|
Wednesday,
December 4, 2011
 Obscured
in much of this week's news coverage of the passing of Gordon
Hirabayashi is the fact that Gordon was not only a Constitutional
test case,
he was a Nisei draft resister like the Heart Mountain boys. His
case,
along with those of Fred Korematsu and Min Yasui, was opposed by
the wartime Japanese American Citizens League because, as
Mike Masaoka puts it on our DVD, "they
were criminal cases," and JACL favored its own civil habeas
corpus case fronted by the irreproachable Mitsuye Endo.
Listen to how Mike explains it in our bonus DVD audio feature, "Masaoka
on test cases." Read the New
York Times obituary.
 Friday,
December 23, 2011
For last-minute shoppers, the new DVD is just now available
at Kinokuniya
Bookstore in Seattle -- along
with the Japanese American National Museum in LA, the National JA
Historical Society in SF, and Nikkei Traditions of San Jose Japantown.
 For
you college and high school instructors who can use our DVD
in the
classroom, you have an additional teaching resource available to
you through the acclaimed Densho project, the online streaming
video source
for interviews with the surviving Japanese American incarcerees.
We donated to Densho the tapes of all 26 interviews that
we conducted
for the film. You and your students can go from the extended interviews
in our DVD bonus features to the Densho
Digital Archive and delve further into the unedited interviews,
complete with full transcripts for ease of study. This is a unique
source of primary material for students.
Here's how Densho director Tom Ikeda describes it in his Densho
eNews for December (scroll down).
Materials
about Heart Mountain Draft Resistance
Filmmaker Frank
Abe does an excellent job, according to a review
in the Rafu Shimpo, of expanding upon the World War
II draft resistance story at the Heart Mountain concentration camp
with his expanded two-disc collector's edition DVD of Conscience
and the Constitution. The bonus features of the DVD set include
extended interview clips from some of the 26 individuals that Abe
interviewed for the film. Abe donated these 26 interviews to Densho
and these interviews are available for viewing in their entirety
in the Densho
online archive.
 Monday,
December 5, 2011
Thanks
for visiting for the first time if you're seeing our ad in the current
edition of the Pacific Citizen. You can learn
more about the new Two-Disc DVD release, and preview
a few clips on our YouTube page, and order
a copy for your school, library, or for yourself or a member of
your family. Our interview with former assistant PC editor Martha
Nakagawa appears on page 12 of the paper edition of the current issue,
and perhaps we can make an arrangement for posting it.
Monday,
November 14, 2011
See
our new updated page about the JACL that
provides a single portal to our online content on the new Mike Masaoka
audio and video content on the DVD, the Lim Report, and the 2002 JACL
apology ceremony. This is the resisters.com/jacl
page to which the DVD directs viewers after each of the JACL-related
segments on Disc Two. Your feedback welcomed. Still working on a Wordpress
rebuild to enable more viewer interactivity on these pages.
Friday,
November 11, 2011
 On
this Veteran's Day, a fitting testimonial from a new viewer of the
DVD. Mary Matsuda Gruenewald is the author of the memoir, Looking
Like the Enemy. She had just watched the film and said she
couldn't wait to share her thoughts, so living in Seattle like me
she called on the phone. We spoke for a while and here's what she
later shared:
An important
documentary. The story is beautifully crafted, and the accompanying
music score helps to heighten the impact. I was deeply touched.
As someone who
was interned at Heart Mountain during the height of the resistance
movement, I can testify to the emotional turmoil that faced our
entire community. My family was on one side of the controversy.
When we sent my older brother off to Europe to fight in the 442nd
Regimental Combat Team, I had no capacity to acknowledge the viewpoint
of the resisters.
Now I am grateful
to you and the other contributors to Conscience and the Constitution
for your sensitive and accurate explanation of the resistance movement.
After all this time, I am finally able to hear the other side, and
fully appreciate the importance of what the resistors did on behalf
of all Japanese Americans, and others struggling for their rights.
Conscience
and the Constitution is a reminder that there are two sides
to every issue. We would do well to consider the virtues of both.
-- Mary Matsuda
Gruenewald
Author, Looking
Like the Enemy
Sunday,
October 23, 2011
 Had
fun doing an online interview with Koji Steven Sakai for 8Asians.com,
a collaborative blog for Asian American issues. Please see "8Questions
with Frank Abe of Conscience and the Constitution," and leave
a comment there or share the page with others on Facebook. Thanks.
 Sunday,
October 16, 2011
Thanks to Chizu Omori for examining our new DVD in her latest
Nichi Bei Weekly column, "RABBIT
RAMBLINGS: A question of loyalty and ‘Conscience’."
