes. Those airplanes specifically were the workhorse of world war ii. Now they had a surplus. Lets change the name, they were actually called c 47 airplanes during and the war and they said like call them dc 3. Lets clean them up, put some seats in them and use them to deport folks. And so thats what they did. And in 1948 this plane left at 9 30 in the morning and it was heading towards tijuana to drop off reportedly 28 mexican citizens and that had a copilot, the stewardess, the pilots wife and an immigration officer also. And about an hour into the flight leaving the bay area flying over the Diablo Mountain range and the plane experienced difficulty with the engine, caught fire, torched the wing off. It tumbled in the air and crashed right into the canyon, which is you know its just actually 60 miles southwest of fresno. And it was annihilated and all the ranch owns, they saw it, witnessed it. There was a nearby county prison road camp there, minimum security place. All prisoners out in the yard all saw it happened, witnessed it. A lot of those folks who i used and interview for the book. And it changed the lives not for obviously the passengers but even the people who witnessed it. So thats what wuss happening that morning. The medias reports of the incident, you know, it was at the time it was labeled the worst airplane disaster in californias history. This was 1849, january 28. And the media, the Associated Press actually has one of the more popular ones, the 28 deportees being sent back to mexico all killed. Out of these newspapers, out of all of them there was no mention of the names with the exception of two newspapers. The prez no be made an attempt to publish the names a couple days after the accident. The names, you know, were badly misspelled erroneous. Some of them looked like they were spelled phonetically, but it was an attempt. And they only published i think a dozen of the names. The only newspaper that actually did publish the names the popular belief at the time or even now was maybe they didnt have access to the names or who were the names . Or how do they find the names . And i thought to myself as an author whos exploring this idea, i thought theres a manifest somewhere. Theres a government program. You know, someone has the names, right . And lo and behold i find an article published in a Spanish Language, independent newspaper, only published in fresno at the time, specifically published for the Mexican Community here, the farm workers. And it was called el faro. And it lists it says heres the name of all the dead campaneros who died in this plane crash, not only the names but the town theyre from and the surviving family members. It lists all of them and when i found that article, it was the jackpot. It was a Spanish Language newspaper that did them justice and gave them their due of just saying their names, which was a basic human right. It wasnt about like, you know, trying to, you know, spew some bias or anything like that. It was just here are their names, here are their family members, they lived. And that newspaper published it. That newspaper came to me by way of the family members. When i first found one of the families, and they knew the story, and he said to me when i first met him at his restaurant he said do you have a list of the names, and i said yes, i do, but the list i have is sort of inaccurate. And he said well i have a list, too. And i said what list do you have, he says hangs on and pulls out this old tattered stained wrinkled newspaper from 1948. According to him the Mexican Consulate had sent his family this newspaper as evidence of his family members death. And that family had kept it for 60 years. I havent found another copy of that newspaper. I didnt feel like i needed to embuit with any overtly political agenda, because the story was such a human story. And it already had metaphor, imbued with metaphor. Here was this one vehicle transporting, you know, 28 mexican peoples. Four of them caucasian, you know, the pilot, world war ii hero, the copilot also a world war ii hero. You wouldnt want any other pilot flying that plane. If you were going to fly that plane, thats the pilot you want flying. You had crash landed that same plane before during world war ii during the burma india hunt, and he crash landed out of that safely. He had over 2,000 something hours in that specific airplane. Thats the pilot you wanted. And he was a newly wed, and 30 years old. His wife was bobby atkinson. They had only be married the year before, you know . And they were just starting their lives. And in fact this was going to be his last flight and then he was going to retire and go back to working for the military again on some other duty. And so his wife was not a stewardess, in fact. Im not sure what she was doing, but she wasnt a stewardess. She had no business being on the airplane, in other words. And what happened was the stewardesses couldnt make it that morning. According a family she called in sick, and i guess at the time you couldnt fly one of those planes without having a stewardess onboard. And i guess he said do you want to come with us, and she said sure ill go, and she jumped on the plane with them. And oorg oo the family only two weeks before that accident, frank, i guess had experienced difficulty on another airplane. And so his wife had made a comment to some friends and family, if something ever happened to frank, i would want to be with him. That was just two weeks before she actually would be with him when that plane crashed down. I was able to interview the atkinson family, and i learned other than being newly weds frankly oz franky that blew my mind, you know. One of the grandsons of a migrant farm worker who also had tastrugg to struggle and make it here on his own, i said what makes you identify, and he said as a young man i could relate to what he was doing. Frank atkinson during the depression would go out and cut rail ties and make 50 cents and bring it back to his parents and help them survive. He said i remember doing that same thing for my mother. Id go out and bring her back the change i was making. So all i