Browse > Theme > Man against nature
4 articles
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, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Capitalism – effect on the individual, Displacement, Man against nature
- Available
Documentary film on Manzanar that focuses on the region's relationship with water and with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which owns much of the land and water rights in the area. The film also juxtaposes the forced removal of Japanese Americans to Manzanar with the forced removal of Native Americans from the Manzanar area in the 19th Century. The film also looks at the contemporary water related issues that saw Japanese Americans, Native Americans, and local white environmentalists come together. Much of the Japanese American perspective comes from Sue Kunitomi Embrey , the co-founder of the Manzanar Committee , and her family.
Changing Season: On the Masumoto Family Farm (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Circle of life, Family – blessing or curse, Man against nature, Wisdom of experience
- Limited availability
Documentary film that follows a Japanese American farm family over the course of a year at their Central California farm.
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.