Chizu zeroes in on one of features I was most looking forward to releasing
on the DVD: the bulk of my 1988 interview for KIRO Newsradio with
wartime JACL leader Mike Masaoka.
Martha
Nakagawa's review in the Nichi Bei, "Extras
in ‘Conscience’ DVD add a fuller, if not more controversial,
picture," also captures the significance of this piece for
scholars and students:
The best and
most controversial part of the DVD is the additional footage of
wartime JACL leader Masaoka. Abe includes a 19-minute radio interview
he did with Masaoka in 1988, when Abe was a radio news reporter.
Abe asks the hard-hitting questions, has documentation to back up
everything and gives Masaoka no wiggle room. It is an extraordinary
interview, and Masaoka’s answers are revealing.
On the
home video of Masaoka's "Rebuttal to Critics," Martha astutely
fills in what is left unsaid in his peoration. More on that in a future
post.
 Saturday,
October 1, 2011
Catching up to the fine two-part interview and DVD review
from columnist George Toshio Johnston in the pages of the Rafu Shimpo
newspaper from Los Angeles. Both appeared in his long-running "Into
the Next Stage" column: "Frank
Abe Is Back With a Fresh ‘Conscience’’"
from July 21 and "Continued:
‘Conscience and the Constitution’’"
from August 4.
Thursday,
September 22, 2011
 Two
new reviews appeared on the same day today: Martha Nakagawa in the
Rafu Shimpo, "‘Conscience’
DVD Set Full of Valuable Material," and Eddie Chern in his
Frozen Glory blog, "Conscience
and the Constitution: A Review." Thanks to both for their
thoughtful observations. The Rafu piece even includes images of the
two disc labels and menu screenshots.
Tuesday,
June 21, 2011
 Welcome
if you're joining us for the first time via our first ad for the DVD
in the NichiBei Weekly Obon issue. Order the
DVD here safely and securely.
To examine
all the bonus features of the two-disc set, check out the previews
of the new DVD artwork below, all of which is also posted in our Online
Press Kit.
See especially
the Disc One and Disc Two inserts for the track listing of all the
titles.
Read
our news archive: 2011|2010
|2009
| 2008 | 2007
| 2006 |2005
| 2004 |2003
| 2002 | 2001
 For
homework help, please see our PBS Online site at www.pbs.org/conscience
for online documents and an online Classroom Guide, and send a comment,
compliment or complaint via the ITVS
Comments page. Teachers can download our newly-updated Classroom
Guide as a 328 KB Word document.
PBS
SYNOPSIS: CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION: This award-winning
and controversial documentary reveals the untold story of the largest
organized resistance to the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans,
and the suppression of that resistance by Japanese-American leaders.
(CC, Stereo, one hour)
In World
War II a handful of young Americans refused to be drafted from the
American concentration camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Organized
under the banner of the Fair Play Committee, they were ready to fight
for their country, but not before the government restored their rights
as U.S. citizens and released their families from camp.
It was
the largest organized resistance to incarceration, leading to the
largest trial for draft resistance in U.S. history. The government
prosecuted them as criminals; Japanese American leaders and veterans
ostracized them as traitors. The resisters served two years in prison,
and for the next 50 were written out of the official history of Japanese
America. Only recently have we rediscovered the resisters and restored
them to the community. Through their eyes we delve into the heart
of the Japanese American conscience and a public debate that is still
alive today.
AWARDS:
BEST FEATURE FILM: VC FilmFest 2000, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film
& Video Festival
BEST DOCUMENTARY: San Luis Obispo International Film Festival
BEST DOCUMENTARY: New York International Independent Film & Video
Festival
BEST OF FESTIVAL: Vermont International Film Festival (War and Peace
category)
BEST MUSIC SCORE: Emerald City Awards, Seattle
NATIONAL JOURNALISM AWARD: Asian American Journalists Association
AMERICAN SCENE AWARD: American Federation of Television and Radio
Artists
DARUMA CIVIL RIGHTS AWARD: Sacramento Asian American community
 "Conscience
and the Constitution" is produced by Frank Abe in association
with the Independent Television Service,
with funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and
the Civil Liberties Public
Education Fund, created by Congress to sponsor research on the
wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. Additional funding is
provided by the Motoda Foundation of Seattle, the Anheuser-Busch
Companies, Brooks and Sumi Iwakiri, and 45 individual Friends
of the Fair Play Committee.
This
Web site and the companion PBS
Online site are made possible by a grant from the California
Civil Liberties Public Education Program, created by the California
State Legislature and administered by the California State Library.
Additional support provided by Michi and Walter Weglyn.
Entire
site © 1998-2011 by Frank Abe |
