South Seattle Community College is having their annual Japanese American Day of Remembrance. All are welcome to attend.

Thursday, February 20

Jerry Brockey Center, Room A

11 am

Film:

In World War II, a handful of young Americans refused to be drafted from an American concentration camp.

They were ready to fight for their country, but not before the government restored their rights as U.S. citizens and released their families from camp. It was a classic example of civil disobedience -- but the government prosecuted them as criminals and Japanese American leaders and veterans ostracized them as traitors.

CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION delves into the heart of the Japanese American conscience and a controversy that continues today. Experience the choice faced by any group when confronted by mass injustice -- whether to comply or to resist.

“The film shows the price one pays for taking a principled stand,” said Abe. “It’s also about two responses to injustice: collaboration or resistance. The resisters broke the law to clarify the rights of all Japanese Americans in camp, yet they not only served two years in prison, they spent 50 years as pariahs in our own community. It’s a classic example of civil disobedience in the American 20th century, and one that belongs in the classroom canon.”

Short Biography of the Filmmaker

For nearly two decades Frank Abe has been instrumental in recovering the story of the Heart Mountain resisters. Abe helped produce the first “Day of Remembrance” media events that publicly dramatized the campaign for redress for America’s wartime concentration camps. He was a founding member of the Asian American Theater Workshop in San Francisco and the Asian American Journalists Association in Seattle, and was featured as a JACL-like camp leader in the NBC/Universal movie, Farewell to Manzanar. He was for many years an award-winning reporter for KIRO Newsradio, the CBS Radio affiliate in Seattle, and is currently Director of Communications for the King County Executive in Seattle.

More information can be found at:

• http://www.resisters.com/
      
• http://www.pbs.org/itvs/conscience/index.html
    
• Trailer: http://youtu.be/Dh_1LVBs-gk
      
• Viewer’s Guide: http://www.resisters.com/learn-more/viewers-guide/