Dmae features rural Oregon author Bing Bingham and his book Shaped By The Land: Stories of the rural American West. We’ll hear about his stories of ordinary people in Eastern Oregon and their perspectives and lives are shaped by their surroundings. He’ll be reading from his book at 6pm on March 20th.at the American Legion Post 134 in Portland. And in the latter part of the show we’ll get a preview of Never Give Up! Minoru Yasui and the Fight for Justice (Part One) produced by his daughter Holly Yasui. The film premieres at the Grand Theater, 191 High Street NE, Salem, Oregon.

(Aired 3/14/17 on KBOO 90.7FM or always on stagenstudio.com and always on  iTunes)

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Bing Bingham will be performing stories from his book, Shaped By The Land: Stories of the rural American West, at 6pm on March 20th.at the American Legion Post 134, located at 2104 NE Alberta in Portland.

Shaped By The Land: Stories of the rural American West, compiled from Bingham’s blog, Dusty Dog Cafe,  The stories feature a community of friends and neighbors who swap tales over an endless cup of coffee in the imaginary Dusty Dog Cafe. Bingham writes stories of everyday people in rural Eastern Oregon, many of whom go out of their way not to be famous or newsworthy. They simply face one of life’s changes or transitions and make the best they can out of it with what they have around them.

For 25 years, Bingham has worked as a freelance writer, photographer and radio producer specializing in rural and agricultural issues. His credits extend from the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution and NPR to numerous regional and local publications, stations and websites. These days, he, his wife and three very dusty stock dogs live on a remote sheep and meat goat ranch in northern, Central Oregon where he writes books and blogs at… http://dustydogcafe.com/.

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Minoru Yasui Day in Oregon – the new documentary film, Never Give Up! Minoru Yasui and the Fight for Justice (Part One) premieres at the Grand Theater, 191 High Street NE, Salem, Oregon.  Doors open at 6:30 pm with a performance by Portland Taiko. Governor Kate Brown will introduce the film, (55 minutes) and a panel discussion follows the screening. Admission is free with a suggested $5 donation to the event sponsor, Salem Progressive Film Series.
Never Give Up! tells the story of Oregonian civil rights leader Minoru Yasui, son of immigrant parents from Japan – from his childhood in the farming community of Hood River, Oregon in the early 1900s; his education at the University of Oregon in the 1930s; and his legal challenge of the discriminatory military orders in Portland on March 28, 1942 – exactly 75 years before the premiere of the film. Historical photographs, documents and film footage trace the process that over 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry underwent as the U.S. government registered, restricted and removed entire families from their homes on the West Coast and imprisoned in temporary detention centers like the International Livestock Exposition Center in North Portland, and in more permanent War Relocation Authority concentration camps like Minidoka in Idaho.
Holly Yasui started producing the film in 2013  to honor her father on his centennial. Born in 1916 Yasui would have turned 100 years old in 2016. The Min Yasui Tribute project, co-founded by Yasui and Peggy Nagae, Minoru Yasui’s lead attorney in 1983, resulted in the posthumous awarding of a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 and the designation of March 28, the day he initiated his constitutional legal test case, as Minoru Yasui Day in Oregon in perpetuity by a unanimous vote of the state legislature in 2016. Holly Yasui and her film co-director Will Doolittle, encouraged by Japanese American activist George Takei to narrate the film, decided to release Part One of the film in 2017 in order to contribute to the reflections upon the Japanese American World War II experiences during the 75th anniversary.
The film (Part One) will be screened in Hood River on April 2 at the Columbia Center for the Arts and on April 3 at the Hood River Middle School and  as a selection of the DisOrient Film Festival in Eugene, Oregon on April 21-22. On July 29, it will premiere in the Los Angeles area at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM).