Box office juggernaut Oppenheimer is expected to dominate awards season this year, but while the US government had the Manhattan Project team hard at work at Los Alamos, it was also incarcerating over 120,000 Japanese Americans in camps from eastern California to Arkansas.
Desmond Nakano's American Pastime takes place at the Topaz camp and centers on a family and community coming together to find strength, hope, and dignity.
Author and professor Susan Kamei ("When Can We Go Back to America? Voices of Japanese American Incarceration during WWII") joins us to discuss her ongoing work in the Van Hunnick history department of USC's Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, the resonant elements of the film's story and characters, the importance of baseball in the camps, and why it's so important to understand this part of our history.
Trailer: American Pastime
References:
When Can We Go Back to America? Voices of Japanese American Incarceration during WWII
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/When-Can-We-Go-Back-to-America/Susan-H-Kamei/9781481401456
Lyrical Paintings of Life Inside a WWII Internment Camp