Browse > Media Type > Films and Video
295 articles
A Time Remembered: The Terminal Island Story (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Power of the past, Importance of community, Immigrant experience, Injustice
- Limited availability
Documentary film on the Japanese American community on Terminal Island , a fishing village of the Southern California coast that was the first such community to excluded en masse in February 1942.
To Be Takei (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Empowerment, Everlasting love, Injustice, Optimism – power or folly, Rights - individual or societal
- Widely available
Documentary film that profiles actor George Takei and his husband and manager Brad Takei, capturing both their pasts and their daily lives today.
The Ito Sisters (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Evils of racism, Family – blessing or curse, Immigrant experience, Role of women
- No availability
Documentary on three Nisei sisters from Central California who lived to see their beiju (88th birthday) celebration, exploring their lives to the end of World War II.
The Red Pines: Japanese-Americans on Bainbridge Island (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, History
- Displacement, Power of tradition, Rebirth
- Widely available
Short film about the Japanese American community of Bainbridge Island, Washington . The twelve-minute film produced and directed by Lucy Ostrander provides a brief history of the community going back to the late 1800s, covers their wartime eviction and incarceration, and includes scenes from a contemporary mochitsuki , the traditional pounding of rice cakes to mark the new year. The story is largely told through Junkoh Harui, a Nisei , who recounts his Japanese immigrant father's arrival on Bainbridge to work in a sawmill before starting a number of businesses, including a store and Bainbridge Gardens. Other interviewees include Fumiko Hayashida, a woman famous for a photograph of her and her young daughter being forcibly removed during World War II; Hayashida later became the subject of another short documentary by Ostrander and her production partner Don Sellers. The title of the film comes from the Japanese red pine trees that …
The Steel Helmet (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Drama
- War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
- Widely available
Dramatic film about infantry soldiers in the Korean War written and directed by Samuel Fuller. One of the ensemble is a Nisei soldier and World War II veteran played by Richard Loo. It is likely the first Hollywood film to note the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II in a disapproving manner.
Tadaima (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Drama
- Companionship as salvation, Darkness and light, Disillusionment and dreams, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice
- Widely available
Short dramatic film by Robin Takao D'Oench that chronicles the return of a Japanese American family to their West Coast home after being released from an American concentration camp. The family—two presumably Issei parents and two presumably Nisei kids, an older teenage boy and younger teenage girl—arrive at a home that is unkempt and dirty and also marred by anti-Japanese graffiti both inside and out. As they set about making the house livable again, the two kids go out into the woods and dig up a box filled with Japanese objects—family photographs, documents, and precious objects such as Japanese dolls and clothing—they had presumably buried in the period prior to their forced removal. As they slowly settle back into their home, each family member finds some degree of hope by the end of the first day. The title is a Japanese expression generally uttered by someone who is announcing his …
Take Me Home: A Child's Experience of Internment (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8
- Documentary
- Injustice, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Power of the past
- Available
Short educational film that explores the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans from a child's perspective.
Tanforan: From Race Track to Assembly Center (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Displacement
- Available
Documentary film on Tanforan , a former horse racing track that became the site of a wartime " assembly center " for incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II. The film includes interviews with many former inmates of Tanforan, some of whom lived in what were once horse stalls, including Maya Nagata Aikawa, George and Michiko Uchida, Tomoye Takahashi, Hid Kashima, Sox Kitashima, Dave Tatsuno , Yoneo Kawakita, Hiro Katayama, Sachi Kajiwara, Sugar Hirabayashi, Hiro Fujii, Yo Kasai, Chizu Togasaki, Tomoko Kashiwagi, Toru Saito, and Jan Matsuoka. Tanforan was produced by KCSM, a San Mateo, California based public television station as part of The New Americans series and was directed by Dianne Fukami. Funders for the film included the Chevron Corporation and the Ray and Peggy Daba Fund.
