over time harry told me. for four years we talked over lunch when we come to japan from his home in california. and finally one day i turned to him and said harry, this is an important story on so many levels. it is an important story for your family. for your generation, for the japanese-american community, for us-japan relations.and i don't know if i'm the right person but if you would consider having a book written i would be happy to try. only kentucky find someone. but i think you should seriously consider leaving a written record. and by this point i thought that i could document it and he turned to me and he arranged for me to meet his brothers the next day. his brothers who had been conscripted into the japanese imperial army. harry became one of the first japanese-american colonels in the us army. he became distinguished member of the military intelligence hall of fame. the 500 military intelligence brigade which is the pacific vanguard for intelligence is located in hawaii on awahu. they have a prolific the -- they named this every young manhood been interned and given such valuable service to his country. all of that would be coming over time so we talked for many years and when harry was back in california where he was retired, by his brother frank, his baby brother who had been inducted into the japanese army had been based they are waiting for the americans and trained in a suicide squad. -- became a partner in crime. we traveled all over through japan and hiroshima. sometimes i went alone also. and we interviewed people as i wrestled with how to tell this story, and an accurate and authentic fashion, i decided that it had to be narrative nonfiction. i did not want to be conventional history. and i wanted to tell both sides. so it is very much a family story. in a dual narrative in which i go back and forth from the american perspective through harry, wherever he was at the time. whether he was stateside or in the southwest pacific. and i alternate and with his brother and mother and his sister who is also interned at the river with her daughter and ultimately went to chicago and beyond.it has been an enormous journey for me. i started working on it really religiously late 1998, it was published in january 2016 by harpercollins. you have a sense of how long some of that is because of the sheer amount of research that was involved on both sides. some of that is because i was learning how to write narrative nonfiction. time to go from an academic background and some of that is because i couldn't convince publishers that this was an american story. people thought that it was a minority. japanese-american story. but to me it is the american immigrant experience and it is timeless. and now it is very much a cautionary tale. after 9/11 that it could happen again. and never more so than now. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you pam. >> i would like to add a sentence to her both. harry fukuhara, who appears in a passing sense in my book. was one of 6000 japanese americans in the military intelligence service. they are the most dangerous jobs in the war. basically to flush japanese imperial soldiers out of caves in okinawa and iwo jima. and the important part about the united states never acknowledged those 6000 men existed. many of home were killed by friendly fire. >> right. we will have time to discuss that more. i want to move on to richard now. the other richard. richard cahan who has a magnificent book of photographs that have never been before in one place. richard is an author of 12 books. he served the ãhe founded and directed the senate 2000, documentation of all events of the year 2000 in chicago. for this book, is a beautiful book. it is called un-american.he and his co-author michael williams have 7000 photographs in the archives. this images in context. and amazingly they found many of the youngest subjects and collected oral histories from them and got names for many of the people.it is a remarkable book. and i'm going to turn it over to richard. >> thank you susan. i'm supposed to show a slideshow here. so if you like my pants are down. i don't have my slides. but the reality is i am really a writer. i have always hope that slideshow wouldn't work so i could talk for 10 minutes. >> i don't believe you. >> this will be really fun. it is a pleasure to be here. this is a beautiful place. i am an amazed at 130,000 people that come to the festival. i did not know we had 130,000 people that read books. [laughter] cell is a wonderful experience. i am glad i'm in this profession. how to tell a story? so many ways. words, videos, pictures - i wrote this book in the exact opposite reason that people usually write books. if you have ever thought about writing books people will always say write about the things you know. i wrote this book because i did not know much about this. i live in chicago. i think when you're in california the less you know about this story. like most people in high school we talked about world war ii and we talked about the battles. and the issue of the incarceration of japanese americans never came up. i mentioned the word incarceration and i want to tell you why. the book is un-american incarceration of japanese americans in world war ii. and i was told by many people who i found were in these photographs that internment is the wrong word to use. why we us citizens cannot be interned. 70,000 110,000 japanese americans were picked up and sent to camps for us citizens. so that word is a lie. it is not telling the truth. we'll talk about how history belongs to a people who are victorious. but i found out that the language is the same way. the book actually, even though it is a picture book it starts out by talking about words. we have heard the words assembly camp. these were the temporary camps that were created to bring japanese americans to permanent camps. about the word assembly center. doesn't it sound like a parade ground? doesn't sound like a good time? let's go up to the assembly center so we can get picked up. so i did not use that word. obviously the word even evacuation. doesn't it have a way of saying i thank you for taking us away? i did not use that word. and another word used over the years is thank you, government for taking us away. the other word that is used most over the years is relocation. think about that. who do you know that has relocated? usually they get a new job and they are relocating on their own. it was very hard not to use the word determined in the title. as you know keywords are very important today and people look at my book and they put in the word internment they don't find it. one of the women pictured in the story said to me why start your book with a lyme? that's where we went. i am called the photo historian. it's a term that i never knew existed. if my college teachers knew the word historian was used after my name they would have sleepless nights. i am a journalist and i tell stories through pictures and what i try to do is i try to understand the context of the pictures. this project started in 2015. i was at the national archives in college park maryland. you have probably heard of this. it's the grand canyon of the lines. most government records, photos in the international archives. i was there in 2015 and i said what collection of pictures should we all see? what is kind of ignored? they brought out a box of 15,000 pictures. i frankly think they brought out 7000. they told the whole story. so, the government hired photographers. i know what you are thinking. why would the government hire photographers to document it? there's no document that tells us this but i believe i understand the story. dorothea lange who i think you are all familiar with the photographer who took the famous photograph, she had been working for the government in the 1930s and she was convinced it was important that this process is documented because she started work before this war relocation authority. people that had overseen the internment was established. she started by showing what japanese, the life of japanese americans were like before. i wish i could show you some pictures. you have to buy the book. $39.95. dorothea lange had a unique ability to think about the migrant picture. people were attracted to her almost like moths attracted to lights. i did chance to talk to her great grand god daughter. i said will so special about her? she had polio. she walked with a limp. she cared about people. she was sympathetic. she wanted to know people story and she wanted to take their photographs. i think the sweetest part of the book was the picture of dorothea lange before the pickups began. she also documented the pickups and another photographer did too. prathea lang lasted three months on the job. she became, she had apoplexy. one day she literally had to nervous break down. it was the day before she took this photo, the day of this photograph. she couldn't stand it anymore. the government soon realized she was not the woman that they should have hired because she was so empathetic. she was showing what really happened. six photographers were hired by the government and then there's another photographer that was very involved. you are all wondering. ansell adams the director of man's omar, they were both sierra club members and he said and so when i get come and photograph the people there. ansell adams, this was a year after the whole process had started. i shall pictures. they are so beautiful. do you see this everyone? he took heroic, beautiful portraits of japanese americans who were in the camp. he arranged for the museum of metropolitan arts in 1944 because the war was over to show these pictures. when they realized what it was all about to put the exhibits in basements with the idea of showing these close enemies as real people as to rope people they were very worried about it. ansell adams later said this was the most important work of his life. there are many people now who believe that because he showed this how do i say it, sunnyside of life in the camps of the pictures are very suspect. ansell adams later wrote that he wanted to find it obeys in the camp but at this time people's lives had adjusted quite a bit. what made this book so special to me was this remarkable opportunity to find the people who were