Cinematize "Dear Miss Breed"!

I remember there were comments on the Internet that said "let's make Dear Miss Breed' a movie like "99 Years of Love - Japanese Americans"! It sounds like a great idea. It could be a joint Japan-U.S. production. (I'm attaching one of the comments below, which is in Japanese). The '99 years of Love - Japanese Americans' was a five-episode TV drama (Episodes – 1: America; 2: Generations; 3: Concentration Camp; 4: Japanese American Regiment; and 5: Reunion) in 2010, produced by Tokyo Broadcasting Station (TBS) commemorating its 60th Anniversary. The mini-series won the Grand Prix Prize at the 2011 Tokyo Drama Awards. The locations used were Seattle, Washington, Los Angeles and Manzanar in California. Broadcast in Japan, reportedly 20 million Japanese tuned in and saw it evoking many emotions. That's one fifth of the population and from that, I assumed that most Japanese knew where Manzanar was, as the film shows the beauty of its wilderness, and the awesome snow covered Mt. Williamson mountain range.

Written by Sugako Hashida, who created her 'war and peace' chronicle, this love story depicts a story of a family of Japanese immigrants who moved to America 99 years ago. When World War II breaks out, the family encounters racism and segregation. The two daughters, who were sent back respectively to Hiroshima and Okinawa, experience the suffering from the Atomic Bomb and Okinawa disasters. The eldest son, Ichiro, joins the 442nd and is killed in Europe.

The last reunion scene takes place at Safeco Field ballpark where survivors including the brother, sister, and nephew (second son and daughter who was sent to Okinawa and their nephew, Ichiro's son) are reunited.

If made into a movie "Dear Miss Breed" would surely be a hit in both Japan and the U.S. I feel strongly that the day may come when an inspired Japanese American film student becomes motivated to make this happen, perhaps supported by a successful Japanese American business tycoon.

In fact, there was a daring attempt to dramatize 'Dear Miss Breed' in 2007. After receiving a grant from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program through the California State Library, San Diego City Library asked the author, Joanne Oppenheim, to create a stage version. The resulting play was performed at the San Diego Lyceum Theater for two weeks in September 2007. It was produced by Andy Lowe, a playwright with the Asian Story Theater. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to see it but my San Diego friend reported that it was a great play worthy of the book, mixed with drama, humor and laughter. I obtained the script from Joanne and contacted several school drama departments, all in vain to date. I asked Joanne if there had been any further attempts at stage production in the U.S. but the answer was sadly no. I recently found a YouTube video excerpt of the play. Please enjoy.

Cinematize "Dear Miss Breed" comment:

映画化してほしい、あの実話

クララ・ブリードさんの話を映画化してほしい。。 ブリードさんは南カリフォルニアのサン・ディエゴ市の若い図書館司書 でした。第二次大戦中、強制収容された日系二世、三世の子供たちに、 本をはじめ様々な物を贈り続けました。子供たちは手紙を書きブリード さんは返事を出し続けました。

ＴＢＳドラマ「９９年の愛　Japanese Americans」でも、マンザナの 収容所の子どもたちが描かれていましたね。各地の収容所内で、日系人 たちは、自分たちで学校を作って子供たちに教育を続けさせました。 ブリードさんの本も、きっと、子どもたちをどんなに支えたことでしょう。

ブリードさんは、戦後も、図書館勤務を続け、館長になりました。 戦争中の勇気ある愛の行いについて、ご自分では何にもおっしゃらなか ったそうです。でもお葬式にはたくさんの日系人が参列したとか。

「親愛なるブリードさま」（柏書房）（今村亮・訳）は２００８年に 日本で翻訳が出版されました。原作は“Dear Miss Breed”（ジョアンヌ・ オッペンハイム、2006年）です。

その本は、日本人とアメリカ人にとって、貴重な歴史資料であり、興味 深いドキュメンタリーであり、心温まるドラマがたくさん潜んでいます。 日米合作の映画になりえます。私のイチオシです。

※翻訳本の在庫が断裁処分されるそうです。惜しいです。 あなたの近くの図書館にあるかどうか、確かめてみてください。

Apology to My Japanese Readers

My article “Introducing Henry Fukuhara, the annual pilgrimage artist” (Painted My Way, Riosloggers, Dec 2013) was published in “Gunjo” magazine, a literary coterie magazine in Munakata, Fukuoka. Shortly afterwards, I was bombarded with questions asking me, "Where on earth is Manzanar?"

Among post-war Japanese, I thought “Manzanar” was a very well-known concentration camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. I've come to learn that with the exception of a few people, the majority of Japanese do not know where Manzanar is. None of the maps published in Japan show the name Manzanar in California. I wrote my article with the understanding that Japanese people knew about Manzanar. Wrong! I made a serious mistake. I was very careless not to have shown the geographic location of Manzanar. Here is my answer to those who inquired about its location. “Draw a triangle connecting San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and try to find the center of the triangle. That is roughly where Manzanar is located."

