Eagle Against the Sun (film)

A dramatic short film by John Akahoshi centering on a 17-year-old Japanese American high school girl and the impact the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has on her life.

In December 1941, Helen (Lisa Inouye) is a popular Nisei girl in high school who lives with her parents and younger brother on a farm in Palos Verdes, California. She and her girlfriends talk about the upcoming Christmas dance and who their dates are; Helen hopes the new boy, Ken (Patrick Todd), will ask her. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, everything changes for Helen. Some of the kids—even those who had been her friends—wonder about her and one even asks if she knew of the attack. Goaded by one of the girls, she asks Ken to the dance, but her turns her down. That night, someone steal the family's truck and destroys their fruit stand. At school the next day, someone vandalizes her locker. At school students give speeches on the Constitution; Helen's friend Jennifer (Stack Armao) talks about the Bill of Rights and the need to protect rights at home even during wartime. Later, Jennifer visits Helen and tells her that Ken has asked her to the dance but that she's not going. Helen insists she go. At the the dance, Helen look forlornly into the window. A final title notes the pending removal and incarceration of the Japanese Americans from Palos Verdes and the rest of the West Coast.

Eagle Against the Sun was a student film written and directed by Akahoshi while at the University of Southern California in 1992.

Might also like Tsuru (2014); A Crossroad Called Manzanar (2010); I'll Remember April (2000)