knew was i had to talk about the humanity of each of the people. All 32 passengers, frank atkinson, his wife. The last love letter actually, it wasnt the last one but he the love letter he wrote home to her in preparing for their wedding. And i put that side by side with one of the last love letters that a passenger sent home to his wife about he struggled trying to work for one farmer, working with another farmer. And hes telling his wife back home i know we have a few garbanzo beans back home, sell them, and well make it. And when you see those side by side all the glaring humanity is illuminated in it. I dont have to spew any of that political rhetoric around that. The humanity is palpable. You read those letters and you cant deny heres two men who loved their families working hard for their families. So january 30, 1948, the Funeral Services happened right here. And the founder people were here, and the service had 28 coffins lined up. And on that day, january 30, while they were doing the services, they actually only did a fewf the caffens. So before the audience and the crowd they entered a couple of coffins. And once everyone dispersed and went about their lives, the coffins were put underground, buried over. As i understand it wasnt initially but years later someone donated a placard. And that part is uncertain, but years ago someone donated a placard and the placard said it was anonymous still. It said 28 mexican citizens died in a plane crash january 20, 1948, rest in peace. It doesnt say buried here, but just 28 people died, rest in peace. Kind of ambiguous like that. And its a small little placard and set there. And thats all it had for years, and its a large patch of green grass where they dont like any other head stones nearby anymore. Some people walk by and they say that looks like a good spot, and they cant. It wasnt until i came upon the story in 2010 and i learn of it, this was the first place i came to i i said ive got to find out where theyre buried. It was astonishing they were also buried what was considered at the time the largest mass Burial Ground in history. I knocked on the doors of the cemetery here and i said do you have the names, and they said, well, well look up the file. And they looked up the file. And they said actually we dont have the names. We have the file, but on that file where every name should be tip cloe goes, it just says Mexican National or it says Mexican National, Mexican National, Mexican National 28 times and that was it. And even they were kind of astonished by that. In fact one of the cemetery directors new here at the time, he said, that blows me awas. And he i i started talking and i said im looking for the names. I said im looking through the halls of Fresno County here, and they wont give me the names because you have to pea related. But you guys can go on official business. And he said i have a list of names a names. And we looked at the list of names together, and we were excited because it was a first, middle and last name. And we could tell some of them were still wrong, but it was a start. And it was actually that list of names that led be on the search. I asked him that day. I said, you know, what would it take, im way out of my league here, but what would it take if these are the correct list of names what would it take to put them on a headstone here, a marker. Well it would take two things, permission from the bishop and money. And i said how much money, and he said at least 10,000. And i said you work on getting permission from the district and ill work on raising the money. And about a month prior to that i was with a local musician and he and i had first said to ourselves i said once we find a list, we should figure out how to put that headstone here. So that day stand ing with the cemetery director, hes a beloved musician here so i knew if we had artist power and musician power, were going to raise the money. Within three or four months we raised 14,000. Carlos got permission from the bishop, the bishop agreed. So we installed a headstone right here behind me, and that headstone is now a 4 by 8 granite slab that is actually used to bury the bishops. And on that slab in english and spanish, it tells you the story of what happened and has the names of every passenger onboard including the crew as well. And then it has 32 leaves around the stone. Because its got these lyric. Well, theyre not just deportees anymore. And one of the beautiful things of this headstone behind me is weve still included in that show how it went from anonymity to having the names today. All the talks around immigration today is has become a vast sea of noise. You know . You know, some of it of value. Some of it for creates for valuable dialogue but a lot of it, specially today as we enter this new administration, we start to hear everywhere, not just from politicians but people in general, we start to hear sort of the ramped up you know, polar of us versus them or you know, immigrants versus americans. That kind of rhetoric is out there. I feel like what gets lost in that, and i think part of that is intentional gets lost in those kind of abstractions i was mentioning earlier is the human face behind it. I feel like this book really provides the opportunity for us to look through that rhetoric to, cut through it and to just look at one situation, one isolated situation, 28 mexicans, four american citizens, all crashed and all regardless of race, regardless of social status, regardless of spiritual beliefs or background, they all met the same fate together. None spared. None. In the end, they were in one vehicle transported or deported to that great other place in the sky. You know . Thats what i hope people take from it is that were all in this together. Goodbye rosalita, goodbye juan adios mi amigos. We wont have a name when we ride the big airplane hollywood called us dirty deporties cities tours journey of the literary world in fresno, california, continues with author of the book harvest sun, planting roots in american soil. The author recounts the story of his childhood, race and identity in californias Central Valley. And