Internationally acclaimed Japanese American composer and songwriter Karou Ishibashi with his stage name of Kishi Bashi takes us on a journey of history and self discovery and offers a glimpse of a less than logical and reasoned United States President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 to designate exclusionary zones where in Goebbelistic fashion anyone of Japanese ancestry was prohibited from residing in. Omoiyari in Japanese means empathy and compassion for others.
Shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941 American paranoia about its West Coast Japanese population went to the boil and some 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent were imprisoned in 10 “concentration camps” in remote American locations. Poor accommodation, food and medical care.
Bashi takes us on a historical journey concerning the rise of Japanese immigration to the United States and their fate after Pearl Harbor with footage of “survivors” of the “concentration camps” discussing their internment and old news reel footage. Loyal Japanese Americans trapped by emotional pollical reactions and plenty of American racism. By the way Canadian readers here in Canada we had such “camps”: so no holier than thou please.
Bashi sings his songs often on the sites of the “concentration camps” and unlike several German concentration camps there has been no serious effort to rebuild them as remembrances. There are some rationally weak comparisons of Japanese American “concentration camps” to detention facilities trying to cope with thousands of undocumented migrants seeking to escape to the perceived land of milk and honey. Japanese Americans were legal citizens of the United States unlike thousands of Central American and Mexican economic migrants.
I take objection to the term of “concentration camp” being used in the documentary. Japanese Americans were not systematically liquidated like Jews, Romas, Russians and political dissidents in German concentration camps. No real mention made of the Japanese term of “Omoiyari” surfacing in Japanese conquered areas in World War 2…sex slaves for the Japanese army in the Philippines, starvation and beating of prisoners of war and so forth and so on. Plenty of documentaries on these atrocities so perhaps we are watching a retribution documentary? Two wrongs do not make a right.
“A Song Film by Kishi Bashi”: ‘Omoiyari’ was directed by Justin Taylor Smith and Karou Ishibashi. The film is being released by MTV Documentary Films. It opens in New York and Los Angeles on October 6 with a national release in select cities. The film will be streaming on Paramount later this fall.
You can see the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UipqCmEZXwY
RKS 2023 Film Rating 72/100.
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