in the photographs. there is our 170 photographs of the book and 30 of them are individual people or small groups of people. dorothea lange and the other photographers generally didn't write their names down but we had a chance to use camp documents to figure out who 25 of these 30 people were. they were wearing tags and one guy knew the tag number. i was in great shape family i co a family member who was still alive and that family member would lead me to the person in the picture. the first picture is of a little girl, holding her one-year-old baby sister and i called the first person i called, remember the day dorothy laying came to take your picture, 75 years later, this wasn't in her memory. i remember the day well. she told me the entire story of what happened, my one-year-old baby sister couldn't find her shoes and her father, was quite upset, hidden want to look like hillbillies. looked at the picture and the one-year-old had no shoes on. tracking these picture down was the highlight of my life, you shouldn't call people during the california primary season because they will pick up the phone. generally i left messages on their machines and when i called them back, dorothy laying took one picture of a woman named rachel. i think she is the migrant mother, can you see her? she is 11 years old. dorothy laying got her name wrong but i found out who she was. i called her up, she hung up the phone. i went to visit her near golden gate park and i asked if she remembered the picture, she had no memory of the picture at all. she looked at the picture and said i was quite presentable then. >> thank you, thank you. [applause] >> so much to talk about and i wonder, let's just start, open up for questions or do you have anything to say to each other before we do that? i must say all three of you, i feel honored to be part of it. >> adams was incredibly famous and did this book and it didn't sell but what really frustrated him was the pride of the people, people who did not want to be seen with their children without fit and made him crazy because they would get dressed up and sit as a family and the government called it, and could not get -- laying, who is better at getting at what is happening which >> adams codified -- criticized. he could make a rocket fly. >> i would love to open it up and hear what people have to ask. thank you. saying thank you with tears. i am going to repeat the question. go to the microphone. please go to the microphone, line up, you mentioned the military zones in california and much of the west coast. i don't know how many people here know that 100 miles within the us border is where the border patrol can offer with impunity and that covers two thirds of the population. how would you have carried those situations with the border patrol and the military zone? 's >> the word is hysteria. is hysteria. we have again and again in hard times tried to find scapegoats, people to blame. whether it was jews in new york or irish need not apply, black people, all those people were treated as the other, and we didn't accept until they were us. >> yes. next question? >> during your presentation we had the amazing opportunity to sit next to a woman who spent part of her youth in one of those camps. take a moment to recognize anyone in the audience who might have a direct connection. >> a wonderful suggestion. please stand. if you were part of this. yes. yes. could you allow that gentleman to come to the front, could you come to the front, yes, please. you were going to say something to the microphone? that is all right, go ahead. >> you probably experienced this but my parents were in the camp and you probably experienced my parents never talked about their experience in camp. i didn't even know about it until high school. the thing i found out is there was a lot of -- you probably experienced it when they went to the camp, they were broken. my grandfather owns property and everything and was proud and so in camp he got drunk shortly thereafter. anyway, i could go on and on. >> thank you for standing up. one of the reasons i wrote this book is because harry did decide in his mid-70s that he wanted to talk about what happens, he moved on with his life during his life and much like holocaust survivors who i interviewed at length for my work and at the end of his life was ready to come to terms with it and one point the conservative is so few people had talked about it and he hoped by his talking about it would open a conversation. unfortunately he died before this book was published. he knew it was coming, he was about to see the cover when it passed away but he would be hard and because i have received hundreds of letters from people with family members who have been interned in canada and the united states who have written me and said you have told my family story. not just divided across continents but families holy in the united states and interned as well. it is amazing. it has become a conversation opportunity to talk to family members and start to probe the most intimate aspects of their life. >> most of the attorneys incarcerated never told anybody about that life unless they met another member and particularly didn't tell the family says men who had been in combat tell their families what they saw. what triggered it? the third-generation sent -- saw on television in the 60s, asking where were you during the war, and now japanese americans are very active in many ways on this particularly in joining with muslim organizations. >> i just want to say one thing. harry, who is the protagonist of the story, who lived in the us and japan and is the person who holds it all together, his daughter pam is here today. pam, could you stand? there you are. [applause] please go ahead. >> my question has to do with the site of the incarceration. this fall, the japanese cultural museum in honolulu, had a display of the incarceration centers and i understood i was looking at territory in hawaii that had been used as an incarceration center so i was confused when richard reeves said no japanese american to the territory of hawaii were incarcerated because i understood president obama had before his leaving office designated these as historic sites on oahu and perhaps the big island as well because people were removed from the towns of the big island to these incarceration centers. i wanted to straighten that out. >> they were mostly in the first wave, the fbi wave of people being rounded up and community leaders, teachers, doctors and businessmen, large farmers, there were hawaiians but very few. >> ironically they were interned alongside italian and german pows as well. just as the national park service monument is not open to the public the japanese cultural center of hawaii has that exhibition up now. it takes some time to uncover the story and there are teams working on it. there is more history to be told. >> i am a journalist in arizona and the opportunity to interview a gentleman who was interned as a child, something that surprised me in my interview with him was his attitude about being incarcerated. he wasn't so much angry about it, he almost felt like being interned at the camp protected him and his family from a very angry public. i was wondering if you in your own research have come across the japanese individuals with similar mindset that this was something that almost protected them in a way. >> in a way we made it seem a little more pleasant than it was. there was some publicity about it, as if they were summer camps but they weren't summer camps. first thing the japanese american noticed, they came willingly, they thought it was their patriotic duty to come with machine guns pointed to the inn at the camps, not outside. there were some pretty terrible things. they had a five dave riot because japanese, two japanese guys had teed up guys they thought were informers, authorities, they were going to take them to phoenix and the camps rose up for five days until the government allow them to be tried the camp with the jury of their peers with japanese americans. >> with the government interested in protecting the japanese outsiders? >> total lie >> do you think there were some in the camps who felt that change the prisoner complex, when the camps were finally opened in 1945 there were people who wanted to stay in the camps because they had heard so many stories from outside the camp, difficult to leave the camp, they were victims also of the propaganda the government was saying we need to protect you and save you and eventually it does go into effect. >> older people who lost everything and had nothing to go back to, the camp felt the best option. >> it was a great driver of this so that what happens was the japanese were farming land other people didn't to farm, they were japanese americans, very good at what they did. however, when they were rounded up, their bank accounts were frozen two days after pearl harbor which means they couldn't pay mortgages, they lost their property, in churches and buddhist temples particularly in california their goods were stored. they could only bring what they could carry, they could only take what they can carry and their earthly goods were in churches and things which were ransacked. the temples were ransacked and people stall everything. >> one of those embarrassing chapters in american history and i share your concerns and an executive order should put places back in this dilemma, the prospects of wrongdoing. there are 1 million stories of adventures like this. most of them do not reflect well on the american, neighbors who were left behind, but as with the holocaust stories there are glimmers of white to be told so i want to talk about major letters growers in california, they were incarcerated and their neighbors, also letters growers took possession, after a while they came back, and restored that property, the biggest lettuce growers in america are the forms. [applause] >> i agree with you and we have a similar story about another man named bob fletcher, lived in sacramento and he was an agriculture inspector who took over the forms of 3 of his neighbors and they made life for him very difficult but he returned to the farms three years later. the story of heroes is essential and i asked every single person if anyone helped them and i included