Iris Yamashita with her late father Dr. Tsuyoshi Yamashita on the day they attended the Academy Awards ceremony and walked the Red Carpet in 2006.
By IRIS YAMASHITA
Iris Yamashita, a 2006 Oscar nominee for her screenplay of “Letters from Iwo Jima,” the companion piece to Clint Eastwood’s“Flags of Our Fathers,” is now a best-selling author of mystery novels “City Under One Roof” and “Village in the Dark.”
Last year, the acclaimed six-part BBC audio series that she wrote, “Purple Heart Warriors,” was the winner of “Best Fiction Podcast” at the Banff World Media Festival.
Inspired by real events, the series depicts “the brave young Japanese American soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team as they battle to liberate France from Nazi occupation.” The cast lending their voices included Tamlyn Tomita, Clyde Kusatsu, Derek Mio and Kurt Kanazawa.
Yamashita’s stories can also be found in the Writers’ Block Party Substack, where this essay was originally published on Aug. 10, 2025.
The writing collective is composed of “a few fellow seasoned writers … who decided to form a group where we could flex our satiric muscles with short humorous personal stories — moments of levity to wade through seemingly dark and troubled times.”
Yamashita writes, “My first essay is about the time I took my father to the Oscars and he completely stole the spotlight.”
The Rafu Shimpo actually plays a part in this story.
And it’s printed here with the author’s gracious permission.
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Back in 2006, I was having dinner with my father when he told me he had already bought his suit. “What suit?” I asked. “For the Academy Awards,” he said. “You’re going to get nominated.”
I was flattered, but so far, while the film “Letters from Iwo Jima” and the director, Clint Eastwood, were doing well with award nominations, my writing of the screenplay had not garnered a single nomination. Not by the WGA, not by the Golden Globes, not by any other major award. So I told him, “I hope you can return it.”
But he insisted that The Rafu Shimpo said I was likely to be nominated. The Rafu Shimpo was the local Japanese-language newspaper, and if it was printed there, it was like the word of God. “Well, OK, if I get to go, you can be my date,” I said, not really expecting to have to live up to the promise.
But The Rafu Shimpo turned out to be right after all, and my father was now my date to the Oscars.
Going to the Oscars felt like as big an event as going to the prom or getting married. I got a fancy gown with a train at the mall. The studio provided a stylist that did my hair and make-up, and a limo came to pick us up with our VIP entrance placard.
The Red Carpet was mostly a blur. There were strobes of flashing lights and people yelling all over the place to look into their camera. I never thought it would happen, but someone asked what I was wearing. Should I tell them I got my dress at the Glendale Shopping Mall and I saw someone else there wearing the same dress? I can’t even remember what my answer was. Probably “Something from the Galleria”? I think the flashing lights had rendered me dumb.
My dad was probably even more nervous than I was. He kept falling behind me, gawking at everything while I was being ushered to keep moving. I couldn’t get through five steps without a sudden jerk and I’d get pulled backwards. I heard people in the stand snicker at us. I kept telling my dad, “Stop stepping on my dress!”
Thankfully, there were plenty of actual celebrities just coming around behind us to divert all the attention – Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, Mark Wahlberg, Al Gore, Martin Scorsese, etc.
Things were going smoother with the dress, I thought, because I stopped feeling the sudden tugs and then I realized that it was because my father was no longer behind me. I looked back and saw my dad talking into a mic with a reporter from a Japanese TV station. So now he was giving his own interviews!
Seated in the auditorium, we could see all the lovely people. Nicole Kidman, Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg. Those people were up-front center. Our seats were off to the side, at the very end of the furthest aisle.
My name had been printed on a seat, but the usher took one look at us and placed my father in the “Iris Yamashita” seat because back then, it was so rare for a woman to be nominated for writing. He must have thought “Iris” was a man’s name in Japanese. I was the only woman in my category.
I was told to sit by the far aisle. My father’s friends reported seeing him several times on TV due to his close proximity to Paul Haggis. I think there was one shot of my right shoulder throughout the whole ceremony.
My father had probably seen three English-language movies at the theater in his life – “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” and “Flags of Our Fathers.” When I first told my father that I was going to be working with Clint Eastwood, he had asked, “Who’s that?”
At the Oscars, the only person he recognized was former Vice President Al Gore, who had been nominated for his documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” My father had brought with him a pen and index card where he took notes, asking me, “Who is that person?” and “What movie was that for?” and I thought it was sweet that he was taking notes — that he really wanted to remember the night.
At the post party, he was beaming from ear to ear and was quite chatty when he got to meet Clint Eastwood and Ken Watanabe, despite not knowing who they were before I started working on the film.
Weeks later, my father gave me a copy of The Rafu Shimpo. He showed me an article titled “Dr. Yamashita’s Red Carpet Experience.” A journalist had interviewed him to get his play-by-play account of the night’s events. He had done another interview! So that’s why he was taking so many notes. I think I was just a footnote in that article.
My father was a hard man to impress. Up until then, I think overall, he felt pretty disappointed about us kids – mainly because neither I nor my sister had become doctors and we hadn’t even married doctors. But the Oscars allowed him to gloat for years. He had pictures pasted all over the office lobby of his ophthalmology practice. In his holiday greetings, he enclosed a flyer, “Congratulations to my daughter, nominated for an Oscar!” He sent them to all his patients along with his business calendar.
Little did we know then that he would pass away from cancer in April 2009. Afterwards, a family friend told me, “It was a good thing you gave him the Oscars.” It was true. I felt good that I had given him his moment. For that one day, he was the shining star.
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To subscribe to the Writers’ Block Party visit: https://writersblockparty.substack.com/
The audio series “Purple Heart Warriors” is available online: https://www.bbc.com/audio/brand/w27vqqn7
For more information on Iris Yamashita, including her books: www.irisyamashita.com
For more information on Iris Yamashita, including her books: https://www.irisyamashita.com/