Alternative Facts: The Lies of Executive Order 9066 (film)

Documentary film that explores the chain of events that led to Executive Order 9066 and the three Japanese American Supreme Court cases that subsequently challenged the curfew and exclusion of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, with a focus on the set of knowingly false claims that proponents of the exclusion used to justify it. Largely following the storyline of Peter Irons ' classic study of the Japanese American Cases, Justice at War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases . , filmmaker Jon Osaki uses interviews—with scholars (including Irons), lawyers and activists involved in the coram nobis cases, and descendants of some of the key figures involved in the decision to forcibly remove Japanese Americans—archival audio and video, and historic photos and documents to tell the story. He uses two college-age Japanese Americans (Mika Osaki, the filmmaker's daughter, and Joseph Tsuboi) as a framing device for the story, following them as they go through an exhibition in San Francisco, discovering the story along with viewers and commenting on it. The last section of the film focuses on the parallels between creation of "alternative facts" that led to the roundup of Japanese Americans and the 2017 "Muslim ban" promulgated by the Trump Administration.

Filmmaker John Osaki has been the executive director of the Japanese Community Youth Council (JCYC), a San Francisco-based non-profit organization, since 1996. Drawn into filmmaking through his work with JCYC, his prior films include My Dog Teny , a children's story about a family dog during the wartime incarceration, and Yonsei Eyes (2017), a story of two Yonsei who visit the camps in which their ancestors had been incarcerated. The title "Alternative Facts" is drawn from a statement by a Trump administration official defending falsehoods promulgated by the administration. "When people see the title, I want people to understand right away that there are parallels between today and what happened in 1942," Osaki told journalist Martha Nakagawa.

Alternative Facts was funded in part by grants from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program and the Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Foundation. Featured at the 2019 Films of Remembrance 2019 CAAMFest and various other film festivals, it has also been shown at numerous Japanese American community events such as Days of Remembrance.

Might also like Rebel with a Cause: The Life of Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga (2016); Unfinished Business (1985); Right of Passage (2015)