them in the book. but i think it is important to know, i looked at every local paper in california, how few letters to the editor were ever written saying what is happening to my neighbor? i learned a couple things from this book. susan mentioned what hysteria does to us and it makes bad decisions. we have a real problem in america and probably the world of knowing who our enemy is. our enemy was japanese americans living in the united states, nothing close but our enemies are not muslim americans living in america. we should figure out who our enemies are. lastly -- and this is very important -- i understand now you don't like what is happening, don't wait to stand up. once the mechanism begins, it is too late. people have to stand up sooner than their instincts even tell them. >> you have been patient. >> i am the daughter of a world war ii japanese american veteran of world war ii. i'm a late learner. i accompanied my father to get the congressional medal of honor. it brings tears to my eyes because i didn't understand any of this. the other thing is his family was not taken to camp but was honored for his family because the fbi came in, reminded them of their family, took to the middle of the yard and started to burn it. they put cross bridges at night, schools were segregated. my uncles tell me the story that they were told that they ate raw fish so they held them to the ground and made swallow goldfish and that is one of the more benign stories. the last story i want to share is my uncle was president of the japanese american citizens league when the proclamation came out. the official travel to date which and i don't know any of this, i forced my family to talk about it and to this day, with gold medals in my family's living room we still don't talk about it. [applause] >> to this like now. >> thanks for your panel. >> closer. >> thanks, everybody, for your panel and your work and asking questions and kept this discussion going. publication and educational opportunity, people can get involved in and what i'm interested in, a dissertation on people put in the camps but also from peru, some people of japanese descent, rendered to us camps during the world war ii, this is not really talked about but that is my dissertation and i was interested -- i talked with some people and heard these comparisons of the camps, the executive order of january 29th or whatever president trump find. they don't even number executive orders anymore. what i have read and educational opportunity, a japanese american oral history online bank, any person can go into it but they say is more relevant, the chinese exclusion act of 1882 and the japanese gentlemen's agreement which prohibited japanese immigrants from coming in. those of a precedents of the camp. what do you see of education opportunities publishing or next projects for you all the deal with these precedents. >> what you're talking about, seattle-based organization, 1000 interviews by survivors, incredible cash of documents. i would highly recommend it. >> spectacular indexes boost the change on most of the end of the session so we can fit in one more. 's >> mine is more of a complement for the way you made sure your book was not titled with a lie because i am native american. the to get the spotlight off of the japanese people but the same thing was done to the native americans was we were, the word was evacuated, relocated and we were not and our land was taken away from us, we managed to survive. i would like to complement that you brought out this session here because it hits my heart the navajo people were not the only ones treated in such a manner. there were the japanese. i would like to say i am proud that we were able to help win world war ii with our code words. [applause] >> one action we can take away from this is to start calling the internment the incarceration. one more time --'s >> going around and around, which words to use. the truth of the matter is internment is the only word the public knows. i know many japanese scholars and writers who are very upset about that because we believe it was not internment. they are concentration camps and those -- because of what the nazis were doing in the thing. yes, internment is not exactly accurate but it is the word the country knows. 's >> i guess we need to stop. i am sorry. so these books are all available at various spots at the festival. you should be able to find them also in the bookstore. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> live coverage of the tucson festival of books on the campus of the university of arizona and all day long we are live in gallagher theatre on the university campus. you have been listening to the authors talk about japanese internment. one of the panelists, richard reeves, will be here to take your calls on the issue. lgbt q right, slavery in america, history of women in the sciences, big money and philanthropy, those are some of the topics the authors will be talking about today. if you were listening earlier, you heard somebody familiar to booktv viewers, richard reeves, talking about his most recent book, "infamy: the shocking story of the japanese internment in world war ii". if you have a question, 202-748-8200 in the east and central time zones, 748-8201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. richard reeves, one of the things you said at the end of the panel's japanese americans, their bank accounts were frozen two days after pearl harbor. how did that happen? >> guest: the government had the power to do it. the justice department ordered the bank account be frozen and people could take out small amounts of money but couldn't pay their bills for years. someone mentioned bob fletcher, one of the heroes, caucasian heroes, who paid among other things, paid his friends, japanese friends who were taken away, paid their mortgage and insurance. and many other cases their lands were stolen and stolen under state law that was considered abandoned property. >> host: how did they identify those bank accounts? >> guest: not sure i understand the question. they had no trouble at all. among other things the japanese were required report to police what their bank accounts were. >> host: february 19, 1942, order 9066. how much thought was put into that? >> guest: i think a certain amount of thought was put into it. obviously it was roosevelt who did it was roosevelt is a great man but he had a lot on his mind and he did not want this to become a political issue including the fact the case eventually endeded up in the supreme court, no one decided till after the 1944 election. he didn't want -- just like the shame the japanese felt, he didn't want to talk about it either. he had a lot to be ashamed of. one of the things, there is good in all of us, bad in all of us but that happened is brown versus topeka board of education, chief justice earl warren became governor and chief justice of the supreme court, a religious man, no doubt in my mind the two things are connected, this was warren's way of trying to clean his slate before our maker and to show that, california does oral histories of their governors and other prominent people. warren's is berkeley, university of california berkeley, lasted six days. the questioner asked question after question but stayed away from the events of 1942. after five days, governor, chief justice, i want to ask about the events of 1942 in california. he stood up, walked out and never came back. so he knew. i think he tried to make amends and later other public officials, particularly reagan who was a californian, did sign away $20,000 which was a pittance compared to what people lost to the surviving internees. >> host: richard reeves is the guest candidate christine is calling for richmond, virginia. >> caller: my aunt was at the camps with her mother and as a teenager she tried to smuggle toiletries into -- they couldn't get basic toiletries. they let her go, no longer allowed her to work there and years later my dad was embarrassed and ashamed she had done that so the mindset was there. >> host: you say your aunt was an aide at one of the camps? >> caller: yes, her mother too. >> host: were they willing to share their stories with you? >> they both passed away. one of my cousins has written a book, don't remember the title of it but when she wrote the book, was really upset because of the way it was handled, he felt she had done a terrible thing and nowadays we think she was very brave to do that. not sure what capacity they served in. and was just a teenager at the time. >> there were jobs involved then went to civilians in the area. that keep the camps running, a big logistical problem. that part of the army handled very well but location of the claims of the camp were exactly the same as prisoner of war camps and whatnot but we brought german and italian prisoners to arizona, california and texas, those german prisoners can walk into towns and buy things and meet the girls and many of them are now american citizens, the japanese are on the other end of japanese americans on the other end of the machine guns and their are some killed by trigger-happy young soldiers. a soldier is 19 years old, board out of his mind. a deaf man walking along the fence, young private was yelling at him to get away from the fence. couldn't respond and the soldier, the guard shot and killed him. the guard was brought up on court-martial charges, and find one dollar for waste of government property. the bullet cost one dollar. >> host: next call for richard reeves from james in grand forks, north dakota, your booktv will go ahead. of the 15 great honor to speak with you. i am one of the few people who believe that was necessary. i was born in 1964, long after the war. my father was at the tail end of the war in okinawa but i have a problem with people board long afterwards looking back in their airtight compartments of time and space and judging people who were going through that conflict was i will go with fdr, earl warren, the american people who were for this more than i am for people born long after that because they were there and the american people were facing an enemy they really didn't know whether they were going to land in california or not. we know now they wouldn't have but even if they had won the battle of midway