TORREY MERCER

Torrey Mercer is more than just a music artist. She is a survivor, an activist, and has been told her and her music are alight in the dark for many. An award-winning recording artist and songwriter from San Diego, Torrey brings bold charisma to the stage through her jazzy-pop vocals and inspiring lyrics. Being trained in pop, jazz, rock, blues, and Broadway in her youth has guided Torrey to become the vocalist and performer she is today. With influences from pop artists such as early Maroon 5, Alessia Cara, and Lady Gaga, Torrey’s performances exude sheer power, layered with thoughtful lyrics on her experiences with bullying, low self esteem, body image, and relationships.

Torrey’s love for music emerged early on in her life, when she was 9 she got involved in musical theater, hoping to find her place in the world. She was bullied and excluded throughout her childhood, and this continued through the end of high school. Feeling like an outcast growing up has made made empathy and compassion for others a defining quality of her music endeavors. Torrey went on her first National Music Tour with the “No Bully Tour” in 2011 at 17, visiting 15 different east coast cities, and 7-8 west coast cities. The same year, she posted a YouTube video defending her idol of the time, Lady Gaga, for her career feats, which landed her 500,000 views on YouTube. Her first single “Looking Glass”, written about her experiences with low self esteem and body image, was released in 2012, winning her the Indie Music Channel Award for “Best Pop Song” in 2013, and was nominated for numerous other awards. “Looking Glass” was featured on the popular YouTube series, “The Most Popular Girls in School” (850,000+ channel subscribers). In 2014, she was named “Best Teen Artist” and “Inspirational Artist of the Year” by the Artists in Music Awards.

In addition to her music feats, Torrey became a motivational speaker and performer at K-12 schools in 2013, where she’s spoken on the subjects of bullying, kindness, and character development. Torrey has impacted over 5,000 students with her program in the state of California, and has spoken at over 15 California distinguished schools. Her individual success led to the founding of her own company, “The Pledge Tour,” an assembly program challenging kids and teenagers to take a “pledge” for self improvement. In 2015, she was awarded the “Peacekeeper of the Year” award for her antibullying efforts by the Encinitas Rotary, becoming the youngest recipient of this award in the rotary’s 50 year history. For more information on The Pledge Tour, and Torrey’s speaking engagements, visit www.ThePledgeTour.com.

Some of her notable performances outside of the No Bully Tour and her assembly work include singing the National Anthem for a pre-season NFL Chargers game, and for the US Tennis Open. She has performed at renown venues such as LA’s Whisky-A-Go-Go, The Jon Lovitz Comedy Club, the San Diego Convention Center, the USS Midway, House of Blues San Diego, House of Blues on Sunset, The Music Box, and Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe, among others.

In early 2016, Torrey independently released her debut EP, Exhale, which reflects on her past, and her personal growth over the last four years. The EP, produced by Tario Holmes (Flo Rida, Melanie Fiona, Big Time Rush, Chris Brown) and co-written with Lena Leon (Christina Grimmie, Coco Jones), was received well by her fans and the press, earning a premiere on PopDust.com, as well as a release party with her largest San Diego draw yet.

Torrey is currently writing new music, and collaborating with other artists and industry professionals to take her next steps. She is grateful for all the support her fans have given her, and can’t wait to see what her career has in store for her next.

Chie Miyagi is a high school teacher in Okinawa and a member of the Board of Directors of the Okinawa Historical Film Society.  She is a representative of Treasures of Ryukyu, a singer-songwriter and author of a picture book 'A Letter from Okinawa' and the Okinawan song of Tida nu fa (Children of the Sun).  Her research inclues peace education, Ryukyu independence, and the Student Corps of Okinawa during the Battle of Okinawa.

Twist in Okinawa mass suicides tale

Teacher based book about civilians ordered to kill themselves on own family tragedy

by Mie Sakamoto

HAEBARU, Okinawa Pref. – Chie Miyagi, an English teacher in Okinawa, has published an English-language picture book to teach her students about the mass suicides involving local civilians during the 1945 Battle of Okinawa.

“A Letter from Okinawa” depicts a girl whose parents kill themselves under orders from the Japanese military on Tokashiki, one of the Kerama Islands. The girl lives separately from them on Okinawa’s main island, where she has been drafted into the nurse corps.

