Browse > Media Type > Films and Video

295 articles

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Ho'onani Makuakane (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Drama
Power of the past, Injustice, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Quest for discovery
Widely available

Episode of the Hawaii Five-0 TV series from 2013 that featured a Japanese American internment-related storyline.

Reunion: The 50th Anniversary Celebration of the 442nd (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Reunion, Power of the past, Circle of life
Limited availability

Television program documenting the week of events that took place in Honolulu, Hawai'i, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team . The hour-long program produced by JN Productions aired on April 29, 1993 on Oceanic Cable in Hawai'i and on May 9, 1993 on KHNL Honolulu.

Right of Passage (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Empowerment, Female roles, Importance of community, Power of the past
Available

Documentary film by Janice D. Tanaka that chronicles the convoluted twenty-year history of the Redress Movement .

America at its Best: Legacy of Two Nisei Patriots (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Heroism - real and perceived, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
No availability

Documentary film produced and directed by Vince Matsudaira that highlights events honoring the two Medal of Honor recipients from the Seattle area, William Nakamura and James Okubo in 2001. The video was produced by the Nakamura/Okubo Medal of Honor Committee of the Nisei Veterans Committee, Seattle.

American (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Drama, War
Heroism – real and perceived, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Wisdom of experience
Widely available

Short narrative film starring George Takei as a Nisei veteran and Japanese American National Museum docent named Clinton Nakamoto. While on duty one day at the museum, he meets a woman with a young daughter and starts to give them a tour. The woman mentions that her grandfather had fought in the "422" and shows Clinton a picture of him on her phone. The picture sends Clinton back to the 1942, recalling his anger at the forced removal and later of serving in the 442nd with the grandfather, who was killed in the rescue of the Lost Battalion . He takes her to visit the Go for Broke memorial, where they find his name on it. On the way home on the bus, he strikes up a friendship with a young Muslim boy.

American at Heart (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Heroism - real and perceived, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
No availability

Film that tells the story of the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team through historical footage (including clips from the movie Go for Broke! ), still photographs and interview with many Nisei veterans, their white commanders, and others tied to the story. American at Heart covers the origin of the units in Hawai'i and Washington, DC, basic training in Camps McCoy and Shelby, their experiences in combat in Europe, and their return to the Hawai'i and the continental U.S. after the war. The film also contrasts the experience of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i vs. those on the West Coast, outlining the mass forced removal and incarceration of the latter. Among those interviewed are General Mark Clark , the World War II commander of the Fifth Army and 15th Army Group in Europe, who discusses what he calls "the wrong decision" to send Japanese Americans to "concentration camps" and …

Resettled Roots: Legacies of Japanese Americans in Chicago (film)

Films and Video
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Importance of community, Power of silence, Rebirth
Available

Documentary film on the evolution of the Japanese American community in Chicago . Directors Anna Takada and Maria Pimentel tell the story using a generational framework with a brief prologue on Japanese immigration and the prewar Issei era and a longer segment on the wartime roundup and incarceration centered on the Nisei , before turning to Nisei and Sansei recollections of resettlement to Chicago and growing up there after the war. Many of the Sansei recall their parents' silence about their wartime experiences. The last segment focuses on Yonsei and recent activism featuring 2019 footage from an all camps reunion in Chicago and on a protest march that saw Chicago Japanese Americans drawing on their history to protest immigrant detention and deportation today.

Ralph Story's Los Angeles: Little Tokyo (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Importance of community, Optimism – power or folly, Self-reliance, Social mobility
No availability

Episode of the popular 1960s weekly television show featuring the Little Tokyo area of Los Angeles. Filmed largely in Little Tokyo, the program covers both the history of the neighborhood and its then current status and includes a discussion of the wartime incarceration of its population.

442: For the Future (film)

Films and Video
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Role of men, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
Limited availability

Docu-drama by Patricia Kinaga that tells the story of the Japanese American World War II experience with a focus on the exploits of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team , through the experiences of four characters.

Relics from Camp: A Video Journey (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Expression through art, Power of the past, Evils of racism
Limited availability

Companion film to art installation of the same name produced and directed by artist Kristine Yuko Aono and narrated in her first-person voice. Aono explains the origins of the projects and includes footage of her and her family visiting various former concentration camp sites to collect dirt and artifacts as well as installation of the exhibition in three venues. The film also features three Nisei who contributed objects to the installation talking about the significance of those objects.

Relocation, Arkansas: Aftermath of Incarceration (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Circle of life, Evils of racism, Power of the past, Reunion, Rights - individual or societal
Limited availability

Documentary film by Vivienne Schiffer about the legacy of the Rohwer , Arkansas, concentration camp that focuses on the incarceration's impact on the Sansei and the role of a local mayor in preserving Rohwer's history.

Relocations and Revisions: The Japanese-American Internment Reconsidered (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Expression through art, Power of the past
Limited availability

Companion video to the 1992 exhibition of art inspired by the wartime exclusion and incarceration at the Long Beach Museum of Art that features interviews with the mostly Sansei artists featured in the exhibition.

