Saturday, 10/27, 11:15am (Session XXVIII)

Director: Ann Kaneko, Sharon Yamato
Producer: Joanne Oppenheim 

Description: 

This is a true story of Stanley Hayami, a young boy who chronicled his turbulent life and times in a diary that he kept while living behind barbed wire from 1942 to 1944. Deeply personal, poignant, and funny, this coming-of-age tale chronicles a life with remarkable promise. Each page echoes with the ebullient voice of a young man destined for a brilliant future. “Hayami is going to the top!” he declares in one diary entry. His life was to end when he joined the 442nd Regimental Combat Team—killed protecting his fellow soldiers. Fortunately, his imagination lives on in the beautiful words and inventive drawings that put a page-turning human face on an extraordinarily shattering chapter in American history. It is a story that combines the brightness of youth, the ignominy of incarceration, and the tragedy of war.

Biography: 

Sharon Yamato is a writer/filmmaker who wrote, produced and directed Out of Infamy: Michi Nishiura Weglyn, a film funded by the California Civil Liberties Public Education Project. She is the author of the book, Moving Walls: Preserving the Barracks of America’s Concentration Camps, and co-author of Jive Bomber: A Sentimental Journey, a memoir of Bruce T. Kaji, the founding president of the Japanese American National Museum.  As a consultant to the Japanese American National Museum, she has served as editor of the Museum Magazine and project director of The Encyclopedia of Japanese American History from A to Z (revised edition), An American Son: The Story of George Aratani, and More than a Game: Sport in the Japanese American Community.     

Ann Kaneko is an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker, fluent in Japanese and Spanish. She was selected as Best Emerging Feature Documentary Director at the New York Asian American International Film Festival for her Fulbright and Durfee Foundation supported film, Against the Grain: An Artist’s Survival Guide to Perú, which highlights the life and work of four Peruvian political artists. For the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women, Kaneko wrote and directed 100% Human Hair, a zany musical set in a Korean-owned wig shop. Her film Overstay, about foreign workers in Japan has been presented extensively at festivals, museums and universities. She has shot and edited numerous segments for the Newshour With Jim Lehrer.    

Contact Information: 

E-mail: sharony360@gmail.com
Web site: flickerineternity.com/