The nation’s television and radio performers and the Asian American Journalists Association this week separately announced top honors for CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION, the PBS documentary on Japanese American resistance to WW2 incarceration.

The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) presented its national American Scene Award to producer/director Frank Abe at its biennial convention at the Radisson Riverfront in St. Paul, Minnesota. The award recognizes excellence in the employment and portrayal of ethnic minorities and seniors, among others, on television, radio, videotape and new media. 

The documentary shared the first place award in television with KRON-TV of San Francisco, which was recognized for the overall diversity in its news programming. The crystal obelisk for Abe was presented by San Francisco broadcast veteran Belva Davis, who praised his work as a "landmark film."

"I was not happy with the way the film and television industry portrayed our expulsion and internment, in films that told the story through the eyes of a Dennis Quaid or an Ethan Hawke," Abe said in a ceremony before 250 AFTRA delegates. "In our version of the story we are the protagonists, we are the main characters, and although we were the targets of a government action, in this story we didn’t cry about being victims. We fought back."

In his remarks Abe also noted the work of Sumi Haru of Los Angeles to represent Asian Pacific interests inside the AFTRA organization.

In San Francisco, judges at the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) gave CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION their National Journalism Award for Unlimited Subject Matter in Television. A short clip of the program was played before a full house of nearly 1,000 journalists and media managers at a luncheon at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco.

The AAJA award follows by more than a decade the presentation of its first Lifetime Achievement Award to James Omura, the prewar editor of the San Francisco Nisei magazine Current Life and the wartime editor of the Rocky Shimpo newspaper. Omura was indicted but later acquitted for publishing news reports about the Nisei draft resisters at the camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and writing columns that offered them support and editorial guidance. Omura is a key figure in Abe’s film.

"I actually got the inspiration for doing the documentary after seeing the reception James Omura received at the AAJA convention here in the City in 1989," said Abe. "It showed me what a responsibility we had to go out there and tell authentic stories about the Japanese American experience for national TV audiences, because if we didn’t, who would?"

Abe is a former national vice-president of AAJA, and was recognized last summer as one of three Founders of the group’s Seattle chapter. He was also an AFTRA shop steward during his 13 year career at KIRO Newsradio in Seattle, and a Screen Actors Guild member who appeared in two television movies including the 1976 film FAREWELL TO MANZANAR.

CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION won top honors at several film festivals and competitions when it was first released last fall. The two new awards are the first to come from national organizations.