outnumbered 10 to one, never would have had them land in california but were facing what we thought was our annihilation. how much is geographic? the japanese were located -- >> host: let's hear from richard reeves. >> guest: we won the battle of midway because japanese americans broke the japanese code and we knew the location of all of their ships and all of their planes. there is no doubt that fear is a real driver of. people on the west coast, in my research, i think i showed that the government do the japanese did not have the capability to attack us but certainly they didn't tell people on the west coast that. the people and the press were hysterical. >> host: what about james's point that at that time this was the right thing to do? >> guest: some smart people thought they had to do it but it is not as if they were locking up japanese. they were locking up americans. americans on both sides of the barbed wire. and the courts and the american civil liberties union and other people were protecting roosevelt. roosevelt was a friend of roger baldwin, the head of the aclu and baldwin -- not represent any, many of those young attorneys quit. it is heroic work in saving japanese-american lives. as newton said for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. >> host: was a popular with the american public? >> totally popular. they wouldn't give them mortar, they wouldn't give them food. on occasion they marched on the camps. yes. it was popular. the japanese were treated as an enemy. >> kennedy, nixon and reagan, john in new jersey please go ahead. and espionage before december, spoke to the popular thing, the right thing. they were not put in concentration camps, they were put in attornment camps, there was no forced labor. lincoln suspended habeas corpus, wilson implemented german-americans during world war i. >> caller: something that had to be done. for people to rewrite history and people to talk about this being a dark part of america is a stupid thing. >> host: let's hear from richard reeves. >> guest: of course it is a dark chapter in our history and many of the people living through it thought it was the right to do but the majority of the japanese who were incarcerated felt they were doing their patriotic duty and many of their sons later in the war did join the military. there has always been a dark side to american history and irish need not apply or anti-semitism. and they would not accept it if they were us. and, >> there was one incident japanese imperial pilot crashed in hawaii which a japanese-american family living in the boonies did shelter him at gun point but there was no sabotage. >> host: don, go ahead. >> caller: i was wondering, could it happen today and if so what can people do to prevent it? what role does racism play in it? >> guest: race was at the root of it. everything said and done at the time, our officials were saying the japanese could not be assimilated into western society so therefore we had no way to question them, to check on them because they were mysterious orientals. so that it was largely public hysteria. >> host: joanna, you are making a booktv. >> caller: why is it that nothing is ever said about the german and italians that were in turns at this time, always japanese, japanese. my parents were interned on pearl harbor day 1941 and we had five american children, the children were taken away from the parents because they were told they were not fit parents because they were german born, children were put up for adoption. 5 american children. >> host: let's hear from richard reeves. >> guest: there was action against germans, german-american, openly pro-nazi organization that filled madison square garden and other places. on the other hand the argument was never used against the germans that we couldn't understand them. we did think they were something like this. i will tell you a story. the lead 10 or of the metropolitan opera later than star or south pacific and an italian citizen, most of the italians who were hard-working never applied for citizenship including the couple the government was most worried about offending which was joe dimaggio's parents, joe dimaggio's parents and property were taken out of the war zone because the yankee clipper was not about to have his parents locked up. in scarsdale, five agents came in, going through thing, after they ransacked the house and taking them away one of the agents noted a letter in italian and he said what is that? that is a letter -- the agent says who is that? he then was taken to solitary confinement at ellis island. why was he there? he was the number 110 or of the anthropology and opera. he was a friend of mussolini, never met him. he signaled to mussolini on saturday night, saturday afternoon, the metropolitan opera broadcast, same thing, most famous japanese american, the great sculptor whose work, and the gila river and found out it was a terrible mistake. this was a man of the world. and there was an awful lot of farmers and less sophisticated people, couldn't communicate with them. let him leave for five. >> host: five years. >> guest: it is well known. i couldn't resist even though i was writing about japanese americans, i couldn't finish that story. >> host: were other east coast japanese americans affected? wikipedia >> guest: no. people in the east didn't know. they knew more about italian. laguardia was mayor of new york, his parents were italian citizens and the governor of san francisco, his parents were italian. the italians work work work and tried to stay away from paperwork so they never became citizens. now we are seeing people become citizens, particularly hispanics, becoming citizens because they are afraid something like this can happen again and it can because the supreme court never ruled it was unconstitutional. robert jackson, that of the court said this is like a loaded gun on the constitution is the government, the military can round up people they want for no reason. >> host: let's hear from patricia in illinois, you are on with historian and author richard reeves. >> caller: hello. i wanted to ask if anybody knew about a move to improve conditions in the camps on the west coast? my reference point is i was obliged to babysit a case as a 9-year-old for a baby named charlotte mary wellman whose father had been sent to replace a very bad man who was in charge of a japanese internment camp. by internment we meant to encapsulate them. the german concept of a concentration camp was with the intent to kill, to destroy. i think i really wanted to know something about tule lake, whether or not a wonderful man like abraham lincoln, to me when i was 9 years old, whether he was able to help improve conditions at the tule lake camp? >> host: tule lake or dewey lake? >> guest: it was the camp, it was the worst. what happened was the government made a very foolish mistake when it decided everybody thought it would be a short war with japan. he wasn't. we were looking for men including japanese-american men in camps to volunteer, the 442nd combat regiment so that it was like a little american, 1000 baseball leads at the camps. there were boy scout troops, jitterbug hops and what not and mostly most of the people accepted, rightly or wrongly it was their patriotic duty this. the ones who rebelled, and some did, there were riots, there were thugs and there was a questionnaire in which people were asked would they swear allegiance to the united states and for swear allegiance to the emperor of japan. if you answered no no, you were sent to tule lake. if you answered yes yes, they would try to get you into the army. they were -- they had tanks to surround the camp because it was a hostile camp out there. in the middle of no place. >> host: debbie in charlotte, we have one minute left, we will be listening to you. >> caller: hello. hello. i want to thank you. the program i just watched, wonderful. i will be buying all three books for my daughter and the interim camp made her fall in love with the japanese language and culture which is her major and she is currently living in japan and i'm getting ready to see her. i wanted to thank you very much. and have a great day. .. >> you're watching live from the university of arizona. . >> welcome to the 9th annual tucson festival of books. my name is joyce bollinger, here with southern arizona senior pride. we want to thank cox communication for sponsoring this venue, faderman is appearing as a result of senior pride. [applause] >> we're pretty thrilled about that. and ms. nutt by the tucson medical center. [applause]. >> and jim is here on his own, i guess. >> evidently. >> the preparation will last an hour, including questions and answers and we want to ask you to hold your questions until the end, and we hope to allow plenty of time for questions. immediately following the session, the authors will be autographing books in the sales and signing area in the ua bookstore tent on the mall. it says booth 141. books are available for purchase at this location, but miss faderman will be 20 minutes late since she's going to be interviewed by c-span. we hope you're enjoying the festival and invite you to become a friend of the festival today. you can text friend to 520214 book. or 5202142665. our visit to friend of the festival booth number 1110 on the mall. your gift makes a difference in keeping the festival programming free of charge and supporting critical literary programs in the community. i want to remind you to turn off your cell phones and i want to encourage you to check out the southern arizona friends senior pride booth, look for the rainbow flag. amy ellis nutt is a pulitzer prize winning journalist, she worked for several years as a sports writer for sports illustrated and currently covers science and health for "the washington post." she specializes in the brain. she co-authored a best selling book on the teenage brain and has written "shadows bright as glass", the journey of a man with brain trauma. nicole, the story of a transgender child and the journey she took together. and they break down walls and i think this story will advance the understanding, that gender identity is in the brain, not anatomy. and the lead plaintiff in the case that we all celebrated, the outcome of, on june 25th-- june 26th, 2015. with deb by, who