Film Screening: "Pilgrimage" at UCSC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 31, 2007
Contact 831-459-5349
aapirc@ucsc.edu

"PILGRIMAGE" PREMIERES AT UCSC
How a new generation of Japanese Americans reclaimed the WWII Concentration Camps

UCSC will mark the 65th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, the
legal order that led to the wartime incarceration of 120,000 Japanese
Americans, with the Santa Cruz premiere of Pilgrimage, a new
documentary by award-winning filmmaker, Tadashi Nakamura.
Co-producer Karen Ishizuka will also be on hand to talk about her new
book, Lost & Found: Reclaiming the Japanese American Internment.

The event takes place Friday, Feb. 9, 6:30-8:30PM, Oakes Lecture Hall
105, UCSC west campus. Admission is free.

With a hip-hop music track and never-before-

seen archival footage,
Pilgrimage tells the inspiring story of how a small group of Japanese
Americans in the late 1960s transformed the abandoned Manzanar,
California concentration camp into a symbol of retrospection and
solidarity for people of all ages, races and nationalities in a post
9/11 world. The documentary is slated for broadcast on PBS, and will
tour the west coast this spring. Tadashi Nakamura is the
award-winning director of Yellow Brotherhood and a student in the
Masters Program in Social Documentation of the Community Studies
Department.

In her new book, Lost & Found, Karen Ishizuka combines heartfelt
stories with first-rate scholarship to reveal the complexities of the
Japanese American struggle to reclaim their own history. Ishizuka
deftly blends official history with community memory to frame the
historical moment of recovery within its cultural legacy. Ishizuka is
a media producer and former Senior Curator at the Japanese American
National Museum in Los Angeles. Her forthcoming book is Mining the
Home Movie: Excavations into Histories and Memories, co-authored by
Patty Zimmerman.

Sponsored by the Asian American/Pacific Islander Resource Center,
Community Studies Department, and Asian Pacific Islander Student
Alliance. For more information and/or disability related needs, call
831-459-5349 or email aapirc@ucsc.edu. Directions and campus map can
be found at http://maps.ucsc.edu. Parking is free at the West Remote
Parking Lot after 5:00 p.m..

***

PILGRIMAGE
(22 min, color, digital video, 2006)
A new documentary by
Tadashi H. Nakamura

Synopsis
Pilgrimage tells the inspiring story of how a small group of Japanese
Americans in the late 1960s transformed an abandoned WWII
concentration camp for Japanese Americans into a symbol of
retrospection and solidarity for people of all ages, races and
nationalities in our post 9/11 world.

Although the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World
War II is no longer hidden, this dark chapter of American history was
virtually forsaken until 1969 when two young Japanese Americans set
out to find a place called Manzanar and ended up creating an annual
event that has since attracted thousands of people. Calling it a
"pilgrimage, " it was the first public event in the nation to call
attention to the reality of the WWII concentration camp experience
that had almost been deleted from public understanding.

With a hip music track, never-before- seen archival footage and a
story-telling style that features both old and new pilgrims,
Pilgrimage is the first film to show how the WWII camps were
reclaimed by the children of its victims and how the Manzanar
Pilgrimage now has fresh meaning for diverse generations of people
who realize that when the US government herded thousands of innocent
Americans into what the government itself called concentration camps,
it was failure of democracy that would affect all Americans. As the
U.S. is again in tumultuous times, Pilgrimage is a timely and
engaging film that brings new and much-needed insight to the lessons
of the past for our post 9/11 world.

Featuring
Interviews with the late Sue Embrey, Warren Furutani, June Kuromoto,
Sandy Maeshiro, Jim Matsuoka, Mo Nishida and Victor Shibata; in
addition to Osman Ahmed, Ronnie Bautista, Nancy Hernandez and Yousef
Tajsar.

Never-before- seen footage and stills of the first Manzanar Pilgrimage
in 1969, the early Asian American Movement, and Manzanar Pilgrimages
of the 1970's as well as rare footage of the WWII camps and civil
rights, black power and anti-war movements of the 1960s.
Music by Miles Senzaki, Fatgums, Blue Scholars and Kiwi.