I detailed the route I took in 2008 to Manzanar in my blog in English. I wrote that I rented a car at the Los Angeles International Airport and headed north on 805 and swung east a bit to Route 14 toward Mojave. I stopped at Ridgecrest, population 50,000, where the Naval Air Weapon Center employs many people. I refueled and rested, then took Route 395 North to Lone Pine. It's a well known state highway that Americans take to go to the Mammoth Lake Ski Resort. Manzanar is located just before reaching Lone Pine. There’s nothing in Manzanar but the old high school auditorium that was turned into a memorial hall and a mess hall constructed a few years ago.

There’s no public transportation to go to Manzanar. The U.S. Government picked the site because of its remote location. They transported the evacuated Japanese-Americans by bus to live in the shabby barracks constructed in a hurry. The easiest way to visit Manzanar is to join the annual Fukuhara pilgrimage tour in the spring. Otherwise, you can ask a Japanese tourist agency to organize a special group caravan, but I would advise not during summer. If you think you can drive yourself and manage the language barrier, you can follow the way I traveled from LA. The total mileage is 500 kilometers. You could start either from San Francisco or Las Vegas, but you have to be careful where to refuel. You may be driving close to the Death Valley and there are no gas stations nearby.

A few days ago, I read a Los Angeles Times article entitled “Backtrack to a sad past for former internees” wherein a group of elderly Japanese Americans recalled the time 72 years ago when they lived in horse stalls at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California. Two photos were shown - one with the reunion team taking a tram tour, circling the track with cameras; the other, an old photo of two men stuffing hay into bags. I found a familiar name George “Horse” Yoshinaga, who was my favorite Rafu-Shimpo columnist. I see now why he used the strange “Horse” nickname. He wrote in the article, “I got my name here. They say it’s because I smelled like a horse.”

"Painted My Way" - Henry Fukuhara, A True Artist

Shadow of the distant pass;
Their memories still last
Manzanar: Monument of Tears.
Ignorance and pseudo-fears;
A wrong that can't be made right;
A blindness for lack of sight;
A day now engulfed by night;
A hope shaded, once so bright.
The memories still last,
… they still last

- "Manzanar" by William Smith

The best souvenir of my recent Californian trip was an art book "Painted My Way", designed and printed in 2011 by the APC Fine Arts & Graphic Gallery, Torrance, California. Phyllis Doyon, who has her studio and gallery in Camarillo, gave it to me when my daughter Yukina and I visited her. Yukina saved the local newspaper report of the "Painted My Way" Exhibition in Thousand Oaks during the month of August. I flew into LAX on Sept 2, so, I missed the exhibition. Calling Phyllis, the exhibition organizer, Yukina found one of Phyllis' works from the Exhibition still being shown at the Thousand Oaks Community Gallery. We dropped in after our lunch outing. Phyllis drew a newly built mess hall, which I wasn't aware of, on my Manzanar visit five years ago. Yukina and I, with grandson Ray, drove to Camarillo to hear what Phyllis could tell us.

It was the first time I heard about Henry Fukuhara (1913-2010), a water color artist and teacher. Henry was an internee at the Manzanar Camp with his family from Los Angeles. They all left for Long Island, New York when World War II ended. They were engaged in a floral business there until late in the 1980s when Henry decided to move back to Santa Monica.

He was an art oriented person when he was young. As Henry made the pilgrimage back to Manzanar, he thought of leading an art workshop with a number of his artist friends, welcoming anyone who responded to his lofty ideal, Japanese Americans or not. He conducted the first workshop at the age of 85 and kept at it until he was physically unable to do so. He continued even when his eyesight deteriorated and fell half blind. Now Phyllis, one of the chaperons, told me the "Painted My Way" workshop survived Henry's death and the exhibitions continue. She introduced me to key artists who succeeded Henry.

Upon my return to Japan, I checked to see if I had missed Henry Fukuhara's name among the Japanese American artists introduced in the two great exhibitions of Japanese American artists I saw in Japan. One was the 1995 Summer Exhibition held in the Tokyo Metropolitan Garden Museum (event cosponsored by JANM, LA and Japan Association of Art Museums for the 50th End of War Commemoration, with a tremendous collection of over 200 artwork, including Chiura Obata, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Dan Harada, Matsusaburo Hibi, Henry Sugimoto, and others.

The other was the most recent Smithsonian-sponsored "Art of Gaman" Exhibition held in succession at Tokyo, Sendai, Fukushima, Hiroshima, and Okinawa, since 2012. Arts and crafts items covered a wide variety of artifacts including tools, teapots, furniture, toys, games, pendants/pins, purses and ornaments.