is also a pulitzer prize winner with, it's a love story and it's soon to be a motion picture. [applause]. >> . >> guest: william faderman has the distinction of having won lamda literary awards in more categories than any other author. she has won in several categories, fiction, memoir, immigrant history, of course, gay history, and it's not possible to underestimate how important the books she's written on lesbian history are to our community. [applause]. she took lesbians out of the footnotes and gave us a way of identifying with some of the most important and successful women in everyone's history. lillian, i understand that during the mid century, i remember that gays and lesbians could be arrested just for wearing the wrong clothes. how did we get from where we're sitting today to there? >> it's a good question and it's what my whole book is about. my book is 800 pages long, so i'm going to condense in ten minutes my 800 pages. [laughter] >> and i need to say, first of all, that the acronym lbgtq gets longer, qqiiaapp, i think it is now. that, of course, is recent. when i came out in the 1950's, we were all gay, whether we were l or g or b or t or whatever, we all called ourselves gay in the underground and straight people didn't know that term. in fact, if you were interested in somebody and you suspected they might be gay, you could say to her, so, are you gay? and if she said, well, i'm a little depressed today or something, then you know that that was not for you. [laughter] >> so, i explain in my book the gay revolution, that i call it the gay revolution even though it's about lbgtq, et cetera people because that was the word that we used to describe ourselves through much of the 20th century. so, question, i think that we made the progress that we made for several reasons. one is that we learned how to organize and it was a very long road before we got it right. another reason is that more and more of us came out and more of us came out because we organized better and we made it safer for people to come out, and so straight people realized that gays, and i'll use the word that was used through much of the 20th century, gay people were not these pariahs lurking in the shadows ready to pounce on some 14-year-old, but they're brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and neighbors and good friends. and i think another reason things got so much better for us, is that we were very lucky for eight years to have a real ally in the white house. [applaus [applause] >> and, of course, we don't have that ally anymore in the white house, needless to say. but i have to say that i'm optimistic about the future. i think we're going to go through some hard times, but we know how to fight back. we have organized. we have powerful organizations that will help us fight as individuals and as a group. we have straight allies because so many of us came out. i was so pleased to see just yesterday, in boston, there's an annual st. patrick's day parade and out vets, lbgt veterans had been marching for the last couple of years and this time, the board in charge of the parade decided that they would not let out vets march because supposedly they registered late and last year they carried a rainbow flag and they weren't supposed to do that. well, the governor of massachusetts said that he would not march in the parade. the mayor of boston said that he would not march in the parade because they they will not condone discrimination. the vote to ban outfits had been 9-4. yesterday, the board met again and considered the boycott and 11-0 -- [applause] >> so, the progress we have made is really phenomenal and the fact that we do have these wonderful allies that we can count on, i think, is phenomenal. so, let me, in the five minutes i have left, let me just give you a very quick sketch of how we learn to organize. in 1948, albert kinsey pub published a book, sexuality and the american male and a man by the name of harry hay in los angeles read the book because kinsey said so many adult men had homosexual experiences and he thought he would get the men together and organize and see if they could stop police entrapment and other terrible things that were happening to homosexuals. for two years, he had no luckment he couldn't get anyone to join his group. finally, he had a brainstorm. in 1950, the united states entered the korean war. harry hay had been a member of the communist party and he took a communist party sponsored petition to a group in los angeles beach, a gay beach, to people at the gay beach and he went from blanket to blanket on the gay beach and he said, would you be interested in signing this petition to get us out of career? in no time at all, he got 500 signatures. right after somebody signed, he would always say, and would you also be interested in joining the group to talk about sexual devian deviancesy? he got zilch interest. it was obviously less dangerous to be associated with a communist party petition than in any way be associated with homosexuality. but harry hay kept going and finally did find four other men who would join him and grew to a couple of women and the numbers grew a little bit and he called the group a society and told them something interesting, nobody had ever defined lbgt people or gay people that way before. he said we are an oppressed cultural minority. that was really revolutionary to think of gay people as an oppressed cultural minority. well, the group went for a while and other groups like formed groups for lesbians. they never grew very big and a split immediately developed within those groups. there were some who really liked harry hay's formulation that we are an oppressed cultural minority and there were others who said, yes, we're all oppressed, but we're not a cultural minority. there's so much diversity within us, among gay people, and except for the fact, the insignificant fact of hour sexual preference, they said in those days, they didn't talk about gender identification, but they said except for the insignificant fact of our sexual preference, we're just like all other americans and we want the rights that all other americans have. and that sort of formed the two-strands of our movement. are we an oppressed cultural minorities or are we simply oppressed, but just like other americans and we should have the rights that all other americans enjoy? groups like it went on through the 1950's and into the 1960's and they did do some important things. i won't go into detail now, but you can read my book to find the details. but they never became huge. what made a difference in our numbers was, as i'm sure you all know, what happened, happened the first night on june 28th, 1969, at the stonewall inn, gay bars had been raided, ever since there were gay bars, all through the 20th century. finally, because it was the 1960's, and this was a radical decade of rebellion and protests, finally on this hot night in greenwich village at the stallwall inn, the young people who had been stopped by the police and ordered into the patty wagon or said, okay, you can go. you have your i.d., but don't come back here, they stood around and eventually somebody, we don't know who, threw the first rock and that was the beginning of a riot that lasted for four days. what was important about that riot is the aftermath of the riot. immediately radical groups began to form, such as the gay liberation front and a little later, the gay activist alliance, and because of their tactics, they sort of put gay on the map. as i said before, gay was an underground word that only we knew. straight people didn't know that word. they made all the difference. we were no longer the love that dared not speak its name because newspapers and magazines and television programs began to deal with us. but as i said, the movement was very radical. many of the lbgt people who joined it, they joined, for instance, the gay liberation front were not interested, and the whole time-- and we needed to reform things all over again and form coalitions with other minorities and not just worry about assimilating and becoming just like everyone else. but as i said, they sort of made it safer for mainstream gay people to come out. people who weren't radical because they were in the newspapers all the time and so, these mainstream organizations began to form and groups such as lamda legal defense and education fund formed in 1973, and they said that they would fight issues, such as the right of young gay boys to be in the boy scouts, really, sort of assimilationist kinds of issues. a group that was the predecessor of the human rights campaign formed in the 1970's. and they began lobbying washington d.c. for our rights. so, i think that there were these two strands going all the time. but what was so important, it seems to me, for the history of how we got our rights, is that radicals began at all. radicals were the brave ones. they were the ones that said that we have to fight and once they made it a little safer to fight mainstreaming organizations formed and demanded our rights. and of course, as i said earlier, more and more of us came out and that made a huge difference. and the people, and practically every, i don't know anybody w who-- slowly started to come out in the 1990's according to the gallup poll, 20% of the population said they had a close friend or a relative who was gay or lesbian. it wasn't enough to make a huge difference. in 1990's, don't ask-don't tell passed and the marriage act passed, but by 2010, 50% of the population said they had a relative or friend that was gay and that could mean that we could get rid of don't ask-don't tell and president obama noticed there was enough support to pass the marriage and doma. i think my ten minutes are up. >> thank you. [applause] >> i guess we are going to flash forward to present and ask jim, how do you feel after the supreme court case? you've called yourself an accidental activist. what's your life been like since then? >> my life has been nothing like it was before. i called myself an accidental activist because in my life and in my life with my late husband john, we were together almost 21 years we were never activists. our brand of activism was signing a check and it took us being put in a situation we could have never dreamt of, could have never