Fujikawa (film)

Documentary film that profiles second generation fisherman Fred Fujikawa through the eyes of his nineteen-year-old nephew Michael Shiroishi. Narrated in Shiroishi's first-person voice, it is his first time accompanying his uncle. Over the course of the voyage, we learn about Fujikawa's family, who were among the Japanese Americans who settled on Terminal Island prior to World War II, along with the history of Japanese Americans in the fishing industry, while also getting a glimpse of life aboard a fishing boat and of Fujikawa and his brother building and launching a new boat. There is a brief segment on the internment of Terminal Island fishermen—including Shiroishi's grandfather—and the subsequent destruction of the Japanese American community there. "It's a sad deal," recalls Fujikawa.

Fujikawa —along with Emi , a film by the same creative team about a Nisei woman's return to Manzanar and Terminal Island—was produced as part of a pioneering Asian American film series titled Pearls by the Educational Film Center and funded by a grant via the Office of Education Emergency School Assistance Act.

Might also like The Lost Village of Terminal Island (2007); A Time Remembered: The Terminal Island Story (1994); Manzanar Fishing Club (2012)