Wataridori: Birds of Passage (film)

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

The three Issei are Koshiro Miura, a fisherman and entrepreneur; Haruno Sumi, a farmer and painter; and Harukichi Nakamura, a gardener. Each tells the story in his or her own words, with English translations voiced by actors Mako , Shizuko Hoshi, and Yuki Shimada over visuals of the Issei in the present of the film and montages of archival photographs. The film cuts back and forth between the stories to create a collective effect, starting with life in Japan and the dreams of America, migration, work, and family and community life, along with glimpses of each person's life in the present. Musical accompaniment is a mixture of period recordings and a new musical score using Japanese instruments by Dan & June Kuramoto.

The wartime roundup and incarceration period is covered through impressionistic recollections of each Issei—the smell of horse manure, being packed up in a truck, the searchlights that bathed the concentration camp at night—without providing details of specific camps. The last sections of the film are scenes from an early Manzanar pilgrimage , a contemporary kenjinkai picnic, and a community wildflower visit; the film ends with a bon dance amidst the flowers.

Wataridori was funded by a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities to the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) for an "Issei film"; the JACL in turn contracted Visual Communications (VC) to make the film. It was filmed in 1974 and premiered later that year. In keeping with VC's collectivist philosophy at the time, none of the filmmakers are mentioned by name in the film's credits, though Robert Nakamura has subsequently been acknowledged as the director. In a 2009 interview, Nakamura says that the film was inspired in part by his father's experience and he ended up using his father's as one of the three stories. ^[1]

Nakamura added that the film "was received fairly well because it wasn't very controversial, it was history, it was kind of nostalgic, and so it did very well in terms of community viewing." Pacific Citizen columnist Kats Kunitsugu called it "moving and accomplished," particularly citing "the fact that the hard work and struggle against discrimination were there, yes, but so were the good times." ^[2]

Might also like Issei: The First Generation (1984); Hito Hata: Raise the Banner (1980); A Time Remembered: The Terminal Island Story (1994)