Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp (film)

Documentary film on Minidoka that serves as the orientation film at the Minidoka National Historic Site. Narrated by George Takei and featuring interviews with Japanese Americans who were incarcerated at Minidoka, the film covers the prewar Japanese American community, the mass forced removal of Japanese Americans in 1942, life at Minidoka, the "loyalty questionnaire," the 442nd Regimental Combat Team , the closing of the camp in 1945 and the return home, the Redress movement , and the importance of remembering the incarceration story.

Rory Banyard and Portland, Oregon, based North Shore Productions was commissioned by the Minidoka National Historic Site to produce the film in 2017 and filmed at the site that winter and at the Minidoka Pilgrimage in July. Interviews were done in Portland, Seattle, Bainbridge Island, and other locations in 2017–18. The film was completed in 2019 and screened at festivals and at community screenings in 2019–20. Banyard and North Shore Productions were also commissioned to make a similar film on the experience of Japanese Americans on Bainbridge Island that was titled Bearing the Unbearable , also completed in 2019. ^[1]

In 2018, Friends of Minidoka received a grant from the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program for $247,716 to produce a one-hour version of the film also in collaboration with North Shore Productions, as well as educational materials aimed at middle and high school students. ^[2]

Might also like The Idaho Homefront: Of Camps and Combat (2007); In Time of War (2004); Bearing the Unbearable (2019).