Redress: The JACL Campaign for Justice (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Injustice, Rights - individual or societal
Limited availability

Documentary film produced by Visual Communications for the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) in 1991 documenting the JACL's role in the Redress Movement , which had recently culminated in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 . Written and directed by John Esaki, the film was shown at Days of Remembrances and other events. William Hohri , a frequent critic of the JACL, wrote a letter to Japanese American vernacular papers that compared the video to "how history was manipulated in the old Soviet Union" noting the omission of the corm nobis cases and non-JACL contributors to the movement. In response, Cherry Kinoshita, the JACL's national redress chair, noted the video's goal "to document JACL's role in the redress effort," and not to tell a comprehensive story of redress. [1]

Starting Over: Japanese Americans After the War (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Injustice, Rebirth, Power of the past
Widely available

Documentary film centering on the return of Japanese Americans to their homes after their exclusion and incarceration in concentration camps.

Aleut Evacuation: The Untold War Story (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Displacement, Evils of racism, Injustice, Power of the past

Documentary film that tells the story of the forced removal and incarceration of the Aleut people from their ancestral Alaskan homes to detention camps in southwest Alaska during World War II. Based on interviews with surviving inmates and their descendants and on historical photographs and documents, Aleut Evacuation proceeds in largely chronological fashion, starting with a brief portrait of the Aleut community prior to the war, then covering their forcible removal by the U.S. government—ostensibly for their own protection in the face of possible Japanese attack—and their subsequent incarceration in several different camps. Focusing first on the largest camp, Funter Bay, which held those from the Pribilof Islands, it also considers a camp on Killisnoo Island where those from Atka were held, along with Ward Lake, where those from smaller villages were incarcerated. Former inmates remember the poor and harsh conditions in the camps and the rampant health problems they …

Stand Up For Justice: The Ralph Lazo Story (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Drama
Injustice, Coming of age
Available

Short film that dramatizes the story of Ralph Lazo , a Los Angeles high school student of Mexican and Irish descent, who voluntarily chose to go to Manzanar to support his Nisei friends and protest the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans.

A Thousand Paper Cranes: How Denver's Japanese American Community Emerged from Internment (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Importance of community, Power of the past, Rebirth
Widely available

Documentary film about the wartime incarceration and about Japanese Americans in Denver after the war. Scenes shot at the Amache site today serve as a backdrop for the incarceration stories, while the segments on Denver focus on the importance of Colorado Governor Ralph Carr and on Sakura Square, the symbolic center of Colorado's Japanese American community.

A Tradition of Honor (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Heroism – real and perceived, Role of men, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
Widely available

Feature length documentary telling the stories of Japanese American soldiers in the 100th Infantry Battalion , 442nd Regimental Combat Team , and Military Intelligence Service , produced in 2002 by the Go For Broke National Education Foundation.

All We Could Carry (film)

Films and Video

Short documentary film by Steven Okazaki on Heart Mountain that serves as the introductory video to the exhibits at the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center . The fifteen minute film draws on interviews with twelve former Heart Mountain inmates and features photographs by Yoshio Okumoto and Bill Manbo, 8-mm home movie footage by Naokichi Hashizume and Eiichi Edward Sakauye, and drawings by Estelle Ishigo , all of whom where were also incarcerated there. The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation commissioned and funded the film. It premiered at the grand opening of the interpretive center on August 20, 2011.

Searchlight Serenade (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Expression through art
Available

A 2012 documentary film on Japanese American swing dance bands in the World War II concentration camps. Produced by Claire Reynolds for KEET, a Eureka, California, based public television station serving California's northern coast, the hour long documentary debuted on October 30, 2012. The film was funded by grants from the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant program, the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program , and the Humboldt Area Foundation (Victor Jacoby Artist Grant).

After Silence: Civil Rights and the Japanese American Experience (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Injustice, Patriotism - complications, Fear of other, Power of the past
Limited availability

Documentary film that focuses on the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans from Bainbridge Island, Washington , as recounted through the perspective of Dr. Frank Kitamoto, who was a child during World War II. The story is told through interaction between Kitamoto and a small group of high school students from Bainbridge High School as they develop archival photographs from the incarceration and discuss its relevance to post 9/11 America. The film ends with the 2002 dedication of a memorial and plaque marking the site of the Bainbridge Islanders' departure. After Silence was produced by the Bainbridge Island Historical Society as part of an exhibition on the community's World War II experience, with funding from the Washington State Civil Liberties Public Education Program and the Charles W. Gaugl Foundation.

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.

Act of Faith: The Rev. Emery Andrews Story (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Circle of life, Family – blessing or curse, Heroism – real and perceived, Love and sacrifice
Widely available

Documentary film on Rev. Emery Andrews , a Baptist priest who went beyond the call of duty to aid Japanese Americans from Seattle incarcerated at the Minidoka , Idaho, concentration camp.

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.

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