Browse > Media Type > Films and Video

330 articles

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"Putting Them Where They Could Do No Harm" (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Evils of racism, Heartbreak of betrayal, Power of words
Widely available

Short film that makes the case for renaming Fletcher Bowron Square in downtown Los Angeles, named after the wartime mayor of Los Angeles who agitated for the removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. Eschewing narration, the film uses Bowron's wartime radio addresses (voiced by Maciek Kolodziejeczak) as evidence of his anti-Japanese and pro-exclusion stance, juxtaposed with excerpts from Japanese Americans testifying about their wartime experiences in clips from testimony before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians . The film ends with many examples of entities whose names have been changed in recent years due to changing societal attitudes towards race, before calling for the renaming of Fletcher Bowron Square. The title comes from one of Bowron's radio addresses.

Six Weddings and a Dress (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Power of the past, Wisdom of experience
Widely available

Short documentary film centering on Chiyomi Ogawa, a Nisei woman who had been incarcerated in Manzanar , and her wedding dress, which was subsequently used by five other women in the early postwar years.

We Hereby Refuse: The Akutsu Family Resists (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Animation
Chaos and order, Evils of racism, Heartbreak of betrayal
Widely available

Simply animated story focusing on the Akutsu family, told in Nisei Jim Akutsu's first-person voice, starting with the arrest of his father after the attack on Pearl Harbor, his internment and interrogation, Jim's unsuccessful attempts to enlist, and the family's subsequent removal to Puyallup . In between the Akutsu family story are scenes of Japanese American Citizens League leaders Mike Masaoka and James Sakamoto cooperating with government officials to facilitate the roundup. The story was adapted from the book We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration by Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura, with the animation based on Ross Ishikawa's artwork for the book.

Honor Bound: A Personal Journey (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Heroism - real or perceived, Power of the past
Available

Documentary film that tells the story of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team through the story of one soldier, Haruo Howard "Howe" Hanamura, and his daughter, television reporter Wendy Hanamura, who travel to Europe in October 1994 for 50th anniversary ceremonies of the liberation of Bruyeres and Biffontaine by the 442nd. The film was produced by the National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS) and KPIX, San Francisco, where Wendy Hanamura was a news reporter. After debuting on KPIX on March 5, 1995, it went on to be shown on over 100 PBS stations.

Nobuko Miyamoto: A Song in Movement (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Expression through art, Quest for discovery, Rebirth
Widely available

Documentary profile of performing artist and activist Nobuko Miyamoto tracing her early career as a precocious dancer and singer on Broadway and in Hollywood followed by a political awakening that saw her and her songwriting partner Chris Iijima become the musical voice of the Asian American Movement. The film traces her life as a single mother in Los Angeles, where she teaches dance out of the Senshin Buddhist Temple before forming the Asian American performing arts company Great Leap. The film also includes a brief segment of Miyamoto's memories of her and her family's wartime incarceration at the Santa Anita Assembly Center .

One Fighting Irishman: Wayne M. Collins and the Tule Lake Segregation Center (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary, History
Power of the past, Working class struggles
Widely available

Documentary film profiling lawyer Wayne M. Collins that focuses on his years-long work to nullify the renunciations of thousands of Tule Lake inmates in the years after World War II. Built around a colorfully profane audio of a 1970s interview with Collins by historian Donald Collins (no relation), the film explores Collins' troubled early life, the broader Tule Lake Segregation Center story, and the wide ranging impact Collins' actions had on generations of Tule Lake families, including that of narrator George Takei.

Sowing Seeds of Life… of Hope (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Empowerment, Optimism – power or folly, Will to survive
Widely available

Short film about Kumezo Hachimonji, an Issei seed store owner from El Monte, California, who brought seeds with him to Heart Mountain that were used to grow vegetables there. The film is based on an interview with Ike Hachimonji, Kumezo's Nisei son. The short film by Michi Tanioka came out Visual Communications ' Digital Histories program, a program to encourage older Asian American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander adults to tell stories through film.

The Ties That Bind: Generations of Faith (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Importance of community, Role of Religion – virtue or hypocrisy
Available

Documentary film about this history of the Buena Vista United Methodist Church , a Japanese American church in Alameda, California , on its 100th anniversary. Using family photographs, home movies and other sources, the film takes us through the church's history in ten and twenty year intervals, highlighting its founding and early growth through the Issei era, the impact of wartime incarceration, and its evolution in the postwar period.

Yuki Shimoda: Asian American Actor (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Expression through art, Quest for discovery, Wisdom of experience
Widely available

Documentary film profiling pioneering Nisei actor Yuki Shimoda that takes us from his youth in Sacramento, wartime incarceration as a young man at Tule Lake , and the ups and downs of his acting career. The film includes interviews with many of Shimoda's friends and contemporaries including Mako , Nobu McCarthy , and Soon Teck Oh, along with clips from key roles in Auntie Mame , Farewell to Manzanar , and Hito Hata among others. The film places his career in the larger context of Asian American actors who struggle to find meaningful parts and often are forced to play stereotypical roles to make ends meet.

Fujitaro Kubota and His Garden (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary, History
Expression through art, Man against nature, Nature as beauty
Widely available

Documentary on the life of Fujitaro Kubota and Kubota Garden. An Issei who cycled through various businesses before discovering landscape gardening, Kubota built a large garden in Seattle to showcase his nursery stock that became an attraction. He and his sons later designed Japanese-style gardens for large clients such as the Rainier Club, Bloedel Reserve, and the University of Washington. The Kubota Garden was eventually sold to the City of Seattle in the 1980s and continues to be operated by the city. The film also covers the Kubota family's wartime incarceration at Puyallup and Minidoka and the difficult postwar period. The film is based on interviews with Kubota family members, those who worked him, and historians tied to the Kubota Garden Foundation.

Manzanar (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Power of the past, Quest for discovery, Growing up – pain or pleasure
Limited availability

Experimental documentary film by Bob Nakamura made in 1971 that was one of the first films to explore the legacy of the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Wataridori: Birds of Passage (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Immigrant experience, Wisdom of experience, Circle of life, Importance of community
Limited availability

Documentary film produced by Visual Communications in 1974 that tells the story of the Issei generation through the lives of three ordinary Issei.

The Sakai Family of Bainbridge Island (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Family – blessing or curse, Importance of community, Necessity of work, Reunion, Role of women
Limited availability

Documentary film on the Sakai family, longtime residents of Bainbridge Island, Washington , based primarily on an interview with Kazuko "Kay" Sakei Nakao.

Through the Lens of Russell Lee: Mathias Uchiyama's Story (film)

Films and Video
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Power of the past, Working class struggles, Displacement
Widely available

Short documentary film about a Japanese American family that left the Portland Assembly Center to engage in farm labor in eastern Oregon, produced to accompany the traveling exhibition Uprooted: Japanese American Farm Labor Camps during World War II .

Time of Fear (film)

Films and Video

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.

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 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.

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.

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