one of my books ive written is called harrest son, a journey into my familys past and looking at the immigration of my grandparents from japan to america and trying to plant roots in american soil and, of course, facing the contradictions of america, the racism of it, and the struggles to try to establish themselves. Historically, japanese americans had a very vibrant Agriculture Community partly because when the immigrants first came, this was the only entry point for a lot of them in American Economy and american communities. Certainly relocation and interment during world war ii shifted that so it concentrated even more the stronger sense of being japanese american. My generation has shifted. Its very classically immigrant story. My generation we call ourself sansi, Third Generation in america. The time, spring and summer of 1942. The place . Ten different Relocation Centers in unsettled parts of california, arizona, utah, idaho, wyoming, colorado, and arkansas. The experience of my parents during relocation and world war ii interment of japanese americans i think was very common. There was crisis, there was turmoil. Theres hysteria and they didnt know what to do. So i think like many of them, they realized they had to just accept what was happening through their own type of civil disobedience but really accept had broader frame of this history that was unfolding along with all the chaos and uncertainty. So they growing up they rarely talked about it. And i only started piecing together stories i heard here and there, reading about it and understanding what a traumatic moment it was when youre trying to establish yourself here in america and trying to literally plant roots here but also at the same time, understand, this is a country that didnt want them. That told them they were the enemy, that told them they needed to go back home. Of course, the irony for my parents, they were born here. Back home was here. And it was that struggle i think that as i grew older and began to understand part of the idea of struggle, i think of the struggles that i went through were dwarfed by that moment in history. And how they had the resilience to work through that and then come back and literally plant roots here in the valley in our farm. My parents did not talk about it. My dad was this traditional stoic farmer, hardly said anything. My grandmother who lived with us only spoke japanese and my japanese wasnt very good but they wouldnt talk about it. I think its because had he carried within them a kind of a shame, a guilt thats embedded whether he youre accused of being something that youre not. So as a writer, i began to try to probe into this, ask questions, read more about it, talk to other families and gradually and it took time, gradually i began to hear a story here from my father, a story there from my mom. My dad would talk about when we were runs burning some wood from dead trees, he said, let me tell you about a fire that i once made. He told me the story about how when they had to leave, my dad was so mad he decided to say hes going to burn all the possessions they had that they couldnt carry because he didnt want to leave it for people who didnt want them. I thought this is my dad, this quiet reserved farmer showing this protest sort of like japanese american lives matter type. And it was amazing to hear these stories. So gradually as a writer you begin to piece together these stories and the take away i had with that, the one take away i had was this idea of silence. Its hard to write about silence because writers think about words and dialogue. But part of my writing was embedded in this history of understanding what that silence means. And how that silence carried everything from their shame and guilt but also their resilience that they had to respond to come back to here in california to say, we are america. We are part of america. We did not own land before the war. As most japanese americans did not. When we came back, when my parents came back after the relocation camps, my father realized the way to get ahead in america was to own property. So he took this huge gamble and he bought 40 acres that we farm now. My grandmother, she was appalled. And i heard about this story. They argued because my grandmother said why do you get, buy land here in america because they take things away. And she was absolutely right. Because of the hysteria of world war ii, they took everything away from japanese americans. So she was right to have this bitter attitude. My father at the same time understood that in order to establish yourself, you needed to become a farmer. You needed to transition from farm worker to farmer. So he bought this land. That day that they were leaving this rented shack that they lived on to move here to this house that was on this property, my grandmother refused to go. So she stayed in this little shack and my dad got mad and he said look, im going to wait in the car until the sunsets. My grandfather who was alive then was happy. He said we get a farm. Im waiting in the car. So he waited in the car. As the sun went down, my grandmother came out of the house carrying this black suitcase with the stenciled number of our family as our family internment number and they got into the car and in silence, they drove to this new farm. And thats how our farm started. It wasnt this magnificent cheering ride. It was really capturing that whole sense of history that i try to write about and its one of my favorite stories actually that i end up writing about and thinking a lot about how things begin and how farms are part of this whole wave of history that embodies all those elements of history. Our farm faced. Challenges. And its really in two generations. One was my dads generation, post warorld war ii, no one wand to buy food grown by the enemy, the zwrap niece americans, of course. So they struggled. They united together. They formed cooperatives. They started jointly marketing things and found a way to work through the system and work the system. When i came back to the farm, the overt racism wasnt there but there are still embedded biases and one of the biases