imagined for me to discover my internal activist and that situation was, number one, john being diagnosed with als, lou gehrig's disease and anyone who knows anything about that, it's a death sentence within two to five years of diagnosis and we were dealing with that, and in 2013, john was completely bed-ridden in an at home hospice care. and i was his care giver with the exception of hospice comes several times a week. that was what you do for the person you love. we never married and wanted it to be symbolic. we only wanted to marry if it carried legal wait so we went through our life together. as john was dying of als. june 26th of 2013 we're watching the news together when the defense of marriage act was struck down by the windsor decision. and in that moment, i just spontaneously asked john to marry me and i'm like millions of other people in the state of ohio or across the country who could simply go to the local courthouse and get a marriage certificate, or marriage license we couldn't do that. i had to figure out how to get a dying man to another state simply to do something that others take for granted. through the generosity of family and friends, and we got a private jet and went to maryland. we wanted to live out john's remaining days as husband and husband and the universe seemed to have something else in mind. that was on a thursday when we got married and our story came out on saturday, on-line, our local newspaper did a story and friends were at a party and ran into a local, a friend of theirs, a local civil rights attorney in cincinnati and our story came up in conversation. and al, the attorney said, well, do you think john and jim might be willing to talk to me? and they called us, john and i talked about it and we said, well, we don't really know what he wants to talk about, but sure. and this is where the accidental activist was born. as al came to our home, he pulled out a blank ohio death certificate do you understand that when john dies, his last official record will be wrong and he'll die as a single person and your name will not be there as surviving spouse. it broke our hearts and made us angry. we knew that ohio wouldn't recognize our marriage, but this piece of paper, this vital piece of information, the last record of the man i loved and our relationship for 21 years would be wrong. al asked if we want today do something about it and we said sure and that started our battle with the state of ohio which took us to the sixth circuit court. we won in federal court and the state of ohio appealed and we ended up in the 6th circuit court of appeals along with cases from ohio, kentucky, tennessee and michigan. and even though the case is known v hodges. it wasn't just about me and john, it was about another widower, parents, children. the youngest plaintiff was two-year-old cooper. the parents adopted him in ohio and they wanted a birth certificate. so, to end up in that supreme court on june 26th, 2013, i have to tell you, it's not something i ever thought would happen to me, not something i could have imagined in my wildest dreams, but to sit in that courtroom and to hear justice kennedy read his decision and you know, the initial, oh, we won, followed by, well, this is legal writing so i'm not really sure. [laughter] >> and once it became clear that we did actually win, you know, my first thought was, john, i wish you were here, wish you could experience this and know that we won and know that we do exist, and that followed closely by the realization in my life as an out gay man, i felt like an equal american. [applause] and for me, i loved the fact that, you know, this fight, becoming an accidental activist and then a purposeful activist, it all happened just because i loved john. and i wanted to live up to my promises and commitments to him. and if you haven't read justice kennedy's decision, if not else read the last page, it's a beautiful piece of writing, and i've had the pleasure and the honor of reading that in a few marriages, and i actually went on-line and clicked the ordain me button so i could marry people as well. and i hear over and over how people use part of his decision as part of their marriage ceremonies. what a wonderful gift justice kennedy gave us. and it's simply because i loved john and parents loved their kids and couples loved each other and they simply want to say, we matter, we exist. to go from somebody who wrote a check, and become the name ab the face of the supreme court case, it's been absolutely amazing and unexpected and unbelievable experience. and when you buy my book, i will tell you, you know, my co-author debby and i made a decision from the start that the book had to be more than me and john, and i was one of more than 30 plaintiffs so in the book you'll learn about outside, and joe and coon cooper, pat and nicole, and two sons, graden and o'ryan. and federal judges who did sit and talk to us during the writing of this book and you get to learn about an amazing man, one of amazing attorneys on our case, al, who represented us in cincinnati, this incredible, brilliant man who dedicated his life to civil rights and that experience changed who i am as a person and i can't turn my back, and i've become too much of a part of it and i understood the value and the joy of being something bigger than i am. so, that's how my life has changed and i give john credit. he made me a better man in so many ways, he gave me something so worth fighting for. [applaus [applause] >> amy, i know you spent a long time writing this book, about four years, as i understand. could you tell me something about the process of how you got to know the family and then how you saw them evolve? >> sure. first of all, i want to say it's an honor to be on this panel about lillian and jim. and thank you all for coming, it's an incredible audience. the story of becoming nicole really fell in my lap and it's been a privilege to write that book, but when the story did fall in my lap five years ago, that was at a time in the beginning of 2012 when i actually said to my agent, this is a fascinating story about identical twin boys, one of whom was a transgender girl and always identified as female. it's a fascinating story, but who is going to want to read a book about a transgender kid. so, this was obviously before caitlyn jenner, really before laverne cox, before the covers of "time" magazine and it was before the transgender moment, but in the middle of writing this book, random house realized oh, my god, we've got to get this book out fast. so i delivered it four months early, i don't know how, but i didn't sleep for months, i realized it's going to be an important book, as a journalist it's a wonderful occupation, and never having to take the exam up there, and i have a short span of attention, and journalism is a great profession for you. you're moving from one thing to another. god bless you, lillian for sticking with your subjects. i didn't know what it meant to be transgender, i didn't. and the importance of this book, part of it, part of it was the need to import it all. and the need to get into that, we're learning more and more about had the brain imaging and what it means to go to michigan, and the other parts of meeting the family for the first time and realizing this, and realizing, this is on the one hand, a very ordinary family. and they were twins adopted at birth and the parents were middle class in maine and the father worked in the university >> but nicole. and, frankly, not just nicole, but kelly and wayne maines and jonas maines, the brother who always stuck by his sister. said about age 9 or 10 said to his father, dad, face it, you have a son and a daughter. [laughter] you know, he always thought of his twin as a for. and, frankly, most of the children who grew up with nicole, who was born wyatt, felt the same way. when she finally changed her name, legally changed her name before the fifth grade and it was announced at school that wyatt would now be known as nicole, she had already been transitioning for years and wearing more feminine clothes and grew her hair, the people in the class said, duh, finally, you know? [laughter] that was, like, no big deal. it only became a big deal to one, one young man, one young boy. and, frankly, it was at the instigation of his grandfather, his guardian. and, frankly, he was really, sadly, used as a puppet to harass nicole and follow her into the girls' room. and thus began a case that eventually became the first, the first win in state, in a state court for the right for a transgender girl to use the bathroom of her own identity. that was in 2014 in maine. so if you -- i urge you to go on the internet, and nicole has given talks, and her father is often, gives talks now. he wasn't onboard for a long time. it took -- he absented himself from the family. he just really couldn't handle it. he wanted to have twin boys, and they both would have baseball mitts and rifles, and he was a hunter, you know? you go visit their house and, yeah, there is a moose head on the -- [laughter] and it's like, whoa, i've never actually seen that. [laughter] and he killed it. so, but this was really important. this was a family people could understand, could identify with. and this was a mother who was faced trying to understand what, not what is wrong with my child, but why isn't my child happy sometimes? what can i do to understand my child. and because she had not had a perfect life growing up, she had no expectations of a perfect family. she was there to do two things; to love her kids and to make sure they were safe ask happy -- safe and happy. and that was it. and so she began where so many of us, you know, begin, you know, in the early 2000s, googling boys who like girls' toys. and that was really the beginning of her education. and she proceeded to slowly educate her husband. it took leaving books all around the house -- [laughter] and finally, finally left one in the bathroom -- [laughter] don't understand that, but that worked. and it took educating even, even teachers and the counselors at the grammar school where the kids went who were open ask wanted to though how do we understand -- to know how do we understand and how do we nourish this child. the problem was the administration and their failure to really, frankly, their