Browse films

A Bitter Legacy

Claudia Katayanagi
United States, 2016, 78 min.

In English.
This film is family friendly.

This feature documentary investigates the "Citizen Isolation Centers", harsh and secret World War II prisons created within the Japanese American incarceration camp system to separate citizens deemed by the American Government as "trouble-makers" from the other Nikkei prisoners. These secret prisons have been called "precursors to Guantanamo."

Director's Statement

More than five years after starting this film, having interviewed many historians and scholars in the field, dozens of former prisoners, 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 the Nikkei (people of Japanese Ancestry), before, during and after World War II. I hope I have created a film that communicates this deeper understanding of what was done to the Nikkei people here in this country, with a few connections of how these same issues are still occurring to people of other cultural heritages today, and what can be done to move this country and all of its people forward in a just, equitable manner.

Category: Documentary.
Themes: Historical, Human Rights, War.