The girl, Sachiko, sends a letter to her parents after surviving the war but never receives a reply. She later finds out that her parents died in March 1945 in a mass suicide.

At the end of the story, it is revealed that Sachiko is Miyagi’s mother and that the story is based on her mother’s life.

Earlier this month, in her class at Haebaru High School on Haebaru, Okinawa, Miyagi, 49, read the book to her 35 students and had them draw pictures of war and write a letter to their parents in English, imagining they were Sachiko.

The English teacher also told them to learn as much about the war as they could from the experiences of their grandparents.

“It is hard to imagine the mass suicides, as there is no way I can see them in pictures or other means. It is important to convey what happened in the past,” said Daiki Shiroma, 17, one of the students.

Okinawa was the only inhabited part of Japan where ground fighting took place during World War II, claiming the lives of a quarter of its civilian population. More than 200,000 Japanese and Americans died during the battle.

Many survivors say that as Japan neared the brink of defeat, Japanese soldiers ordered civilians to kill themselves and their loved ones, though some deny the claim.

Although there are no specific figures, about 600 people are said to have died in mass suicides.

The issue drew public attention again last year after the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry’s school textbook authorization council instructed history textbook publishers to play down the Japanese military’s role in the civilian mass suicides.

Following a major September protest rally in Okinawa, the council approved requests by history textbook publishers to effectively reinstate references to the Japanese military’s role.

But the council did not retract its opinion that the textbook references to the forced mass suicides could cause misunderstanding.

“The number of deaths (in mass suicides) may not be as big as other war dead” from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the Holocaust, Miyagi said. “But it is very cruel that families killed themselves to end their lives. I’d like people to know that the war caused such tragedies.”

Miyagi first knew the truth about the death of her grandparents, Jitsui Makiya and Nae, when she saw a monument with their names engraved on it on Tokashiki Island about 20 years ago.

Until then, she did not exactly know how her grandparents had died because her mother, Sachiko, 80, was reluctant to talk about her wartime experiences, as are many survivors.

“My grandfather served as a school principal and later as village mayor on Tokashiki. He must have loved Tokashiki and wanted to live,” Miyagi said. “My mother must have been very shocked because her parents were telling her to come back to the island, saying it was safe there.”

Her mother said she herself was taught by a Japanese soldier how to die using a grenade by making sure she exploded it next to her heart so she would die instantly.

Her mother said she appreciates the fact that her daughter has written the book.

“If Chie had not written about my parents, no one would know how they ended their lives and they would have died in vain,” her mother said. “But if there had been no war at all, they would not have died in such a way.”

Peter Simpson, 43, an associate professor at Okinawa International University who helped Miyagi write the book, said he was “really moved” when he heard the story of her grandparents in May 2005.

“My knowledge of Okinawa was quite limited” before coming to the prefecture in 1998, Simpson said.

He said his image of the mass suicides was that only a small number of people decided to commit suicide as they believed it was better to die than to be captured by the Americans, or that Japanese soldiers would commit suicide rather than civilians.

“It’s not something that many people know about outside Japan. People know more about the Nanjing Massacre and about the ‘comfort women’ (wartime sex slaves) issue, but most people don’t know about these forced suicides,” Simpson said.

“In Okinawa, the memory of the war, especially among young people, is fading. Even the antiwar kind of culture is under threat. . . . So this story is an important one to tell,” he added.

The idea for the picture book came during Miyagi’s 2002-2004 stay in Northern Ireland and Hungary to study English teaching. In the two countries, she showed students a picture-story show about the mass murders and suicides on Okinawa.

“When I told the story about mass suicides and revealed that Sachiko is my mother, the students were shocked,” Miyagi said. “And they simply felt lost (after knowing that family members had killed each other).”

It is beyond her imagination that people were driven to kill their loved ones, Miyagi said, and she still questions why this happened.

On the other hand, she thinks it is a miracle that she came into the world at all and is still alive now.

“It is miraculous that my mother, who lost her parents and many of her friends, met my father, who also survived the war, and had me,” Miyagi said. “I want everyone to realize that life is the product of a miracle.”

“A Letter from Okinawa,” published last November, has an accompanying Japanese translation and is available for ¥700, including tax. For further information, phone Okinawa Jiji Publishing Co. at (098) 854-1622.