When I found that Henry Fukuhara had not been introduced yet to Japan, I felt it my duty to let the Japanese see his powerful and inspirational work as shown in the book "Painted My Way".

His Manzanar days of less than 5 years influenced him greatly almost like an obsession. I know another artist from the same generation, with a similar obsession in Yamaguchi-ken, a neighboring prefecture to Fukuoka where I now reside. His name is Yasuo Kazuki (1911-1974) and his obsession was Siberia. Yasuo wanted to become an artist like Henry, but he was drafted into the army and sent to Manchuria. At the end of the War, Russians sent him to Siberia for hard labor. His Siberian experience was 2 to 3 years, shorter than Henry's internment at Manzanar, but he lived there with death all around him. Upon his return to Yamaguchi, he began producing prolific artworks (his Siberian Series won the Grand Artist Prize of Japan) which were all requiems to his friends who died in the Siberia gulag.

Kazuki wrote all the dreams I had in Siberia were about my old home in Yamaguchi. But upon returning home, all I dreamed about were Siberian scenes - heavy snowfalls outside the window; poor prisoners all with drooped heads treading leaden feet back to the camp; horrible dreams of dread of receiving sentences of longer penal servitude.

Kazuki wrote also about the difference between an artisan and an artist. An artisan is a person who chooses art as his profession, whereas an artist is a person who chooses art as his way of life. He humbly admitted he had a dual life as an artisan and artist, although he tried to be artist. Henry Fukuhara inspired 80 to 100 artists and artisans in Manzanar each year. That's something only a real artist can do. He was never an artisan. I sincerely hope the Manzanar pilgrimage will continue on and on.

Manzanar Pilgrims

"As I came to understand what Manzanar had meant, it gradually filled me with shame for being a person guilty of something enormous enough to deserve that kind of treatment. In order to please my accusers, I tried, for the first few years after our release, to become someone acceptable. I both succeeded and failed. By the age of seventeen I knew that making it, in terms I had tried to adopt, was not only unlikely, but false and empty. .... It took me another twenty years
to accumulate the confidence to deal with what the equivalent experience would have to be for me."
- from Farewell to Manzanar (Ten Thousand Voices) by Jeanne Wakamatsu Houston and James D. Houston

I rented a car in Los Angeles in the summer of 2008 and traveled for two days to Manzanar where more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were interned during WWII. About 250 miles, or 405 kilometers, one way to get there. Drove the familiar Cal 14 Highway that I took to see Cal State flower poppies some years ago. Passed Lancaster and Mojave and I stayed at Ridgecrest overnight to take it easy. Mojave is the gateway to Death Valley. Right after Mojave, I stopped the car to photograph the Red Rock Canyon cliffs, with colorful layers of pink, red and brown, which I took as a welcome sign. Ridgecrest has many hotels and gas stations as my American son-in-law told me before my departure. I asked the hotel clerk, as I checked in, about the town population. 20,000 was her answer. She said that more than 10,000 people work at the Naval Weapons Test Center in China Lake. The temperature read 97 degrees F (36 degrees C) at 4:00 PM.

I started at 7:30AM the following day as I was told I would have more than an hour drive. I aimed to finish my visit before it got hotter. Highway 395 leads to Mammoth Lake, the ski resort. It's a scenic back road with snow covered Sierra Nevada ranges. Sequoia National Park on the the other side of the ranges. Slowed down as I entered the town of Lone Pine, 10 miles south of Manzanar. While wondering where the exit might be, the sign "turn left here for Manzanar" suddenly appeared. It was a two way road. I yielded to cars from the opposite side. A dusty and bumpy road finally led to Manzanar. The sentry stands on both sides, and you face an awesome Mount Williamson in the back. I thought I was the first to arrive there but there were a few visitors waiting already ahead of me.

Manzanar is in the Owen Valley. In 1872, a severe earthquake buried Owen Lake. However, the snow-fed streams form Owen River and the local people cultivated apples. Manzanar means apple orchard. The City of Los Angeles with an increasing population, sought sources of water and built a long aqueduct from Owen. The orchards disappeared in the 1930s. The Manzanar internees siphoned water from the aqueduct and cultivated vegetable farms.

Manzanar possessed many photographs of the Japanese incarceration as compared with other detention camps and I wondered why. At one time, cameras were forbidden as they were considered to be a spy act. The chivalry of the great Sierra Club photographer Ansel Adams (1902-1984), as well as the arduous camera-manship of Toyo Miyatake, and others succeeded in getting the ban removed.

In the summer of 1943, Adams received a visit from Ralph Merritt, an old Sierra Club friend, and then the Director of the Manzanar War Relocation Camp, in his Yosemite home. Ralph was concerned with the sudden arrival of 10,000 interned Japanese Americans and the impact on the community and the environment. He wanted Adams to monitor the impact but said: "I cannot pay you a cent, but I can put you up and feed you, plus gas for transportation." Adams took the job and visited Manzanar. Not just once. Four times! I saw Adam's photos titled Owen Valley produced before the war started. I figured the valley was one of his favorite places.

