Time of Fear (film)

Documentary film that provides an overview of the Japanese American World War II incarceration experience with a focus on the two camps in Arkansas, Jerome and Rohwer . The film was commissioned as part of the Life Interrupted project of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the Japanese American National Museum and was produced by Ambrica Productions with Sue Williams writing and directing it. The primary funders of the film included the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council, the Arkansas Humanities Council, and the Department of Arkansas Heritage. The hour long film made its national PBS debut in May of 2005.

Time of Fear tells its story using archival still and moving images—including home movie footage of Jerome taken by Akira and Yoshio Hayashi—along with recreations and interviews with Japanese American former inmates (along with Senator Daniel Inouye ) and both white and African American Arkansans. In addition to conveying the standard aspects of the expulsion and incarceration story, the documentary covers aspects of the story unique to Arkansas including the impact of segregationist governor Homer Adkins, the mixed reaction of local residents, and the complications of introducing a large population that was neither black nor white into the binary Jim Crow environment.

Might also like Relocation, Arkansas: Aftermath of Incarceration (2016); The Idaho Homefront: Of Camps and Combat (2007); Moving Walls (2017)