Through the Lens of Russell Lee: Mathias Uchiyama's Story (film)

Short documentary film about a Japanese American family that left the Portland Assembly Center to engage in farm labor in eastern Oregon, produced to accompany the traveling exhibition Uprooted: Japanese American Farm Labor Camps during World War II .

The ten-minute video is built around a 2014 oral history interview with Mathias Uchiyama, whose family left the Portland Assembly Center in June of 1942 to harvest sugar beets in Eastern Oregon. Housed first at the Nyssa migrant labor camp , the Uchiyamas later moved to a private farm where they lived in a cabin and worked for the white farm owners. They were ultimately allowed to stay in the area, since it was outside the exclusion zone for Japanese Americans. Ten at the time of the roundup, Uchiyama and his family were photographed during their farm labor period by Farm Security Administration photographer Russell Lee in a series of fifteen images. In the film, he talks about Lee and the photographs and recounts his memories of that time.

The film consists entirely of Uchiyama's recollections and Lee's photographs. No director or producer is credited.

Might also like One-Two-One-Seven (2016); Starting Over: Japanese Americans After the War (1996); Resettlement to Redress: Rebirth of the Japanese-American Community (2005)