Then Becoming Now (film)

Documentary film by Emiko Omori about three men—Kazumu "Kaz" Julio Cesar Naganuma, Hiroshi Fukuda, and Hiroshi "Shim" Shimizu—who met as young children when their families were interned at the Crystal City , Texas, internment camp, became friends in postwar San Francisco, and participated in protests against Trump administration immigrant detention and family separation policies in 2019. In interviews, each man discusses his family history and internment trajectory, with Fukuda's—whose father was a Konko-kyo minister—and Shimizu's being from San Francisco, while Naganuma's was among the Japanese Peruvians who were seized by the U.S. Government as part of a prisoner exchange program. They became friends after the war through the Boy Scout troupe run by the San Francisco Konko Church. The film ends with each speaking at 2019 protests, including one at a Dilley, Texas, detention center near the site of the Crystal City camp.

Then Becoming Now came about as part of the Histories of Exclusion and Resistance (HEAR) series produced by KALW, San Francisco, a public radio station and its Your Call program. Funders included the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program . Filmmaker Emiko Omori has made several films about Japanese Americans and the wartime incarceration, most notably Rabbit in the Moon (1999), an acclaimed documentary family history and exploration of resistance in the concentration camps.

Might also like ; Pilgrimage (2006); Three Boys Manzanar (2016); Rebel with a Cause: The Life of Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga (2016)