A Bitter Legacy

AAPI Monthly Film Series–Online Screening & Conversation

Co-presented by Asian American Pacific Islander of North Bay and Asian American Alliance of Marin

A Bitter Legacy is a feature documentary that examines the history of the World War II American incarceration prisons for 122,000 people of Japanese ancestry within the so called“War Relocation Administration” with a focus on the “Citizen Isolation Centers”.United States citizens who were deemed “troublemakers” by the government for speaking upor questioning the unlawfulness of this imprisonment, were sent to almost secret prisons in Camp Tule Lake California, Moab Utah, and Leupp Arizona-places now considered precursors to Guantanamo Bay largely because of the manner in which these men were “rendered”, and treated in such harsh and sometimes, brutal manners.In investigating the forces at work behind the creation of these citizen isolation prisons, welcome to learn of their importance within the entire bitter legacy of wartime incarceration here within the country and how they were attempts to control any uprising or dissent within the entire population of 122,000 people of Japanese ancestry. Claudia Katayanagi is a fourth generation Japanese American. Both sides of her family were pretty wealthy before WWII, having worked hard for many years and earned the respect of many in their community. But after the war, they lost everything and having endured so much pain, they would not talk freely about their experience in the American Concentration Camps.They would rather forget about it.Claudia wrote, “I realized I’ve denied my Japanese heritage for a long time. By exploring this Nikkei history in these American Concentration Camps, I began to fully appreciate my cultural heritage and all that pain and indignation all the Nikkei families have suffered.”More than four years after starting this film, having interviewed dozens of historians,scholars,former incarcerees, and having personally visited and filmed at many of the former confinement sites, I have a deeper understanding of the many issues that were affecting theNikkei people now, as well as before, and during World War I