Unexpected Journeys: Remarkable Stories of Japanese in America (film)

Documentary film consisting of short profiles of Japanese Americans whose "surprising stories" were shaped by World War II in unusual ways. The segments include

• Sumi Hughes and Yuri Long, two Nisei sisters who grew up in Florida, but who moved to Los Angeles just in time to be sent to Manzanar ;

• Terry Janzen, born to a white father and Japanese mother in Japan; after the family settled in San Bernardino, California, they were forcibly incarcerated at Poston ;

• Harry and Hamako Schneider, a couple who met in Japan where GI Harry married war bride Hamako and settled in the US;

• Iris Teragawa, a Nisei born and raised in Oxnard and incarcerated at Gila River who later became a fashion designer who opened her own clothing store in West Hollywood, California; and

• Lloyd Inui, a Nisei who grew up in California, went to Heart Mountain , then resettled in Baltimore before becoming a pioneering Asian American Studies professor at Cal State Long Beach.

Each segment runs five to seven minutes and is built around an interview with the principal, with additional information provided by narrator traci kato-kiriyama.

Produced and directed by John Esaki for the Frank H. Watase Media Arts Center at the Japanese American National Museum , Unexpected Journeys was one of a series of Japanese American themed documentaries sponsored by Nitto Tire U.S.A. Inc.

Might also like Words, Weavings and Songs (2002); Invisible Citizens: Japanese Americans (1983); The Empty Chair (2014)