The Chessmen (film)

Short narrative film about Japanese Americans struggling to run a flower nursery set in Northern California in 1949. Based on a short story by Toshio Mori , filmmaker Ken Kokka made the film as a film student at UCLA.

As the story begins, Mas, a middle-aged Nisei man who had lost his nursery as a result of the wartime incarceration, works for Yosh. While Mas wants to grow the best flowers possible, Yosh is more concerned with cutting costs. Despite this, Mas convinces Yosh to hire George, a young man who has just dropped out of college. Though George is a good worker and aspires to own his own nursery, Yosh encourages him to go back to college, citing the difficulties of running a nursery and the hardships family members have to endure. When Mas is injured on the job, both men can see the writing on the all.

In adapting Mori's 1941 short story, which was originally set prior to World War II, Kokka moved the story the postwar period "to focus on the challenges that faced my parents and grandparents during the resettlement period after WWII." He shot the film at the Oishi and Sakai family nurseries in Richmond, California. Kokka later made a documentary film, Blossoms and Thorns: A Community Uprooted , about the history of Japanese American flower nurseries in Richmond. Kokka also removed the character of Takeo, who in Mori's story, is a neighbor who also serves as the first-person narrator. ^[1]

Might also like Blossoms and Thorns: A Community Uprooted (2012); Tadaima (2015); Resettlement to Redress: Rebirth of the Japanese-American Community (2005)