cowardice in the face of the father -- the grandfather who was really a bully who enlisted the christian civic league of maine to, you know, basically discriminate and harass the family and forced them to move. so for many years wayne was in orono where he had his job and would commute two and a half hours every weekend to be in portland. so i was, i was fascinated by this family. it was a writer's dream, when you meet four people who are interesting and who can talk about themselves and who have self-awareness. not everyone you meet as a journalist, you know, is able to put words to their feelings is and their ideas, and each of these people were. the important to part about the science of this was, and it was a lot of reporting on my part, and it was to learn and to understand that gender identity is different from sex and sexual anatomy which is also different from sexual orientation. gender identity is who you go to bed as, and sexual orientation is who you go to bed with. that didn't originate with me -- [laughter] i picked that up from someone. but gender identity is itself a process, and it's a combination of genes and of hormones, and it's complex. who we are is really determined by what goes on this our brains before birth, and identical twins have the exact same dna, they have the exact same genome but not the exact same epi epigenome, the chemical switches that turn the genes on or off are not identical. subtle changes in the environment of the womb can affect what switches on or off. even your position as identical twins in the womb, you're getting different amounts of hormones, so your brains develop differently. it's enormously complex, but i believe it was an important to part of book, was to help explain to people that this isn't because of a schizophrenic mother. it's not because, you know, the here gave the young boy too many dolls. you know? this is, this was something that nicole knew from the age of two and a half. you barely have language. and she didn't say i feel like a girl, she said i am a girl. you know? daddy, when does my penis be fall off? -- penis fall off? she thought like a butterfly maybe that was how it would happen. so when you realize how children are talking to you, you listen to them. and it's not, it's not temporary. it's not, it's not trying something out. it's deep, and it's deep in the brain, and it's deep in their soul, and i learned many, many lessons from this family and continue to. and it's been a privilege to go around talking to audiences, because i'm also learning more from you. so thank you. it's a privilege to be here. [applause] >> thank you. i think we want to open it up for questions, we want to make sure we have at least 15 or so minutes to, for people to ask the authors what they'd like to know. and we'd like for you to go to the microphones. there's a microphone on either aisle because this is on c-span, so they want to make sure it's going to be carried. so i'll start with you. >> yeah. i have a question for lillian. you're talking about kind of the evolution of gay rightings. can you talk about aids and what effect that had on the movement? >> thank you, that's a very important question. the worst tragedy to hit the lgbt community ever was aids, needless to say. but it had a very important effect on the movement. in the 1970s, for example, there was a huge split between lesbians and gay hen. there was -- gay men. there was a lot of hostility on the part of lesbian community, feminists who saw suspicion of gay men who were not lesbian feminists as well. they really felt that gay men had a lot of privilege that lesbians lacked. with the advent of aids, i think that many lesbians felt that they couldn't afford that kind of hostility, that kind of -- in the face of death, practically everything is pettiness, that kind of pettiness. so they became very active in -- many lesbians were nurses, after all. thousand women can become -- thousand women can become doctors and lawyers and whatever. in the 1970s there were very few women doctors, and so women who wanted to go into a profession very often chose to be a nurse or a social worker or a teacher. those were the professions that were open to women. many lesbians were nurses and helped navigate the very difficult medical establishment. lesbians started things like in new york there's a group called god's love, we deliver. in san diego, where i live, there's a group called mama's kitchen that brought food to men who were suffering from aids or hiv. and so in that sense, i think there was a real healing of the rift between lesbians and gay men that had been so deep and passionate in the 1970s. but other things happened as well that were very important for the progress of our movement out of all of that tragedy. i can really say there was progress in our movement. groups such as act up formed and really learned how to demand that the medical establishment be more sympathetic to gay men. one of the committees of act up actually worked with the cdc and the national institutes of health to change the protocol of how drugs would be approved. they got examendmental aids -- experimental aids drugs approved much quicker. they really learned how to navigate the system. and so we certainly can't discount the terrible, terrible tragedy of aids, but i think the only good thing to come out of that terrible tragedy is that it brought us together as we hadn't been before, and it taught us a lot more about organizing. >> thank you. and this one. >> hi. thank you for coming to speak. this is really nice. but you didn't mention inner in sexuality which i think is kind of problematic, and you didn't -- i know you only have a limited amount of time, but you didn't talk about the impact of race and class as well as gender and how, you know, maybe a white gay man has a much different experience than a black, non-binary person. and so i don't want to take the history of gay rights, you know, for granted. i know i'm young and what i think is acceptable is not what was acceptable, you know, 30 years ago. buff i was wondering -- but i was wondering if you could talk more about kind of this idea of moving towards clear justice instead of gay rights and what you think about intersectionalty and current problems with mainstream focus on gay rights and assimilation. [applause] >> it's a very complex question, and i don't want to hog the microphone, but let me just say about it that, of course, people of color have been active within the movement from the beginning of the movement. one of the early periodicals, for instance, that came out of the first periodical to have, first gay periodical to have national circulation was called "one," and it was formed by tony reyes, or he helped form it. he was on the board that got legal right to publish the periodical. he, of course, was a latino. the title, "one," came from guy russo who was an african-american gay schoolteacher. the title comes from carlyle, a quotation from thomas carlisle, a 19th century writer who says the brotherhood of man makes all men one. but i think it's true that people of color had not much recognition within the movement throughout the '50s and the 1960s. i think that began to change with the stonewall riots because so many of the young people who rioted were young men of color, latino and african-american young men. i think in the '70s there was, certainly within lesbian feminism, a good deal of sensitivity and recognition of the fact that lesbian feminism had to be open to people of color and women of color and not simply middle class white women. i think that gay men took a little longer to recognize the importance of intersectionality. but i'm thinking of periodicals that came out in the 1970s that made it a concerted effort to recognize intersectionality such as lesbian feminist period calls like "conditions" and "sinister wisdom." now i think that diversity is honored very much within the lgbtq, etc., community as it hadn't be in earlier years. the problems continue, and i don't think we're ever -- anywhere near solving them, but it's a vast improvement from where we began. >> yeah, just to follow up kind of, i wondered if you could speak to the role of queer scholarship in advancing the movement. [laughter] >> i hate to hog the microphone. >> go ahead. go right ahead. yeah. >> well, we'll have some questions for jim and amy after this. [laughter] >> scholarship began, certainly, this academia with michelle fuko and eve sedgwick and judith butler, and it advanced the movement in that it head lgbt -- it made lgbt subjects or queer subjects, i should say, respectable on college campuses. before queer theory, there had been a few gay courses on various college campuses. my campus had one. i was the director of the experimental college, and we had one as early as 1972. but we really had to fight to have a gay course can. i remember the really wonderful vice president, wonderful in all other ways saying to me when he saw that it was in the experimental college catalog, you know, the community out there wont like this -- won't like this, but he didn't tell me to take it out. it remained in the catalog, and the course was offered. nowadays or for the 20 years or so since queer theory has been so fashionable, there would never be a problem like that on college campuses. so i think that queer studies had a very important role in advancing the movement because young people were able to study queer subjects in college and then go out and become activists within the movement. >> and do you have a question for jim or amy? sir? >> it's pretty much to the entire group. i'm a living, breathing example of intersectionality. i am a disabled man, an lgbtq as well. so i applaud the panel, and i rode in late, so i didn't hear from the beginning. but sexuality and disability alone is taboo still today. and so when you add on the layer of lgbtq, which i am, it adds a -- and i am writing a book as well -- it adds a whole different dimension. was within the culture -- because within the culture i find that it's hard to date because people have to get over the fact that maybe you're disabled as well. so, and so intersectionality, i live and wreath it every day -- and wreath it every day, to the young lady that, we didn't really speak of intersectionality, that's why