Visible Target (film)
- Films and Video
Documentary film on the forced removal of Japanese Americans from Bainbridge Island , Washington. Cris Anderson and John de Graaf produced Visible Target in 1985 for Seattle public television station KCTS, making it one of the earliest documentaries to tackle the exclusion and incarceration of Japanese Americans. The film also profiles Walt and Milly Woodward of the Bainbridge Review , among the only West Coast journalists who opposed the treatment of Japanese Americans and features interviews with them.
Voices Behind Barbed Wire: Stories of Hawai'i Island (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, History
- Power of the past, Injustice, Quest for discovery, Immigrant experience
- Widely available
Short film that tells the story of Japanese Americans on Big Island of Hawai'i who were interned during World War II using a combination of contemporary interviews, historical photographs and footage, and historical reenactments. It is one of a series of four films produced by the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i about the internment experience in each of the four counties of Hawai'i as a follow up to the 2012 film The Untold Story: Internment of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i .
Voices Behind Barbed Wire: Stories of O'ahu (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, History
- Power of the past, Injustice, Quest for discovery, Immigrant experience
- Widely available
Short film that tells the story of Japanese Americans on O'ahu who were interned during World War II using a combination of contemporary interviews, historical photographs and footage, and historical reenactments. It is one of a series of four films produced by the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i about the internment experience in each of the four counties of Hawai'i as a follow up to the 2012 film The Untold Story: Internment of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i .
Voices Long Silent (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Immigrant experience, Injustice, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice
- Available
Documentary video that explores Issei perspectives of the wartime forced removal and incarceration, as related through voiceovers by actors from Los Angeles-based theater company, East West Players, accompanied by still photos of the incarceration. Filmmaker Bob Matsumoto was inspired by the testimony of Japanese Americans before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians , and sought to recapture the voices of those who were no longer able to tell their stories. Matsumoto updated the film twice, once after the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and once after the retroactive awarding of Congressional Medal of Honor awards to Japanese Americans who had been overlooked for the award in the 1940s. Voices Long Silent was used to accompany the exhibition The Art of Gaman and included in the DVD release of The Story Behind the Objects , a video specially produced by an about the show.
Unexpected Journeys: Remarkable Stories of Japanese in America (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Power of the past, Wisdom of experience
- Widely available
Documentary film consisting of short profiles of Japanese Americans whose "surprising stories" were shaped by World War II in unusual ways. The segments include
Unfinished Business (film)
- Films and Video
Documentary film released in 1984 that tells the story of the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans through Minoru Yasui , Fred Korematsu , and Gordon Hirabayashi , three men who challenged their forced removal in the courts, along with the subsequent resurrection of their legal cases in 1980s. Unfinished Business was nominated for an Academy Award for "Best Documentary Feature" for the year 1985. Primary funding for the film came from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.
Unforgettable Face (film)
- Films and Video
Short documentary film on the reunion between Yanina Cywinska, a Nazi death camp prisoner, and one of her Japanese American liberators, George Oiye , forty years later. Produced and directed by Nicole Newnham, Unforgettable Face was among the first films to document the role Nisei members of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion played in the liberation of sub-camps of the Dachau death camp. The film screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994.
The Untold Story: Internment of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, History
- Power of the past, Injustice, Quest for discovery, Immigrant experience
- Widely available
Documentary film produced by the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i (JCCH) in 2012 that provides an overview on the internment of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i during World War II—both those held in camps in the continental U.S. and those held in Hawai'i camps—as well as contemporary efforts to preserve the Hawai'i sites today.
The Untold Story of Ralph Carr and the Japanese: The Fate of 3 Japanese-Americans and the Internment (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, History
- Heroism – real and perceived, Individual versus society, Injustice, Rights - individual or societal
- Available
Japanese-produced documentary film on Colorado Governor Ralph Carr and his embrace of Japanese Americans during World War II, along with the experiences of three Japanese Americans affected in different ways by his stance.