"My first impression of Manzanar" he wrote in his autobiography, "was of a dry plain on which appeared a flat rectangular layout of shacks, ringed with towering mountains. The shacks created a mood that was not relieved by the entrance gate and its military guards. ... However, the interiors of the shacks, most softened with flowers and inimitable taste of the Japanese for simple decoration, revealed not only the family living spaces but all manner of small enterprises: a printing press that issued the Manzanar Free Press, music and art studios, a library, several churches, a clinic hospital, business offices, and so on... I was profoundly affected by Manzanar."

The photographic essay and book Born Free and Equal by Ansel, awed as a photographer with God's eye was published in late 1944. However, it did not draw the expected attention to the chaos of war. It is only very recently that the book back in print attracted renewed enthusiastic attention.

Jeanne Wakamatsu Houston, the author of Farewell to Manzanar, was eight years old when interned directly from Los Angeles, and left the camp at the age of ten. Her scars, however, remained quite a long time, as I quoted above. Her father, who owned a fishing boat in Los Angeles, had been arrested and sent to the Federal North Dakota prison in suspicion of providing oil to the Japanese submarine that attacked a beach near Los Angeles. When his suspicion was cleared, he was sent to Manzanar to join his family.

Jeanne returned to Manzanar, accompanied by her family, in l972 from Santa Cruz where she and her husband taught at the University of California. She showed her sharp observation as an internist rather than a casual visitor. The barbed wire surrounded the housing area of 550 acres (2,250,000 square kilometers), but the original camp which included farm and cattle feeding land, was ten times that size. She spotted a white obelisk gleaming in the distance and marking a subtle line where the plain begins gradually to slope upward into the alluvial fan that becomes the base of the mountains. She visualized the ruins of a variety of gardens handmade; everywhere designated as firebreaks, which impressed Ansel Adams. She heard ghostly voices of the deceased in the wind. She even remembered the insistence of her father to leave "in style". He went to the town of Lone Pine and brought back a salvaged blue Nash four-door with two flat tires. He honked and cruised around to show off. Jeanne wrote that the car sounded like a boxer working out on a flabby punching bag.

The only remaining building was the senior high school auditorium. In l972, the auditorium was the servicing station for Los Angeles City Power and Water. In 1992, this auditorium was turned into the National Park museum and Manzanar became the national historic site to symbolize ten detention camps. The objective was to tell the future generation the importance of preserving civil rights, not to repeat the same mistake.

Bob Lefsetz is a music critic and analyst who lives in Santa Monica. He writes the "Lefsetz Letters" on the net and has a large readership. In April 2008, he planned his birthday celebration in Mammoth and there he went with his wife and friends. But his plan was foiled. The ski slopes were rock solid ice, akin to skiing on a washboard. They decided to descend the mountains. After Bishop, between towering peaks and the desert, trying to see through the bugs embedded on the windshield, he remembered Manzanar and stopped the car. He had driven by Manzanar so many times without stopping. It was six o'clock and the place was to close in half an hour. "The ranger suggested that we either see exhibits or film. We chose film. It's the power of film. It took us to another time and place. They emigrated - built new lives - until the U.S. Government took it all away. Parents sold possessions for pennies on the dollar. Incarcerated to the California desert - blistering hot and bone-cold in winter - wind never stopped. All the toilets in a row, no dividers in between. With the war over, the prisoners were given a ticket wherever they decided and the princely sum of $25. Visited cemetery before driving out. How many lives ruined and lost for an unjust, ridiculous cause. No Japanese American was ever convicted. If this is the American dream, I want no part of it. Most Americans do not travel to Manzanar unless they are skiers." Lefsetz urged, "do visit Manzanar and study this history to prevent a similar tragedy in the future."

I saw on the net many responses from the readers including those of the Japanese Americans in question.

After the museum and driving around the camp, I spent some time praying in front of the memorial tower. Maybe 20 minutes or so. Cars came, stopped, some walked to the tower, retreated, and left. One of them asked me what is meant by the character on the stone. No English explanation. To console the spirit of the dead and pray for their eternal peace. I exchanged conversation with him. He said he came from the south, not too far away. Seems an American youth of sincerity. I gave my email address saying if you come up with anything about Manzanar, write to me. I said "I will promise to answer."

It was in 1963 that President Kennedy spoke to university students a few month before he was assassinated. "What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? .... Not the peace of the grave or the security of slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living and the kind of that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and to build a better life for their children - not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time. "

I heard the assassination news in Manhattan while working. "Impossible" was my cry and tears rolled down my face to the floor.