The Lost Village of Terminal Island (film)

A 2007 documentary film directed by David Meltzer about Terminal Island , once home for a large and prosperous Japanese American fishing community located near the Port of Los Angeles, California. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 , nearly 3,000 Japanese immigrants and their families who lived at Terminal Island were forced from their homes and into government concentration camps. Most of the original inhabitants of this tight-knit Japanese American village would never return. This film tells the story of childhood memories of growing up on a once idyllic Terminal Island as well as the painful experiences of suspicion, interrogation and incarceration (most Terminal Islanders were sent to the camp at Manzanar ) that the community suffered following the passage of Executive Order 9066. The film also traces the former residents' continuing identification with Terminal Island, noting the reunions that began in 1971 and climaxing with the dedication of a memorial at the former site of the village in 2002. The film is based largely on interviews with the former residents, augmented by many family photographs and archival and home movie footage. Funding for the film came in part from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program .

Might also like A Time Remembered: The Terminal Island Story (1994); After Silence: Civil Rights and the Japanese American Experience (2003); The Merced Assembly Center: Injustice Immortalized (2012)