was against large versus small. There was this drive that you need to expand your farm. You need to grow things that are cheaper, that are more efficient and more productive. And i cape back thinking, thats not the farm i want to do. I want to grow something that has quality, that has flavor, and again, that had that back story that came with it. So thats one of the reasons why i talked my dad into saying lets start farming organically because i think its a consumer, its a part of the public who appreciates this value that were growing. And all through the course of our familys history, we think about it, we were driven by values more than anything else. You know, my grandparents did come to america because they wanted to suddenly become the wealthiest people in the world. They were driven here by dreams and hopes. My parents came back from the relocation camps to farm because they were driven by initially desperation and also the sense of wanting to become american and plant roots here. And i came back to the farm knowing that i wanted to continue that legacy in many ways and at the same time, write and tell stories about the things i was witnessing. I was like lots of farm kids that grew up in the 60s and that i couldnt wait to get off the farm, right . No one wanted to farm. I grew up in a ry lively Japanese American Community and all of us went off to college and that was the goal for all of our parents and generation to get the kids off the farm, get them educated so they could find something better. So i ran off to a college that i thought would never bring me back to farping with berkeley. I studied sociology and i thought theyd never bring me back to farming but then i did spend two years living in japan as an Exchange Student and that changed my life. It was retouching a culture that was around me but yet realizing i was not japanese. I was japanese american. During that two years, i spent about half the time working the small little rice farm that my grandmother had left and working alongside of her brother in japan and i remember stopping and thinking, this is exactly what im trying to run away from. What is it . It was really the call of the land. But the dynamic was i did not understand how to grow rice. I understand how to i did not understand how to grow rice but i understood how to grow peaches. And i realized i need to come back here to see what this was like. So i came back and shocked my dad saying i want to come back and farm a little with you. He was shocked because he thought none of his sons, none of his children were going to farm just like most farms around here. So the transition was wonderful in the sense that my dad was very quiet and very reserved. So when i came back to the farm, started making mistakes, started doing things, there was a lot of just a few soft grunts, nodding the head and then silence. And thats when i began to go crazy say tell me, am i doing it right, wrong, how do you feel about it . He was wonderful because he just allowed me to fail. And i there that was the biggest take away that i had because when i came back, i also started looking at the landscape of farming and understanding the growing pressure to grow in size to, grow crops, to grow crops that are designed for a mass market. And i came back wanting to do Something Different and thats why we starred farming organically. And at the same time, hoping that this precious fruit that we grew would fit in an organic marketplace that valued flavor, character, and ironically, valued the back story of the fruit that we grow. And it seemed to have all worked. My daughter as she begins to farm with me, i begin to think and we often talked about is my role a teacher, is it a mentor or someone who just passes on something and hands something down. It turns out its a little of everything. I think my daughter wants us to be partners. Which really wasnt quite what i was expecting because you think of your best teachers that you had, they were teachers. Not partners. But then i starred thinking more about it and maybe this is part of a millennial way of looking at the world where the world is much more inclusive as opposed to hierarchical. Were evolving this new relationship and now shes a partner on the farm, understanding how she wants us to make decisions together. There are times when i thought, you know, id be really happy if you kind of made that decision but no, she wants to do it together. Who could complain about that. So i have to stop myself from thinking oh, this isnt quite the story i thought was the narrative, i thought was going to happen but its a very different and unique narrative at the same time. Theres this ironic twist being japanese american and understanding that whole legacy of immigrants and immigration that affected my family when they first arrived from japan and Understanding California agriculture thats swirling and churning and growing expanding all at the same time, this whole issue of immigrants and immigration are part of the fabric of agriculture. It continues today so that the workers we have are part of this whole new definition of what does it mean to be an american and an immigrant. And theyre all part of the food system that we have. I hope people take away from my stories in my books a sense of authenticity. This is the real world. Im not a im not a journalist who spends one summer on a farm and then writes about food. Ive live this had. My family has been part of this for generations. This is what i live and breathe and hurt from at the same time because i try to write about that authentic life of farming and being a family at the same time. And the struggles and challenges that we have within that book, economic forces, environmental, climate change, prices, shifting weather. Those are all part of what we do here on the farm. Thats part of again the story of food that i try to write about. I hope people take away that real taste of the food from the stories that i write. Next cities tour shows us the economic and geographic landscape of the San Joaquin Valley. I had a choice a long type ago when i went to school in the east and started