Art Nomura
Interactive
Standing Tall: The Extra/Ordinary Life of Mizuko Takahashi Nomura, is an interactive ebook for iPad, iPhone, and Mac Computers. Buy it here.
Three years in the making, Standing Tall.... is designed for Apple iPhone, iPad and Mac computers running Mavericks or Yosemite OS.
Created with Apple’s iBooks Author software, this ebook is about the author’s paternal grandmother and features a dramatic narrative inter-twined with interactive graphics, movies, photo galleries, games, Keynote animations, and more.
The details of Mizuko’s extra/ordinary life in Japan and America offer the reader a personal look into the trials and tribulations of immigrant life. A special aspect of the ebook is an accounting of the matriarch’s life in Manzanar War Relocation Center in east-central California for three years beginning in 1942.
Standing Tall: ... is required reading for anyone who wants a grounding and/or fuller understanding of the history of minority women, Japanese immigrants, and the incarceration of Japanese from the west coast of America during World War II. Readers interested in family genealogy will be inspired by the multi-generational family depicted in this story.
In addition to the story narrative, the ebook features over 250 historical photos ranging from government-sponsored documentation of concentration camp life to dozens of rare family photos dating back to 1870. Specially selected links to sites and documents about the Japanese American experience expand the scope of the ebook to the wide world of the internet. Videos with family members dating back to 1987 augment the narrative with first-person recollections.
The following is the introductory video contained in the ebook that features Dr. Carl Nomura, Mizuko's third son. Recorded at his home in Port Townsend, Washington in 2013:
Cover photo for STANDING TALL: THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF MIZUKO TAKAHASHI NOMURA. Taken from a passport photo dated 1918. Mizuko is age twenty-two. Her eldest son Takuma (my father), standing to her right, is four years old and the boy on her lap, Jiro, my uncle is age one. Click on the cover image below to go to a serialized version of the narrative for STANDING TALL: on the Blog page.
