Searchlight Serenade (film)

A 2012 documentary film on Japanese American swing dance bands in the World War II concentration camps. Produced by Claire Reynolds for KEET, a Eureka, California, based public television station serving California's northern coast, the hour long documentary debuted on October 30, 2012. The film was funded by grants from the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant program, the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program , and the Humboldt Area Foundation (Victor Jacoby Artist Grant).

Built around interviews with ten former inmate musicians, Searchlight Serenade tells the story of the wartime roundup and incarceration of West Coast Japanese Americans in its first third, before delving into the story of the bands, which played big band swing jazz popularized by bandleaders such as Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey and Glenn Miller, and that provided a source of recreation and pride in the bleak concentration camp settings. The story is augmented by Amy Uyeki's animations of the incarceration and of the band performances, which were created from her original woodcuts and drawings. The soundtrack includes popular music of the period that the bands played. The documentary also includes contemporary footage of some of the musicians performing.

Might also like Words, Weavings & Songs (2002); California's Gold with Huell Howser: Songbird of Manzanar (2005); Hidden Legacy: Japanese Traditional Arts in the World War II Internment Camps (2014)