The premiere of Sharon Yamato’s documentary “One Fighting Irishman: Wayne M. Collins and the Tule Lake Segregation Center,” narrated by George Takei, will take place on Saturday, Oct. 28, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. at the Japanese American National Museum’s Tateuchi Democracy Forum, 100 N. Central Ave. in Little Tokyo.
A conversation with Takei, Sharon Yamato, Wayne Merrill Collins, and Brian Niiya will follow the screening.
The film tells the story of San Francisco attorney Wayne Mortimer Collins (1899-1974), whose uncompromising defense of the Constitution drove him to spend 23 years representing over 5,000 of the most maligned Japanese Americans who renounced their American citizenship under duress while imprisoned at the Tule Lake Segregation Center during World War II.
The renunciants were vilified by the government and press, and were shunned by their own community for their so-called disloyalty. Takei’s mother, an American citizen forced to renounce her citizenship, was assisted by Collins, who prevented the family’s deportation and loss of citizenship.
The late Edison Uno, JACL activist and founding father of the redress movement, once said, “If you haven’t met Mr. Collins, you haven’t experienced the bitterness of 110,000 evacuees in one fighting Irishman.”
The late Michi Nishiura Weglyn, author of “Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps,” said that Collins “did more to correct a democracy’s mistake than any other one person.”
Collins’ son, Wayne Merrill Collins, is also an attorney who has worked on behalf of Japanese American incarcerees.
Yamato is a journalist, nonfiction writer, TV producer, and independent filmmaker with more than four decades of experience in media writing and production.
Running time: 30 minutes. Contins profanity, violence and adult themes. Parental discretion advised.
Included in price of museum admission: $16 general, $9 for students and seniors, free for members. For more information, call (213) 625-0414 or visit www.janm.org.