READ MORE ABOUT THE JAPANESE AMERICAN DRAFT RESISTERS BY CLICKING ON THIS IMAGE
www.pbs.org/conscience
graphic: video sleeve image


Learn about the largest organized resistance to the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans

Resisters.com


The online news center for a
PBS documentary on the Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee


Like us on Facebook

BUY A DVD

DVD FEATURES

NEWS

About the JACL

STUDY CENTER

SCREENINGS

PRESS KIT

ABOUT US

E-MAIL US

The Two-Disc Collector's Edition DVD of CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION for home video use is now available for order. You can purchase by mail, by phone, or securely online via the PayPal button. For educational and institutional use, please use our updated Order pages. Read more about the features on the new DVD, learn about our story, see a video preview, or watch the opening of the film.

Follow ConscienceDVD on Twitter

Wednesday, December 4, 2011
Gordon Hirabayashi (UPI)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.

Kinokuniya BookstoreFriday, 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.

Densho logo 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.

Pacific Citizen advertsiement 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
book cover, "Looking Like the Enemy"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
8 Asians website logoHad 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.

Chizu Omori columnSunday, 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.

George Toshio JohnstonSaturday, 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
logo: Rafu Shimpo newspaperTwo 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

newspaper ad for DVDWelcome 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.

 

 

 

DVD casewrap front
DVD casewrap back
Scene selection menu
Front cover (300dpi, 1 MB)
Back cover (300dpi, 1 MB)
DVD outtakes menu
DVD extended interviews menu
DVD Disc 1 label
DVD Disc 2 label
DVD Disc 1 insert
DVD Disc 2 insert

Read our news archive: 2011|2010 |2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 |2005 | 2004 |2003 | 2002 | 2001

Watch the story of the resisters for yourself. Order the new 2-disc Collector's Edition DVD by clicking on the PayPal button or by calling Transit Media at 1-800-343-5540.

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

Independent Television Service logo"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.California State Library logo

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