Name: 2026 SoCal Films of Remembrance
Start: 2026-03-28T11:00:00-07:00
Location: Tateuchi Democracy Forum & Gardena Valley Japanese Cultural Institute

LITTLE TOKYO
Tateuchi Democracy Forum Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Ave., Los Angeles, Calif
Saturday, March 28, 2026
11:00 a.m. – 7:30 p.m.
GARDENA
Gardena Valley Japanese Cultural Institute
1964 W. 162nd St. Gardena, Calif.
Sunday, March 29, 2026
11:30 a.m. – 7:15 p.m.
Other Venues:

PROGRAMS:
Loyalty Questioned
• The Most Loyal “Traitors” (10 min., 2025) by Kayla Jem Ling. A short historical documentary about how the Nisei soldiers of WWII’s 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team fought to protect America and to free their families at home.
• Defiant to the Last: Resistance at the Tule Lake Jail (37 min., 2025) by Emiko Omori. For over 80 years, the jail at the World War II Tule Lake Segregation Center in Northern California has remained a mystery. Why was there a jail inside a jail?
Artistic Interpretations
• DUST (13 min., 2025) by Glenn Mitsui. A visual poem film composed of eight poems written and narrated by poet and writer Brandon Shimoda, each visually interpreted through the artwork and motion design of Glenn Mitsui.
• Procession (18 min., 2025) by Bruce Tetsuya. A woman embarks on a pilgrimage to one of the Japanese American incarceration camp sites on her 70th birthday.
• Hello Maggie! (23 min., 2025) by Willie Ito. This animation is based on the real-life experiences of Shigeru Yabu and illustrated by the legendary Disney animator Willie Ito, recounting his story of being forcibly removed from his family’s home in San Francisco and sent to Heart Mountain, Wyoming, in 1942.
Assembly Centered
• Misadventures of a Nisei Week Queen (17 min., 2025) by Sharon Yamato/Evan Kodani. A short documentary about spirited 92-year-old June Aochi Berk — from prewar Little Tokyo to living in a horse stall at Santa Anita Park, to the Rohwer concentration camp, and to being crowned Nisei Week Queen.
• Kioku: Remembrance (33 min., 2025) by Koji Lau-Ozawa/Barre Fong. Kioku tells the story of a group of students striving to build a monument at the Tulare County Fairgrounds, commemorating the site’s use as a detention facility for Japanese Americans during WWII.
Identity Explored
• Yonsei (37 min., 2025) by Rachel Michiko Whitney/Jeff Mizushima. Feeling stuck in her acting career, Rachel decides to write and star in a film about her mother, who was a struggling Japanese American actress in 1980s Hollywood, but she digs deeper into her grandmother’s story about falling in love in a
Japanese American incarceration camp during WWII.
• 9066: Fear, Football & The Theft of Freedom (22 min., 2024) by Chris Jones. When former NFL linebacker and Super Bowl champion Scott Fujita traces his family history in the U.S. back to incarceration during WWII, he and his father find reconciliation in what happened and the unlikeliest of football stories.
Showcase Presentation
Third Act (90 min., 2025) by Tadashi Nakamura. As the filmmaking son of a filmmaking legend, Tad uses the lessons his dad taught him to decipher the legacy of an aging man who was a child survivor of the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans, a successful photographer who gave it up to tell his own story, an activist at the dawn of a social movement. As Parkinson’s Disease clouds his memory, Tad sets out to retrieve his story — and in the process discovers his own.
Tickets:
$15 each program / $25 for “Third Act” (includes reception) in San Francisco and Los Angeles / $20
Filmmaker Reception only
$75 All-Day Passes (limited) in SF, LA
$60 All-Day Passes (limited) in San Jose, Gardena
Nichi Bei members get discounts
Students with ID: FREE (limited)
Tickets and more info: 2026.filmsofremembrance.org
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Presented by the Nichi Bei Foundation
Presenting Sponsor:
The Henri and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation
Reception Sponsor:
The Kinjiro and Eiko Moriguchi Fund
Bronze Sponsors:
• Center for Asian American Media (CAAM)
• The George and Sakaye Aratani CARE Award and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center
• US Bank
• Gerry and Gail Nanbu
Media Sponsor: Nichi Bei News
In Partnership With: Japanese American National Museum and Gardena Valley Japanese Cultural
Institute
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