An archive of past updates from our home page.

Monday, March 14, 2011
I'm very saddened to learn of the passing last week of Noboru "Elmer" Taguma of the Sacramento area. Noboru was one of the early resisters from the American concentration camp at Amache, Colorado, aka the Grenada Relocation Center. He's also the father of Nichi Bei Weekly editor Kenji Taguma, to whom we send our deepest condolences.

Noboru was a great guy, quick to laugh and always with a sly smile on his face. He provides an impish comment that caps one of the bonus features on our forthcoming DVD. I don't want to spoil the moment, you will soon be able to see for youself.

Thursday, March 17, 2011
Kenji posted more details about his father, along with the photo of him that appears near the end of our film:

TAGUMA, NOBORU, 87, passed away peacefully at his home in West Sacramento, Calif. on March 11, 2011. A native of Broderick, Calif. who was born on April 3, 1923, he retired in the early 1990s after farming tomatoes for 45 years, mostly for Campbell’s Soup, around Clarksburg, Yolo County, Calif.

During World War II, he was one of only 300 young Nisei to resist a military draft imposed behind barbed wire, based upon constitutional principle. He stated he would gladly fight for his country if his family was released from the wartime concentration camps and his citizenship rights were restored. Once shunned by so-called “community leaders,” the resisters today are heralded for the civil rights stand they took....

He is survived by his beloved wife of nearly 53 years, Sakaye (Yoshizawa) Taguma; daughter Masako Carol Yasue of Nagoya, Japan; son Makoto Mark (Alice) Taguma of Mountain View, Calif.; daughters Mariko Sharon (Benjamin Kam) Taguma of Union City, Calif. and Machiko Gail (Andy) Irie of Torrance, Calif.; and son Kenji Glenn Taguma of San Francisco. ...

Final Viewing will be held on Thursday, April 7, 6 to 8 p.m., at Sacramento Memorial Lawn, 6100 Stockton Blvd. in Sacramento.

A Memorial Service will be held on Saturday, April 9, 1:30 p.m., at Sacramento Memorial Lawn, with burial to immediately follow. Reception afterwards at the Tenrikyo Sacramento Church, 6361 25th Street (at 47th Avenue) in Sacramento.

In lieu of flowers, donations in his memory can be made to the Nichi Bei Foundation, P.O. Box 15693, San Francisco, CA 94115.

Thursday, June 2, 2011
All of the new DVD artwork is now posted in our Online Press Kit for viewing and download. Still waiting for the empty cases to arrive from New Jersey before the factory can cut the inserts and assemble the packages. In the meantime, here are samples of the labels and the inserts, which if you click on and enlarge, will show you details of all the bonus features on both discs.

Front cover (300dpi, 1 MB)	Back cover (300dpi, 1 MB)	Scene selection menu
Outtakes menu	Interviews menu	Disc One label
Disc Two label	Disc One insert	Disc Two insert

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 above, 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.

Thursday, June 30, 2011
Greetings from the Magic Valley. In Twin Falls, Idaho, to screen CONSCIENCE and speak at the Civil Liberties Symposium. Received a warm welcome from the Friends of Minidoka group and staff at College of Southern Idaho. And the Twin Falls newspaper has devoted several articles to the event, including this one, which mentions Friday's upcoming screening. Now I wish we'd had more footage of Jim Akutsu and Minidoka in the film! But I found an excerpt of Jim talking about his meeting with Min Yasui in camp that I will try to edit down and post online later this year as a bonus to the DVD bonus features.

Monday, July 4, 2011
In Twin Falls, Idaho, and at the Minidoka camp site, high-quality work is being done by rangers with the National Park Service, the Friends of Minidoka board, the Minidoka Pilgrimage committee, and professors at the College of Southern Idaho. Just back from a remarkable five days there meeting staff and volunteers, along with Idaho teachers and students and the pilgrims from Seattle and Portland, the areas that sent evicted Nikkei to the camp at Minidoka 69 years ago.

Introduced a screening of CONSCIENCE at the CSI Fine Arts Theater -- and thanks to the 250 who came out from the community and the pilgrimage and asked great questions, and to Bob Sims for thinking of us -- but what made the weekend unique was the joining of an academic symposium that offered licensing credit for local teachers and students, with the experience of a traditional pilgrimage to a former concentration camp site where National Parks money is restoring old barracks buildings and creating new wayside signage. The interpretive signs make the Japanese American experience of wartime incarceration as accessible as visiting Yosemite or Mount Rainier to learn about Half Dome or subalpine meadows.

Having a sense of the geography of the place, now I know what Henry Miyatake has been telling me all these years about the swimming hole and how it was built after two kids drowned in the swift waters of the North Canal that is actually on the south side of the five square mile site. Seeing the depression in the ground that was the old swimming hole next to a photo of kids splashing in the water during the war, made it all come alive. The NPS and Friends of Minidoka doing great work to locate and bring back the Block 22 barracks building and the old mess hall that had been moved and reused after the war. And Sunday saw a celebration to dedicate completion of a replica Honor Roll that memorialized the names of Minidoka boys sent off to war.

What was most unexpected was the warmth and friendship of the local residents who are committed to reclaiming their own experience of the government plunking a concentration camp down on Bureau of Reclamation outside town. I couldn't believe at first how genuine were the handshakes and thanks for bringing the story out and for the 160 who came out for the pilgrimage. Bill Vaughn (center, in straw hat) was rightly honored for his painstaking work and architect's eye to so accurately recreate the Honor Roll billboard down to the half-inch, and in the exact same place as the old post holes where they recovered the remains of the old wooden posts and replaced them with aluminum posts, and fiberglass laminate in place of the shiplap for the board. Roy Prescott and the township of Eden served us all BBQ dinner in the city park, and spoke of keeping the story as a lesson in civics for their own children. And in line for the BBQ, Joe Davidson mentions how the township is putting up a plaque to mark the spot nearby where the exiles from Seattle and Portland were unloaded from the trains and bussed to camp. See more in the story and photos in the Twin Falls Times-News, "Reliving the past at Minidoka site." And see a gallery of photos taken at the CSI Fine Arts Theater screening and at the Minidoka guard station by the great art director, Eugene Tagawa.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I hope to make progress this week on rebuilding this site to be more interactive, with places for comments and RSS feeds, so stay tuned for more and be prepared to see a new look and feel on one of your future visits.

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

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.

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.

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.

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