my career in baltimore, i could have gone around the country and each place maybe written books and stories. I decided to come back here to this place that shaped me and try to understand what it was. And who the people were. And i began with my own family story and then you know, that linked up to the other stories. And when i hear the stories of the africanamericans who came west, the japanese, the mexicans crossing the border, theyre not very much different than my grandfathers tale. My grandfather came here in 1920, his name was aram arox, the name of a river that flows from mount arafat. He was a poet and arax was his pen name. The pen name was osepian. We were the son of joseph. He changed it to arax because it was a more literary pen name and was going to be a poet. The army and genocide broke out. He had to hide in an attic in istanbul from 1915 to 191617. He went up there with his books, mo pa sant, all these french poets and short story writers. And he became a lover of french symbolism. When he came down, he had a choice. Was he going to remain in turkey after the genocide . He had a chance to go to the sorbonne in paris to study literature. But he had this uncle who had come to fresno, california, to start again. And he was writing my grandfather these letters saying, theres a new armenia here. Theres a place, a valley surrounded by mountains. Just like our owld place and grapes are as big as jade eggs and the watermelons if you carve them out you could float down the rivers in them. My grandfather took the bait. He had a choice between paris and fresno and he cape to fresno and he carved out a life here of farming, being a grocery man, and writing his poetry. His sons became these jocks, great baseball and football players. My dad had a football scholarship to usc. That literary thing skipped a generation. And then it landed on me. Right now, were sitting in my office in northwest fresno. Surrounded by you know, i dont know how many tons an of documents that have to do with this history of california and the story of water. So thats where were at. This is for me, its like this is heaven and hell. Getting up every day and having to you know, oh, im writing about something. Where did i first read about that and then sorting through all had stuff trying to figure out where it is. So youll see thousands of post its with topics. Each color represents a different topic. Its about as strike as i get. The middle of california is called the Central Valley. But the Central Valley really goes from a place bakersfield to sacramento. Even beyond. Its 400 miles long. It is the longest valley in the United States if not the world. Im talking more about the San Joaquin Valley which is the Central Valley is made up of two valleys, san joaquin and sacramento. The San Joaquin Valley is where all these dramas have taken place. Steinbecks stories, sore royians stories and it is a place thats geographically exiled from the rest of california. Its physically exiled. Its surrounded by mountains. And its psychologically exiled. Its a place that has its own kind of ethics. Its backward if you come here, it feels very much like the south. Okay . It feels like the south for a reason because when my grandfather arrived here in 1920, these sons of the cotton plantation were coming here, too. What happened is the boll weevil was ravaging the cotton fields of the south and the sons of the plantation had to find a new place to farm cotton and so they came west and they landed in this valley in a place called tolure lake which was actually a lake. About 50 miles from here, there was a lake that was 800 square miles in girth. And it was the most dominant feature on the california map. These plantation, the sons of the plantations came west and they drained that lake dry. There were four rivers. And they ended up damming those rivers, turning the meanders of those rivers into straitjackets. So if i showed you rivers today you would see theyre as straight as an irrigation canal. Theyve been confined. And then they controlled the philosophy those rivers. They actually put pumps along those rivers that would make the rivers run backward so they can control that flowen an all those rivers were captured in the name of agriculture. So our rivers here in the valley are rivers of agriculture. 95 of their flow have been taken by farms and that flow gets shut off by a dam and then the flow gets shunned through this lattice of irrigation canals throughout the valley. So its the most industrialized farming in the history of man. And its created these factories. And really to begin with the nonfiction literature of this place, you need to start with factories in the fields by Carrie Mcwilliams which was a book that was written in the depression time. And it really put on the map the sense of how industrialized this agriculture was and how we had created this Feudal Society where you had these farmers who didnt even call themselves farmers. They called themselves growers. And they had captured you know, tens of thousands of acres of land and had industrialized it and then to find a workforce, they went south of the border and imported a workforce. And we basically imported you know, a whole lower class that cape here. And so that struggle created kind of a vast Plantation Society in a way. And that feudal kind of structure still exists today. Its a place of tremendous disparity where the land and the machines are controlled by maybe 300 families up and down this valley, the vast majority of the land and the water is controlled by a handful. And so thats the story ive been trying to tell, picking up you know, where kind of factories and the fields left off and telling that story of this place. I was born here, spent most of my life here. But its still a mystery to me. For instance, if we were to take a drive, i could take you on a drive for, it will take 20 minutes. We would begin in the suburbs north of here where there its a very conservative place that probably voted 60, 70 for donald trump. And out there are these big megachurches and these big megahouses. And then we would drive from those suburbs