Author Graham Salisbury’s stop in Honolulu for the Sons and Daughters of the 100th’s Veterans Day book signing was part of the final leg of a two-week-long, 11-city book-signing tour. Salisbury, who now makes his home in Portland, Ore., is currently working on a new book, “House of the Red Fish,” which is scheduled to be released next summer. “House . . .” is a sequel to his award-winning book, “Under the Blood Red Sun.”
“The Japanese American experience is very powerful in Hawai‘i, and the more I read about it, the more interested I become,” Salisbury said of his passion for telling AJA stories. He has committed himself to writing a five-book series focusing on Hawai‘i’s Japanese American experience during World War II, so readers can expect at least two more Hawai‘i-related books in the next few years.
“I’m not so much a history buff as I am a human interest kind of guy,” he explained. “I really love the human side to all of these stories about the Nisei, because it shows what kind of men they really were.”
Salisbury says unlike most authors who have written on the World War II AJA experience, his target reading audience has never been booksellers or retailers. “This is for the students,” he says. “I hope one day every school in the U.S. will make my books required reading as part of their history or civic lessons. I don’t see how they could possibly learn about the history of America without learning about the role that Japanese Americans played, especially in the context of World War II.” — Shara Yuki Enay
