Event Details

John Christgau author of Kokomo Joe: The Story of the First Japanese American Jockey in the U.S. and The Origins of the Jump Shot will be here! Kokomo Joe is a story about the first Japanese American jockey in the country, and he burst like a comet onto the scene of horse racing in northern California during the summer of 1941. He won race after race, despite conspiracies against him by antagonistic jockeys. As war with Japan loomed, his continued victories and his amazing records aggravated fans who feared and hated anything Japanese. When war finally came, and with it invasion rumors, not even his flight to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona provided escape from the government's espionage and sabotage dragnet. The story of Kokomo Joe, caught in a web of wartime fear and hysteria, stands as a compelling illustration of the tragic fate of Japanese Americans during World War II.