Browse > Point-of-View > Interviews with Nisei veterans
2 articles
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 …
Legacy of the Nisei Veterans: WWII Stories of the 100th/442nd and Military Intelligence Service (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Heroism - real and perceived, Role of men
- Limited availability
Documentary film made up of interviews with ten Nisei World War II veterans from the San Francisco Bay area. Short segments of the interviews are organized by topic in more or less chronological fashion, with the occasional insertion of still photographs from the period. Segments include the reaction to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the arrest of Issei leaders, Executive Order 9066 and its aftermath, early recruits to the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), the formation of the 442nd and the loyalty questionnaire episode of early 1943, the battlefield experiences of the MIS in the Pacific and the 442nd in Europe, and the role of the MIS in occupation Japan. The film ends with a brief summary of each man's life after the war. One unusual element in the inclusion of Takeshi "Gish" Endo's story of being recruited out of Heart Mountain by the British Political Warfare Mission, and doing translation …