“Japan Focus” online journal

Japan Focus logoAn online journal called Japan Focus (“regional and global perspectives on politics, economics, society, history & culture”) has posted a new article that references our film and draws some material from our PBS Online site and this one, including our photos of Frank Emi in camp and Mits Koshiyama in court.

Japanese-American Incarceration Resistance Narratives, and the Post 9/11 Era” opens with a quote from James Omura and examines our film and Satsuki Ina’s remarkable From A Silk Cocoon in the context of “fifty years of Japanese American counternarratives challenging prevailing views about the incarceration experience.”

Author Jean Miyake Downey says:

“Many thanks for your inspiration and sharing news of inspiring resisters during this time when we need to speak out again… My background is in the African American Civil Rights Movement/Solidarity Movement in Poland (nonviolent social change movements) and, growing up in the 1970’s and not graduating from law school until 1988, in Florida, I bought the official versions of the incarceration, even though they smacked “false” to me.

“Before the age of internet, I remember seeing very little about the redress movement and Civil Liberties Act in the paper, and the takes were spinned, to minimize important aspects of the history. Of course, I knew about Fred Korematsu, but nothing about the FPC and other protesters.”

Frank Chin also sent a 29-page script for what looks to be a proposed staged reading involving himself and the Heart Mountain resisters:

“Here’s a piece linking the camp resistance that began with Hirababyashi, the draft resisters and Ehren Watada.”

The script is titled “CITIZENS DEFENSE OF THE CONSTITUTION: THE JAPANESE AMERICAN RESISTANCE TO CAMPS OF 1942 to THE RESISTANCE OF LT. EHREN WATADA OF 2006.”

Read it online, unedited, as a PDF document.

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