From a Different Shore: An American Identity (film)

Documentary film produced by Great Britain's The Open University that examines the Japanese American community by focusing on three families in Los Angeles.

Narrator and on-camera host Richard Maidment, an American Studies professor at The Open University, begins with footage of the Manzanar site and of the 1993 Nisei Week festival in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo and introduces us to three influential families: the Kitos, whose Fugetsu-do Japanese sweet shop had been in Little Tokyo for ninety years; the Moreys, merchants and developers in Little Tokyo; and the Komais, owner of the Rafu Shimpo newspaper. Maidment tells the Japanese American story largely through these three families, along with other experts such as a sociologist Harry H.L. Kitano and visits to the newly opened Japanese American National Museum . The first half-hour is devoted to Japanese American history, most of which focuses on the World War II incarceration, its continuing impact, and the Redress Movement . The second half of the film looks at the current state of the community—Japanese Americans as part of the Asian Pacific American coalition, the evolving identity of Sansei and Yonsei , the impact of interracial marriage, and relations with the new Japanese immigrant community. The program closes with scenes from a large Manzanar reunion .

Jeremy Cooper produced and directed From a Different Shore: An American Identity for The Open University and BBC. It was distributed in the U.S. by Films for the Humanities & Sciences, later Film Media Group.

Might also like East of Occidental: The History of Seattle's Chinatown (1988); Crossroads: Boyle Heights (2002); Crossroads in Nihonmachi (2006)