The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii will premiere a new short film, “Voices Behind Barbed Wire: Stories of Oahu,” at the Hawai‘i Convention Center.
The film — to be featured March 10 as part of the 24th Annual Honolulu Festival — is one of four short documentaries the cultural center produced to supplement “The Untold Story: Internment of Japanese Americans in Hawaii,” a 30-minute documentary released in 2012.
After the release of the 2012 film, more families came forward to share their stories of relatives unjustly confined at internment camps in Hawaii and on the mainland during World War II.
| ON FILM
The film “Voices Behind Barbed Wire: Stories of Oahu” is one of a four-part series where families in each county share personal stories of relatives unjustly confined at detention sites and internment camps in Hawaii and on the mainland during World War II.
>> When: 10 a.m. March 10
>> Where: Hawai’i Convention Center, third floor, Room 311
>> Cost: Free
>> After the film: Q&A session with director Ryan Kawamoto and Carole Hayashino, president and executive director of the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii
|
New information also surfaced with the discovery of additional confinement sites on the neighbor islands. In their ongoing research, the cultural center has identified 17 sites across Hawaii.
Each short film written and directed by Ryan Kawamoto focuses on each county in the state where family members share personal stories.
The 29-minute film that focuses on Oahu families includes re-enactments of authorities armed with bayonets arriving at the homes and placing family patriarchs under arrest.
The documentary also describes how detainees were “stripped-search and stripped of their dignity” at a detention center on Sand Island.
Family members interviewed for the film vividly recount the day authorities arrived at their homes. They express the anguish they endured as they wondered when their father would return home.
Carole Hayashino, president and executive director of the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii, said, “This film is a reminder for us to be vigilant.”
The Japanese-American Confinement Site, a federal grants program, awarded the cultural center $215,500 to produce the four-part series. In addition to federal funds, the nonprofit organization matched funds in private gifts and in-kind support for the project.
Hayashino said the cultural center recently held a screening of the film “Voices Behind Barbed Wire: Stories of Maui County” at the Nisei Veterans Memorial Center in Kahului. The cultural center aims to visit Hawaii island and Kauai County in the coming months.
Hayashino added that the center also plans to distribute 500 DVDs to schools and libraries statewide in the spring to educate youth about the social injustice that took place during the war and how such acts should not be repeated.
