Film: Resistance at Tule Lake @ Tufts University

The Tufts Japanese Culture Club and Tufts United for Immigrant Justice will be screening Konrad Aderer's film Resistance at Tule Lake for their annual Day of Remembrance event titled "Incarceration and Resistance". Every year Japanese Americans around the United States commemorate February 19th, the day that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, the executive order that paved the way for the unjust incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants in a vast network of incarceration camps.

Tule Lake was the largest and most infamous of the camps. At its peak it housed nearly 19,000 prisoners and was the site of significant unrest. While the camp started out with the same status as other camps, it was eventually designated a "segregation center" where prisoners deemed disloyal by the so-called "Loyalty Questionnaire" were separated from their families and moved from other camps. (The official title of the document was "Selective Service Form 304A / Statement of United States Citizen of Japanese Ancestry".)

This is Konrad's second feature length documentary about the Japanese American incarceration. Although his family was incarcerated at other camps, he told me that he chose Tule Lake as the subject of his film because he said he's always been interested in the Japanese and Japanese Americans who resisted. Resistance at Tule Lake was last year's Centerpiece Film at the 9th annual Boston Asian American Film Festival and was screened earlier this month at the Museum of Fine Arts as part of their Boston Festival of Films From Japan.


Date & Time
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
6:00 - 8:00pm

Location
Tufts University
Aidekman Arts Center
Alumnae Lounge
40 Talbot Ave., Medford, MA 02155
Directions & Parking

Admission
Free

Note: Dinner will be served. Film screening followed by panel discussion with students whose families were incarcerated in Japanese American incarceration camps.

 

Resistance at Tule Lake

2017 | 80 mins | Documentary | Japanese-American
Directed by Konrad Aderer

Resistance at Tule Lake tells the long-suppressed story of 12,000 Japanese Americans who dared to resist the U.S. government’s program of mass incarceration during World War II. Branded as “disloyals” and re-imprisoned at Tule Lake Segregation Center, they continued to protest in the face of militarized violence, and thousands renounced their U.S. citizenship. Giving voice to experiences that have been marginalized for over 70 years, this documentary challenges the nationalist, one-sided ideal of wartime “loyalty.”

Resistance at Tule Lake premiered early 2017 and continues to screen in various film festivals, museum exhibitions, educational institutions and local community organizations. The documentary will be broadcast nationally in 2018 and made available for educational, institutional and home use as a DVD and other formats including Internet viewing.