Inspired by the true-life experience of its star George Takei, Allegiance follows one family's extraordinary journey in this untold American story following the events of Pearl Harbor. Their loyalty was questioned, their freedom taken away, but their spirit could never be broken.
This short documentary produced by the University of Oregon Multimedia Journalism graduate program explores memories of Portland's Japantown – Nihonmachi – and the thriving Japanese American community in Oregon prior to World War II. The film features Chisao Hata, an artist, teacher and activist, and Jean Matsumoto, who was incarcerated at the Portland Assembly Center and in the Minidoka concentration camp as a child.
1945: after the death of his father, Ken escapes Japanese American internment camp to find his Caucasian mother who lives in town. Things become complicated, however, when Kens little brother, Jo, joins him at the last minute.
Fact based drama about one of the internment camps used by the American military during World War II to detain some 100,000 Japanese Americans (most of them U.S. born) following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.
The film expresses the history of oppression, discrimination, violence and hate in America. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short.
FREEWAY CITY is a provocative case study on how the collision of race, politics and casino economics shaped the destiny of Gardena, California.
Kylie, a college nursing student troubled and traumatized by the recent events of her passing boyfriend, learns to find peace and strength through an ancient practice from the relationships around her.
The filmmaker's father and uncle, Norm and Stan, are third generation Japanese Americans. They are "all American" guys who love bowling, cards and pinball. Placed in the Amache internment camp as children during World War II, they don't think the experience affected them that much. But in the course of navigating the maze of her father's and uncle's pursuits while simultaneously trying to inquire about their past, the filmmaker is able to find connections between their lives now and the history that was left behind.
Documentary film version of the stage show in which actress Cynthia Gates Fujikawa explores the story of her father, actor Jerry Fujikawa, who had a long career in films and television, most often as a stereotyped Asian. The daughter, in the course of searching out her late father's history, discovers many things that she had not known, among them that her father had spent time in Manzanar, the internment camp for Japanese-Americans during World War II, that he had had a family prior to hers, and that somewhere out there was a sister she had never known existed.
Venture out to the Masumoto Farm – eighty acres of prime, peach-growing orchards – where seven varieties of the sweet juicy fruit are cultivated to sun-kissed perfection by a dynamic father-and-daughter team of David “Mas” and Nikiko Masumoto. Director Jim Choi succinctly captures this underrepresented facet of the CA farming industry about an Asian American family-run business, three generations strong, which in turn presents us with the changing idea of the American Dream. - See more at: http://laapff.festpro.com/films/detail/changing_season_2015#sthash.54OdJcdi.dpuf
The long-suppressed story of 12,000 Japanese Americans who dared to resist the U.S. government's program of mass incarceration during World War II. Branded as 'disloyals' and re-imprisoned at Tule Lake Segregation Center, they continued to protest in the face of militarized violence, and thousands renounced their U.S. citizenship. Giving voice to experiences that have been marginalized for over 70 years, this documentary challenges the nationalist, one-sided ideal of wartime 'loyalty.'
December 7, 1941 - TOMIKAZU “TOMI” NAKAJI (Kyler Ki Sakamoto) and his best friend BILLY DAVIS (Kalama Epstein) are playing baseball in a field near their homes in Hawaii when Japan launches a surprise attack on the US at Pearl Harbor. As Tomi looks up at the sky and recognizes the Blood-Red Sun emblem on the fighter planes, he knows that his life has changed forever. Based on actual events, Under the Blood-Red Sun is an unforgettable story of friendship, courage and survival.
Zip, a 17 year-old Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) baseball pitcher, faces the tragic circumstances of the World War II internment of 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry. Set in a relocation camp in the summer of 1943, this film chronicles the journey of an American family torn apart by a forced and unjust incarceration, a father's decision that challenges his son to find strength, and ultimately his son's triumph through courage, sacrifice and the All-American game of baseball.
Amid the hysteria of World War II, a Chinese-American private investigator meets with a Japanese-American client and must choose between his desire to help those in need and his angry and bitter community.
Fumiko Hayashida: The Woman Behind the Symbol is both a historical portrait of Fumiko, her family and the Bainbridge Island Japanese American community in the decades before World War II as well as a contemporary story which follows 97-year old Fumi and her daughter Natalie as they return to the site of the former Minidoka internment camp, their first trip back together in 63 years. The film reveals how the iconic photograph became the impetus for Fumiko to publicly lobby against the injustices of the past.
A documentary film about the internment of Japanese Americans at Heart Mountain, Wyoming during World War II. The program, hosted by Jan Yanehiro, proceeds in part as a series of interviews. It also includes archival film footage of Heart Mountain and Japanese Americans during World War II, as well as present day footage of the Heart Mountain landscape.
Documentary following six Americans of Japanese ancestry who were held in U.S. internment camps during World War II.
Leaving internment camps to defend their country in Europe, Japanese-American Nisei soldiers of WWII became the most decorated unit in American history. This film tells their story.
This film is a poetic composition of recorded history and non-recorded memory. Filmmaker Rea Tajiri’s family was among the 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in internment camps after the attack on Pearl Harbor. And like so many who were in the camps, Tajiri’s family wrapped their memories of that experience in a shroud of silence and forgetting. This film raises questions about collective history – questions that prompt Tajiri to daringly re-imagine and re-create what has been stolen and what has been lost.
A 1971 film study of a Japanese American who lived in a detention camp during World War II.