to Downtown Fresno where you would have the highest concentration of poverty in the country in these neighborhoods. Then we would drive 15 minutes beyond and we would land in a rural vineyard in the middle of a place called fowler or selma which is the raisin capital of the world and we would be surrounded by this whole different kind of life, a beautiful kind of life, quiet, agriculture but also rural poverty. So in that half an hour drive, you see these three kinds of landscapes and i would say that you would be the find that anywhere else in the country those three drives. Those three places in one drive. Its quite a canvas to write about. Its a hard place to write about because you have to makeern judgments and it can be a depressing place to write about. I this i thats why so much of the literature thats come out of here has been the great literature has been fiction and poetry. Fresno has a really rich history of great poets. Larry lev vis, peter everwine, phil levine who came here from detroit and we have some great fiction beginning with steinbeck and sa royian thats been written here but nonfiction has been more difficult because you have to dig into these the brokeness of this place. And it doesnt make you a real popular person to tell the stories here. I live here and yet youre writing these stories that not everyone embraces because youre telling the history, warts and all of a place. I think the wisest person among the wisest people ive ever beened was a woman gamed girtha tony. I found her in corcoran while i was doing the king of california. She was 100 years old at the time. And she had come from texas. Followed the cotton trail west. But she didnt come all in one migration. They stopped along the way. She referred to her children, she had seven or eight of them as stopover kids. There would be a kid in each place. And they landed in corcoran and they picked the cotton. And as i was interviewing her in that little house on the outskirts of that city, that town, she was taking me all the way back to the slave days of her grandmother. So in that one interview, we were spanning you know, 150 years of history. Remarkable lady. Shes got on a piano and started playing. And above the piano was all the photographs of her children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. And wisdom and so you know, it was her voice is one of the powerful voices that i had the privilege of capturing. And her story is told in the king of california. So its been a joy to be able to do this to be able to travel with this old beatup little sony tape recorder. I dont even use the digital ones. I should because and then just capturing these stories. And telling the history of a place. I think if youre going to be a nonfiction writer and live in this place, you have to write in a way that is going to you have to tell stories that are going to upset the people. And so thats not an easy thing to do where youre basically telling on your place. Much easier to come in from the outside, write whatever you need to write, scathing or not and then leave. You know, i live here and so im a pretty polarizing figure here. Writing these stories. But i try to write them the nice thing about like the king of california and hopefully this next book is people read them and they see that ive taken, made an effort to try to gather the story from the people. But its hard to hold back on certain judgments and ultimately, some of these books, pieces become indictments of a place. And then when you live in that place, its difficult. Im waiting for that great mong nonfiction writer. The great punjabi fiction writer. If there if their cultures are telling them the same message that my culture told me which was to go out and become an attorney or a doctor and make money, then theyre going to have a hard time. But thats what you hope for is that this story continues because the story is evolving. This kind of landscape, this big with these many issues, its going to evolve. And someones got to be there to tell that story. Next, cspan cities tour shows us the 9066 japanese american voices from the inside exhibition at California State University in fresno, california. The exhibition tells the story of the japanese american experience. The commanding general of the western Defense Command determined that all japanese within the coastal areas should move inland. Noticed were posted. All persons of japanese descent were required to register. We have to put ourselves in their shoes in 1942 and not think through the lens of 2017. Things were very different back then. And so what were trying to do is humanize the experience and explain to people the environment that people were in so that they can understand how people endured that period. Were at the special Collections Research center at the henry madden library, California State University, fresno. What were here to talk about the 75th anniversary of the executive order 9066 that president Franklin Roosevelt signed on february 19th, 1942. After the bottoming of pearl harbor in 1941, the president , Franklin Roosevelt, decided that japanese americans needed to be evacuated from all areas of the west coast because either they may not be loyal to the United States or just seen as some kind of threat. And so they rounded up all of the japanese americans, including children and elderly people and sent them to these ten camps. Executive order 9066 was the executive order that authorized the removal of all japanese americans from the west coast. People wonder why didnt they Say Something at the time. Well, they did. You maybe didnt know about it. There were Different Court cases at the time. One went to the supreme court, fred can koramatzu case. He lost that case. It wasnt till the 1980s that decision was overturned by a federal court. Fresno and the San Joaquin Valley has always had a large japanese American Population because of the agriculture. Thats what theyre known for. And so obviously, when all the japanese americans were evacuated, all the japanese americans from this area where are sent to two camps. One camp in particular. There were ten camps in the