Quarterly Indoor Screenings
murder in the high desert
TUESDAY, February 18, 2025
6:30 to 8:00 pm
Bernal Branch Library
500 Cortland Avenue
Seating is limited and first come, first serve. Reserve your space; register below
This is an indoor event.
A story about the murder of an inmate at the Topaz concentration camp by the military in 1943, it’s coverup, a lost monument found 77 years later, and the controversy of it’s unearthing. The unearthing of the stone monument raises unsettling questions about how Japanese American history is told, preserved and, most importantly, by whom.
Join Emiko Omori, director, and Nancy Ukai, co-founder of Tsuru for Solidarity for this special Day of Remembrance screening and Q&A post-screening.
EMIKO OMORI, director, began her career as a filmmaker and cinematographer in 1968, when there were few camerawomen and fewer still Asian American camerawomen. Her first job was as camera/editor on the KQED program, Newsroom, in San Francisco. She left KQED in 1972 and, since then, has freelanced as a producer, director, cinematographer, and editor on many award-winning films, as well as her own films. Her Emmy award-winning documentary Rabbit in the Moon premiered at the Sundance Film Festival where it was awarded “Best Documentary Cinematography.” In addition, Rabbit in the Moon has garnered many awards including the “John. E. O’Connor Film Award” from the American Historical Association. Emiko, a long time resident of Bernal Heights and contributor to Bernal Heights Outdoor Cinema, is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
NANCY UKAI is co-founder of Tsuru for Solidarity and director of the 50 Objects history website, which explores the WWII incarceration of American Japanese through 50 artifacts. It is sponsored by a National Park Service grant. In doing research at the National Archives on an artifact related to the military murder of James Wakasa, she found a map of Wakasa’s death site which led two archaeologists to discover the Wakasa Monument that had been buried for nearly 80 years. It is considered the most important archaeological artifact of all the Japanese American World War II prison camps.
Nancy was born in Berkeley and is the grandchild of Japanese immigrants. Her parents were incarcerated at Topaz, the camp where Wakasa was killed. Nancy has worked as a journalist in Japan, where she lived for 14 years.