High School Counselor

Coach of The Teen Team

Founder of Get Ready Coaching

Donovan's refusal to settle for less than his true calling moved him from a plan to be a pilot, through the family business, past stock trading to school counseling. The next step in the evolution of his passionate plan is to leverage all that he has learned in 16 years as a school counselor to make the most powerfully profound difference possible as a life coach. He helps create trusted teen teams that groove new healthy routines so teens are fueled for takeoff toward Destination Dream.

Mr. David Migoya is a reporter for The Denver Post newspaper, and a founding member of the Post’s Investigations Team.  He has been at The Denver Post since 1999.  He has investigated and reported on many issues during his career, including banking, finance, human services, consumer affairs, and business investigations, as well as matters involving the Department of Veterans Affairs and other issues of interest to military veterans and their families. He has also worked at newspapers in New York, St. Louis and Detroit over a 35-year career that began at The Post.

Det David Love and Dr Lana Love speak with Eco poet Philosopher Derrick Jensen co-founder of Deep Green Resistance about moral values and belief systems.

"Derrick Jensen (born December 19, 1960) is an American author and radical environmentalist (and prominent critic of mainstream environmentalism) living in Crescent City, California. According to Democracy Now!, Jensen "has been called the poet-philosopher of the ecological movement."



"Jensen has published several books, including The Culture of Make Believe and Endgame, that question and critique civilization as an entire social system, exploring its inherent values, hidden premises, and modern links to supremacism, oppression, and genocide, as well as corporate, domestic, and worldwide ecological abuse. He has also taught creative writing at Pelican Bay State Prison and Eastern Washington University." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derrick_Jensen

Roslyn Franken is a passionate inspirational speaker, author and proud cancer survivor who knows about the power of positivity and emotional resilience in the face of adversity. Her mother survived the concentration camps of Nazi Europe and her father survived the Nagasaki atomic bomb as a prisoner of war in Japan. At age 56, her mother was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer and with an amazing “Keep Going” attitude lived for 21 years when she was only given two years tops to live. Her father suffered a massive heart attack at age 67 and with his “Never give up” attitude lived till age 94 when he was told he would be lucky if he made it to 82. When diagnosed with cancer at only 29, Roslyn turned to her parents’ positive “Keep going” and  “Never Give Up” attitude as inspiration in her fight to beat cancer and become a long-time survivor.

At 39, ten years after surviving cancer, and at her heaviest weight, Roslyn had enough. She decided that as a cancer survivor she could not allow herself to continue gaining weight and potentially putting herself at risk of cancer and other often diet, lifestyle and weight-related diseases. How she lost the weight and changed her life is outlined in her easy-to-read and easy-to-follow self-help book, The A List: 9 Guiding Principles for Healthy Eating and Positive Living. 

In giving presentations about THE A LIST  book, Roslyn mentioned her parents’ life as well as her cancer journey that both inspired her path to weight loss and improved self-care. People were so inspired by these brief mentions that they wanted to hear more.

And so, Roslyn set to task once again and wrote her second book entitled MEANT TO BE: A TRUE STORY OF MIGHT, MIRACLES AND TRIUMPH OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT.  In this book, Roslyn reveals the true story of her parents amazing survival, resilience and triumph as unlikely Holocaust and Atomic bomb survivors who find true love against all odds and overcome life-threatening health issues later in life. She also includes the profound lessons she learned from her parents about survival, resilience and positive mental attitude while fighting to survive cancer at the young age of 29.

A documentary was made about her parents’ story and Roslyn’s book, Meant to Be, is currently being adapted for production as a feature film.

As a professional inspirational speaker, Roslyn  delivers a heartfelt presentation to share highlights from her book, Meant to Be. She speaks for conferences, student events, community events, faith-based / religious events, senior groups, fundraiser / charity events, banquets / galas and other group events.

Roslyn is also co-author of Death Can Wait: Stories from Cancer Survivors, a fundraising book for cancer research and cancer patient programs.

She has been a guest on numerous television and radio shows and featured in newspapers and magazines across North America and abroad.

She has a Masters degree in Human Systems Intervention (the study of how people self-learn and change as individuals and in groups) from Concordia University in Montreal, Certification in