nation all out of the west coast area. So there were no camps in california except for man zi nar. The rest were in colorado, arizona, wyoming, those kind of states. But a lot of our japanese americans were ached. So this is why we kind of have this collection and we focus on it. Weve had a japanese american collection for a long time. It comes from different donors over years. It sort of comes in fits and starts but its only more in recent years weve gotten a lot more material and theres been a lot more focus on it. Weve been fortunate to meet up with a number of families not just japanese American Families but other families for example, the man who ran the Fresno Assembly center his family gave us a number of items that are important. So in recent years, its really become a major focus of ours although weve always done this, had this materials on this topic. I think remembering the 75th anniversary of executive order 9066 is important because we have to remember that twothirds of the people put in these camps were american citizens and so what was done to them has never really been talked about from their point of view. Thats one of my main focuses and goals of the exhibition is to talk about how they felt about it because for many years, for decades nobody talked about it especially from their perspective. So one of the main goes like i said of this exhibition is to explain to people what happened, but how the people actually felt themselves who were in those camps. So in the collection we have a number of photographs. Some of them are wellknown but they i straight what people, what the environment was like before the japanese americans were sent 0 camp. And these are just examples of the racism and prejudice that was rampant at the time. People didnt distinguish between japanese americans and japanese nationals who obviously we were at war with after pearl harbor was attacked. So we will show these to remind people the environment that the japanese americans were in. These photographs illustrate what they had a few days to get rid of their property, their farms, their everything had to go. They were only allowed to carry a certain amount. Only what they could carry is what they say. If you couldnt carry it, you couldnt bring it to camp. They didnt know lounge they were going to be gone, where they were going to be going but they were given a few days to dispose of everything. These photographs show them packing up and so you see a variety of duffel bags as well as suitcases. They were taken by either bus or train, and as i understand, the government didnt want people to know that they were transporting japanese americans so they had to be out of sight. So they had to put the shades down on trains. They werent allowed to be seen. They didnt want anyone to know this was happening. This is a shot of a family and you see they all have these tags on them. Their i. D. Tags. Every family was issued an i. D. Number. And they were told to wear the tags when they were being transported so they could be identified. They didnt use their names. They just used their numbers which is part of the shame and the dehumanization of this whole experience for the japanese americans. These maps show how the japanese americans were evacuated. Theyre color coded by where they were sent. So the first one talks about the exclusionary. Its all of the state of california. It went all the way up to the washington state, oregon, of course, was included. And then this map shows where each of the Assembly Centers are so depending on where you lived you were sent to a different Assembly Center. And this explains where all the centers were. There was one in pine dale and one at the fresno fairgrounds. The Assembly Center was just a temporary location so it was people literally lived in the horse stalls and there are accounts about that. How hot it was in the summer and how there was no air conditioning, and it dawned on me that hitting the hay was very appropriate a terp because they literally had to stuff nature tresses with hay and thats what they slept on. We use at term internment knowing that officially the word interment is meant for prisoners war and military prisoners. And obviously these people were never blamed for anything. They did nothing wrong. So they were technically not prisoners but they were incars res, they had no choice about going to the camps. While the families were in the camps people may not know they did their own newspapers and this is the one from fresno. Its called the fresno grapevine done in the Fresno Assembly center. Even though they were there six months, they took the time to create a newspaper for themselves. They wrote about you know, happenings in the camp. I think they were trying to create a sense of normalcy for themselves as well as to share information and again, they didnt know how long they were going to be there, and this was a way to communicate with each other and to maybe create a sense of community while they were in the Assembly Centers and later in the camps. So the grapevine is from the Assembly Center. And then later a reference to grapes, they wrote the vignette and did this all them selves. The camp residents them selves wrote, produced and printed all of this themselves. So you can say, you can see how they sort of mimeographed it. Its not a renewspaper because they didnt have real Printing Presses but they did the best they could. People might be surprised to see that they actually had yearbooks. This is like a real yearbook. This was from 194344 in man zi nar, the only camp in california but a real yearbook and they had who classes and these people graduated while they were in the camp. So this was their yearbook. I did want to point out that there were a lot of the japanese americans who enlisted in the war. While their parents were in the camps, they some of them chose to sign up to join the war. They were made up of only japanese americans in the 442nd infantry. But when they came home on leave, they would come back to the camps and visit with their parents and other family members. One of the highlights of our exhibition is the go for