FAREWELL TO MANZANAR

US, 1976, 105 minutes, Colour.
Clyde Kusatsu, Mako, Nobu Mc Carthy, Pat Morita.
Directed by John Korty.

Farewell to Manzanar us the story of the Japanese Americans, caught in the conflict of World War II, the bombing of Pearl Harbour and native American antagonism towards the Japanese Americans. It is contrasted with the differing response to Italian and German Americans. The film treats the same themes as Alan Parker's effective Come See The Paradise. The film focuses on a family, the long tradition of being in the U.S., the experience of the war, imprisonment and hostility, life in the camp at Manzanar, the changing lives over the war years and the aftermath of this war experience.

The film has a great deal to say about human nature, about racial hatred and antagonism, about suffer and imprisonment and the loyalties to country of origin as well as country of refuge.

The film is well acted and was directed by John Korty, a director of humane films and telemovies whose credits include River Run and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.

1. Moving telemovie? Memoir of World War H? In the retrospect of the decades? A piece of Americana? for the wide television audience?

2. The Californian settings, the towns, the desert camp, Manzanar? The musical score (including American and Japanese songs)?

3. The title, the framework of the film with the daughter visiting the camp, the flashbacks and her memories, coming terms with the experience in the camp? Letting the harsh memories go?

4. The situation of Japanese Americans in the U.S. to 1941: not being allowed citizenship, not being able to vote, own property? The long decades that so many had lived in the U.S.? The suspicions, the treatment and the arrest, the detention in the camps, the life in the camps? The aftermath?

4. The focus on the family, the close-knit group, their American friends, Japanese neighbours? The father and his being four decades in the U.S? His children born there? The American style celebrations? The Japanese traditions?

5. The bombing of Pearl Harbour and its effect? The reaction of people, hostilities and suspicions, the authorities? The roundup? The arrest of the father and his imprisonment, the rough treatment by the police? The mother's grief, the children and their reaction? The selling of their goods and the smashing of the crockery when the poor price was offered? The heart rending separation from all that they had built up?

. The bus to the camp, the daughter and her voice over and commentary? The arrival in the camp, its squalor, filth, the lavatories, the huts? The diligence of the Japanese in making the habitable? The details of daily life in the camp, the food, the huts, cleaning? The young people and their playing together, education? Doctor's, collapse and illness? The pathos of the funeral of the children? The return of the father and the family coping within the camp?

7. The meetings, the political implications? The resentment of the Japanese, their thinking to return to Japan? The father and his stance, unpopular? Yet talking about the love for both mother and father even when they were in conflict? The lack of prospect in Japan? His reminiscing about America’s being good to him despite the drawbacks - as outlined to the interviewer?

8. The family changing and growing in the camp? The young men, the angers, the recklessness, the riots? The women, educations, helping in the family? The entertainments and dances, concerts?

9. The young woman and her graduation, her education and her future? The young Japanese men signing up, going to war and the pathos of their return, those who died?

10. The photographer, his concealing of his camera? His finally being allowed to keep it? His being urged to keep a true record of the events in the camp?

11. The picture of the American authorities, the arresting police and their brutality? The rounding up of the Japanese? The interviewers and their wanting to avoid their jobs, just a job? The sympathetic nurses and the romance between American and Japanese American? The authorities in the camps? The military? The new commander, his reaching out to the people, sympathetic, helping them to build? The experience of the war, a prisoner in one's own land, the burden of heritage? Racial prejudice? The loss of years of one's life? The daughters comment on her father, the driving of the car, the new freedom, but his not really ever being able to recover his former self? The memories of the fishing, his achievement, all gone?

12. The impact of films like this, historical insight, plea for humanity, plea for humanity for similar situations which are always occurring?