i decided to come up. >> and what is your question? >> and so the question i have is we are an expanding group, we're more inclusive from a social justice standpoint be, but yet we have far to go. and in the political climate that we are in today, where do you see us going and how can we get there? [laughter] >> good question. >> jim, do you want to -- >> well, i think for me, and this was something, this was kind of my personal journalny over the past -- journey over the past couple of years. i ended up this this place as an lgbtq activist, but i've realized it's more than just that. i really have to fight for just civil rights. and for me, one of the things that i think we all need to do is approach the fight whether we're lgbtq, whether we're disabled, whether we're of color, we have to approach the fight we're in with the understanding that with -- yes, there will be some differences, but we're all fighting for the same thing. we are all fighting to be equal human beings. and until we can all internalize that and understand that and actually live that, we're going to have issues. so, you know, for me from the perspective of disabled persons, you know, john being diagnosed with als, being out in this world which is built so much for people with ability and not for people with disability, it opened my eyes to how difficult life is when you're in a wheelchair, when you're using a walker, when you're using a cane. that owned my eyes. it took my personal experience be, it took love aring someone, experiencing that for me to understand really what reality is. and i think for all of us it comes down to telling stories. in so many ways, that sounds like a copout, tell a story, you can change minds -- hearts and minds. but that is really what it comes down to. if we don't get out there and tell our stories, if if we don't share the stories of the people that we've met and the people who have had an impact on us and opened our eyes, we're not going to change anyone else's opinion. and, again, another personal experience for me, up until about two years ago if i knew a transgender person, if i had a transgender friend, i didn't know it specifically. now i have so many transgender friends. and for me, that has opened my eyes and expanded my world, my understanding. and i find i can't go a day without speaking up for my transgender siblings. and i think that's what it takes. it takes knowing someone and understanding we are all fighting for the same things, and if we can't fight for the same things and if we're going to say, you know, there's a movement within the lgbt community, some people are saying the t should not be part of it. i can't disagree with that hardly enough. no. how dare you say your challenges aren't as important as our challenges are? so for me, that's what it comes down to. we are all fighting for the same things. we need to fight for each other. we need to get out of our own personal space and realize while things might be a little bit different, we are fighting for the same thing, and that's where i am now. i can't fight just for lgbtq, i fight for civil rights, i fight for disability rights, anything i can do, and it's a personal journey. so we need to be loud, we need to talk, we need to share stories. >> if i could add to that, as someone who frequently writes, obviously, about the brain, we are built for easy answers. our brain seeks out the easy solutions. we have to struggle against that. so there's always going to be a struggle to understand complexity and to understand diversity. society favors conformity. nature favors diversity. and we have to remember that. and we have to remember that transgender or intersectionality, that it's not about aberration, it's about variation. and it is, as jim says, so important to put a face to things. that's why telling his story, telling the story of the maines family, these are people like you and i. there's no difference. but there's complexity. and there's variety. and if we can keep that in mind, we can really -- lillian may be more optimistic than i am, but, you know, we can get there. >> so i think we have time for another question. >> yeah. this is directed to you, amy. i think i have an idea for another book for you. >> oh. >> have you ever heard of tom sosnik? he's a transgender boy , and his experience is totally, totally different from nicole. the family is originally from israel, but they were living in fresno, in california, and when tom was mia, constantly bullied, all the time. and so his parents decided -- her parents decided that they were going to have to find a friendly atmosphere, friendlier atmosphere, so they moved to the east bay. and he was in a judeo school where my -- jewish day school where my granddaughters were, and he came out to the middle school. and the support that he got from the community, from his family, it's so heart warming. oh. he came out earlier than he thought he would because he read of the transgender teenager, tale, who killed herself by walking in front of a semi on a highway, and that did it for him. he decided he had to come out right then and there. >> so is your question -- >> and he's on youtube, and if you want to see him talking to the middle school, you can. >> you know, thank you for sharing that. i've heard so many stories in traveling around from people, and it reaffirms for me, as jim was talking about, it's about telling your own story. and i'm reminded of something that the poet moore once said, probably paraphrasing here, that we don't tell our stories, stories tell us. and that if we don't share those stories, we are somehow ultimately diminished. and i think that that's my role as a journalist. and i hope -- i have a lot of hope this young people because i think they are sharing their stories more, and they have more courage than my generation ever had in doing that, because they've experienced diversity. they are in touch with diversity so, yes, it's about telling stories. and it's about sharing. thank you. >> not at all. >> so my name is, my name is tim, i'm an elementary school principal. i've got a picture of my husband, my daughter or and my dog in my school of 650 kids on the south side of tucson, and to be honest, what my students find host unusual about me is not the fact that i have a husband, but that i'm vegan. they think that's really strange. [laughter] they have a real hard time with that. you know, but -- [laughter] really odd. but one of the things they'll, that i know just as a school leader is there'll be a need to make a decision. there'll be a need to change something. and whether it's how the parking lot situation works or dropoff happens or whatever it is, i'm often thinking but, yeah, we've got that parent who, dot, dot, dot. so, amy, you mentioned in nicole's case, the school administration had been a lot more helpful a lot sooner if they had been braver sooner. what do you think helps school leaders find their bravery? >> wow, that's a really good question. >> thank you. >> i think it's talking, and i think it's communicating. and there were certainly the school counselors at nicole's school who educated herself and got to know the parents so that she could help other kids understand. the faculty was great. it was the administrators who, i think, were cowed by the possibility of lawsuits. and, you know, i think it's important to also educate that she was assigned a staff bathroom and that separate is unequal. and we've been through this before, and bathrooms have been the center of -- [laughter] discrimination for a long time. and i think if we remind people of that history and how we broke that down, it's really no different. it's a red herring, the arguments that are used with regard to bathrooms. they just really are. and i think a lot of it has to do with if you meet someone like nicole, if you meet a transgender person, then i think you understand. it, but it takes talking to that person. and nicole is out this and willing to talk, and not everyone is, but enough people are that it will headache a difference. but you have -- it will make a difference. you have to be willing to listen, and you have to not be afraid of lawsuits. [laughter] >> i'm sorry, i think that we're out of time. i want to thank you -- >> one more. [applause] >> do we still have time? two minutes? okay. two minutes. >> oh, two minutes. >> run, run! >> sorry. >> okay. this is particularly for ms. nutt, but for the entire panel. i am the parent of a transgender child, a young one. and i have to say that i began before my journey, our family's journey before your book came out, and i was another one of the parents who started on google. and the people who have told their stories made a great deal of difference to us. that doesn't change a strange, hard, difficult choice and responsibility that my husband and i have in deciding levels of privacy and publicity. how did you, the maines family, reflected on how you make the choice to, i guess you would say out, a very young child and at one level you do that for the public good? >> thank you for that, and it's a really important question. the condition of this, of writing this book was that it would not come out until the twins had graduated from high school. and so the last chapter of the book was written very hurriedly when nicole made her surgical transition, and they graduated. be there -- there was publicity because of a court case, and "the boston globe" did a front page story, a very good story and there was a lot of press afterwards, and they didn't want to do it because they wanted to protect their kids and also have them grow up in as media-free environment as they could. so it was difficult for them. but it made all the difference in the world for writing a book that i could spend time with them, watch them change and watch them grow and then have the book come out at a time when they were going off to college, and, you know, having lives of their own. it's a difficult, it's a difficult thing to negotiate, but they did it, you know? maybe you can too. >> and thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> i'm sorry. thank you for attending the session -- [laughter] i know! i don't want it to end either, but there's another panel coming in right now, and can

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