broke National Association will be doing an exhibition in this space to talk about the military aspects of the world war ii and how the japanese americans helped win that war. And it wasnt just them fighting. It was they also helped the military with intelligence. So theres a whole section called mis, military Intelligence Service and anyone that could speak japanese and read japanese was recruited to work for the government. Some of them were actually sent to japan. Well move on to some of the items that will be in the exhibition that are on loan to us. Were here looking at items that will be on in exhibition. These are items on loan to us. And the first one is a trunk from the morashita family. There is actually an earp blanket issued to them in the camp. And this is their family i. D. Number, 40421. This is what they could carry. So whatever they could put in this top layer and on the bottom layer, this is what they were able to bring to camp. And the family kindly gave us this earp blanket because a lot of the camps were very cold, very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. And since they didnt know where they were going, a lot of them did not bring appropriate winter clothing. So they were issued Army Blankets or given old earp coats. So this is an example of one of those. This is another piece of luggage. A duffel bag. And this is from the kumano family. You etheir number is 40896. And the kumano family br from sang gore which is in the San Joaquin Valley. Whats interesting about this is they had to make their own duffel bag. This is actually a sulfur sack. And as you can see, this company was a local company from fresno. We have a wood carving from the posten camp that is being lent to us. We dont know who made this. Its not signed. But its quite beautiful. You see the guard tower. And a lot of the intricate details, obviously these people had a lot of time in camp. A lot of them didnt have jobs. They were allowed to work later on off camp. Some of them had jobs in camp but a lot of older people really had nothing to do so i think a lot of them took up arts and crafts and taught themselves a lot of little craft work. This is a little sculpture and i have the translation here. Someone caved in japanese, it means stay tight and go forward, which is part of a value, an ethic that the japanese americans have. They call it sigata g anae which means endure you know, just make the best of things and go on. And i think thats also one of the elements of the exhibition we want people to understand is that they went through this horrible experience bus over the generations, theyve hopefully come to terps with it and of the families have gone on to prosper and you know, incorporate this history into their family histories. So theres a lot of history here that i think people dont realize. And i think its especially pertinent today. We talk about how certain groups are being targeted and i certainly know that the japanese americans them selves have taken up the banner to fight against any Civil Liberties violations. For example, with muslim americans. They dont want this to happen again to anybody. And i think thats why the history is important. I like 0 people to understand that again, this is something that is not that far along far away. It happened 75 years ago but in the span of a history its not that long ago. So when people say could ever happen again, again we have to understand it did happen. Not that long ago and it could happen again. So thats one of the main reasons were doing this exhibition. This weekend, cspan cities tour takes to you springfield, missouri, while in springfield, were working with media come to explore the literary scene and history of the birth place of route 66 in southwestern missouri. Saturday at noon eastern on book tv, author jeremy neely talks about the conflict occurring along the kansas missouri board offer in the struggle over slavery in his book the border between them. In 1858 sxwraun brown having left kansas comes back to the territory and he begins a series of raids into western missouri during which his men will liberate enslaved people from missouri and them them escape to freedom. In the course of this, theyll kill a number of slave holders and so the legend or the notoriety of john brown really grows as part of this struggle, that people locally understand is really the beginning of the civil war. Then sunday at 2 00 p. M. , on American History tv, we lift the nra National Sporting arms museum. Theodore rose vet was probably our shootingest president. He was a very, very avid hunter. First thing he did when he left office was organize and go on a very large hunting safari to africa. This particular rifle was prepared specifically for roosevelt. It has the president ial seal engraved on the breach. And, of course, roosevelt was famous for the Bull Moose Party and there is a bull moose engraved on the side plate of this gun. Watch cspan cities tour of springfield, missouri. Saturday at noon eastern on cspan2s book tv and sunday at 2 00 p. M. On American History tv on cspan3. Working with our cable affiliates as we explore americ america. Saturday, American History tv on cspan3 takes to you the american historical Associations Annual meeting in washington, d. C. For live allday conch. 8 30 a. M. To 5 00 p. M. Eastern. Join as historians and scholars talk about civil rights in 1968, watergate and the rise of partisanship. Commemorating civil war reconstruction in national parks, and the New BirminghamCivil Rights National monument. Live coverage of the American Historical Association annual meeting saturday on American History tv on cspan3. For nearly 20 years, indepth on book tv featured the nations best known nonfiction writers for live conversations about their works. This year, as a special prong, were featuring best selling fiction writers for our program. Indepth fiction edition. Join us for our First Program sunday at noon eastern with david ignatius, the author of several National Security thrillers including agents of innocence, body of lies, blood money, and the quantum spy. Our special series indepth fi