“Resistance at Tule Lake” will be screened on Thursday, Sept. 14, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Choi Auditorium on the Occidental College campus, 1600 Campus Rd. in Los Angeles.
The documentary 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 in Northern California, 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.”
Director Konrad Aderer is a documentary filmmaker and video journalist based in New York City. His independent documentaries (lifeorliberty.org) have focused on resistance arising in immigrant communities targeted by “national security” detention and profiling.
His 2011 feature documentary “Enemy Alien” (2011), on the fight to free a post-9/11 detainee, was honored with a Courage in Media Award from Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR). He has received grants from the Center for Asian American Media, New York State Council of the Arts, National Park Service, and other funders.
During the post-screening discussion, Aderer will be joined by Grace Hata, a Tule Lake survivor whose family renounced their U.S. citizenship. She will recount her family’s harrowing journey through two of America’s concentration camps and their struggle for survival in devastated, post-surrender Japan.
“Resistance at Tule Lake” was described by Mike Hale of The New York Times as “a potent piece of history at a time when the United States is once again feeling less than hospitable.”
Free admission. Sponsored by The 75th Anniversary of the Japanese American Incarceration: Never Again, International Programs Office, and Dean of the College.
For more information, visit www.oxy.edu/events/resistance-tule-lake.