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“Righting Civil Wrongs” Shorts Program

  • 45 mins

From the hot-button issue of Black reparations, to the racial reckoning of America leading to the re-examination of monuments to racist icons, to the role of Japanese Americans in using our experience to safeguard the rights of others similarly targeted by racial scapegoating, the “Righting Civil Wrongs” shorts programs utilizes history to inform the present.

Featuring a post-film discussion with filmmakers STEVE NAGANO, JON OSAKI and DONALD K. TAMAKI of the California State Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, moderated by ABC-7 News Producer LINDSAY NAKANO.

In this program


Righting Civil Wrongs Shorts Program Discussion

A post-film discussion with filmmakers STEVE NAGANO, JON OSAKI and DONALD K. TAMAKI of the California State Task…

We Came Back For You

Directed by Akira Boch, Taiji Terasaki

“We Came Back for You” is a film poem based on a poem by the same name by Satsuki Ina, a psychotherapist and activist who is one of the featured “heroes” in the exhibition, Transcendients: Heroes at Borders. The film features Ina reciting her poem over a montage of photographs of her during and after her incarceration during World War II, footage preserved in the archives of the Japanese American National Museum, and images of Ina’s current activism that connect the travesty of democracy then to the present-day crisis occurring on the U.S.-Mexico border, where immigrant refugee families are being separated and held in detention centers indefinitely.

Putting Them Where They Can Do No Harm

Directed by Steve Nagano

Fletcher Bowron, former Mayor of Los Angeles, used his weekly radio show to indict Japanese people during World War II. His amazingly racist rhetoric was spewed over Los Angeles’s airwaves, fueling the incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry. Now is the time to remove his name from the square that honors him.

Reparations

Reparations

Directed by Jon Osaki

“Reparations” explores the four-century struggle to seek repair and atonement for slavery in the United States. Black and Asian Americans reflect on the legacy of slavery, the inequities that persists, and the critical role that solidarity between communities has in acknowledging and addressing systemic racism in America.