Iwao Shimizu belonged to a group of incarcerated Japanese Americans who demanded improved living conditions at Tule Lake Segregation Center. The poster for Resistance at Tule Lake features Iwao Shimizu and his son, Hiroshi. In the same way their poignant photograph gives emotional focus to the poster, their experiences anchor the harrowing story of the Tule Lake stockade. But it took gifted Japanese American actor James Yaegashi to give the late Iwao Shimizu a voice.
It’s January 1st. There must be a deep meaning behind why one must begin a new year starving…We must survive solely on water for the next few days.
Iwao Shimizu
Hiroshi Shimizu participates in the film as an interview subject, and provided us with his father’s diary, which we translated from Japanese into English for the first time. Iwao had a distinctive point of view as a Kibei, a U.S. citizen educated in Japan.
Actor finds personal link with Tule Lake story
We knew we needed a brilliant bilingual Japanese American actor to bring Iwao Shimizu’s words to life. And we got him — James Yaegashi, of Marvel’s Runaways. Yaegashi was educated in Yokohama, Japan. His cultural background thus matches that of Iwao Shimizu, though the meaning of a Japanese education had much different consequences then. During World War II, Kibei faced particular suspicion from the U.S. government and even from their own Japanese American community.
“I am very glad to be a part of a project that raises an important voice in the current climate of our country. Stories like these must be told and retold for us to collectively keep alive the principles that make the United States a beacon of freedom.”
James Yaegashi
Family separation at Tule Lake
Following the Tule Lake “riot” of November 1943, the U.S. Army occupied the Tule Lake concentration camp, terrorizing families with frequent raids into their living quarters to look for contraband or arrest people. On December 17, they took Iwao Shimizu from his family and imprisoned him in Tule Lake’s stockade along with 247 other men.
The Army confined the men without any explanation or official charges, retaliating abusively whenever a prisoner asserted their human dignity or civil rights. In his diary, Iwao Shimizu recounts a battle of wills with the abusive guards, which escalates to a hunger strike.
We were very fortunate to have James Yaegashi help us recreate the moments when 247 stockade prisoners stood up to their captors. His participation has special meaning as a reminder of where the U.S. is in its journey along the long arc of social justice.
This film enters the national conversation at a time when the U.S. government once again is confining and separating vulnerable families. How will history judge today’s policies on migrants and refugees? What stories will children now detained on our border pass on to the generations?