Valor with Honor (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, War
- War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Heroism – real and perceived, Evils of racism
- Available
Documentary film by Burt Takeuchi that tells the story of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team . Eschewing a narrator, the film is built around the thirty-five interviews with veterans Takeuchi conducted and also includes brief reenactments of battle scenes that were shot at Sequoia Paintball Park in Santa Cruz, California. Valor With Honor tells the story in largely chronological fashion, starting with prewar life, the impact of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the roundup of Japanese Americans on the West Coast before getting to induction and basic training, combat in Italy, the rescue of the Lost Battalion , the liberation of Dachau sub camps, and the return to postwar society. Much of the running time focuses on the Rescue of the Lost Battalion and includes interviews with members of the 141st, the men who were rescued. The 86-minute film was completed in 2010 and has been screened widely across …
Transcending: The Wat Misaka Story (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, History
- Convention and rebellion, Heroism – real and perceived, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice
- Available
Feature length documentary film that traces the basketball exploits of Wat Misaka, a Nisei from Utah who starred on two college basketball national championship teams and played briefly for the New York Knicks in the 1940s.
A Tribute to Ruth Asawa (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Expression through art, Power of the past
- Widely available
Short documentary film on artist Ruth Asawa by Dianne Fukami. Released shortly after Asawa's death in August 2013, the film incorporates interview footage from Fukami's earlier 2008 film Ruth Asawa: Community Artist .
Tsuru (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Drama
- Desire to escape, Evils of racism, Individual versus society, Will to survive
- Widely available
Short dramatic film about an elderly Issei couple whose attempt to avoid the mass roundup of Japanese Americans during World War II is aided by a white nurse. Tsuru was a senior year project at Chapman University by Chris K. T. Bright.
Toyo Miyatake: Infinite Shades of Gray (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Darkness and light, Expression through art, Nature as beauty
- Widely available
Documentary film on photographer Toyo Miyatake , directed by Robert A. Nakamura for the Japanese American National Museum in 2001. Toyo Miyatake: Infinite Shades of Gray traces Miyatake's various identities as Little Tokyo studio photographer of portraits, weddings, and other events before and after the war; prewar art photographer; and surreptitious chronicler of incarceration during World War II. The film is an expansion of Nakamura's earlier documentary on Miyatake, The Brighter Side of Dark: Toyo Miyatake, 1895–1979 . Among its awards are a CINE Gold Eagle and the Grand Jury Award for Best Documentary Short at the Florida Film Festival; it was also an official selection of the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.
Toyo's Camera: Japanese American History During WWII (film)
- Films and Video
Feature length documentary by Japanese filmmaker Junichi Suzuki that was released in 2009 and was the first of a trilogy of movies by Suzuki on the Japanese American World War II experience. Though the film begins by telling the story of Issei photographer Toyo Miyatake and his photography of Manzanar , it proceeds to a provide a broad overview of the entire exclusion and incarceration experience, including the Redress Movement of the 1980s. A well-known feature film director in Japan, Suzuki moved to Los Angeles in 2001 and learned about the incarceration experience from a neighbor who had been held at Tule Lake . Toyo's Camera had a brief theatrical run in Los Angeles and was broadcast in Japan on BS Japan satellite television and the Japanese History Channel. Suzuki followed up Toyo's Camera with 442: Live with Honor, Die with Dignity (2010) and MIS: Human Secret Weapons (2012).
Uncommon Courage (film)
- Films and Video
Uncommon Courage: Patriotism and Civil Liberties is a 2001 documentary film that tells the story of Nisei in the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) during World War II. The 86 minute documentary was produced, directed, and written by gayle k. yamada of Bridge Media for KVIE, a public television station in Sacramento, California. The film debuted on KVIE and other public television stations in California on May 31, 2001, and was shown on many other stations later that year. In addition to the full version, there is also an hour long version. Primary funders for the film included the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program , The Freeman Foundation, Jack and Kiyo Hirose, George T. and Sakaye Aratani , and The Henry and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation.
Tokyo Rose: Victim of Propaganda (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Injustice, Patriotism – positive side or complications, Facing darkness, Individual versus society
- Available
Television documentary for A&E network's "Biography" series that sympathetically tells the story of Iva Toguri d'Aquino and the myth of "Tokyo Rose."