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Fujikawa (film)

• Films and Video
• Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
• Documentary
• Beauty of simplicity, Man against nature, Wisdom of experience
• Limited availability

Documentary film that profiles second generation fisherman Fred Fujikawa through the eyes of his nineteen-year-old nephew Michael Shiroishi. Narrated in Shiroishi's first-person voice, it is his first time accompanying his uncle. Over the course of the voyage, we learn about Fujikawa's family, who were among the Japanese Americans who settled on Terminal Island prior to World War II, along with the history of Japanese Americans in the fishing industry, while also getting a glimpse of life aboard a fishing boat and of Fujikawa and his brother building and launching a new boat. There is a brief segment on the internment of Terminal Island fishermen—including Shiroishi's grandfather—and the subsequent destruction of the Japanese American community there. "It's a sad deal," recalls Fujikawa.

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