Film: DEFIANT to the LAST-Resistance at the Tule Lake Jail

Film Screening: Discussion of Defiant to the Last, Resistance at the Tule Lake Jail .
Followed by discussion with Filmmaker Emiko Omori and Satsuki Ina, author of The Poet and the Silk Girl

About the Film from the Defiant to the Last website:
"Based on lies and wartime propaganda, during WWII the U.S. government forcibly removed and incarcerated more than 125,000 innocent Japanese Americans in ten American concentration camps, solely because of their race.

"At all the prison sites, despite the mythology of quiet compliance, Japanese Americans showed moral courage, resisted, and refused to accept the government’s abuse. Defiant to the Last tells the story of the Tule Lake Segregation Center where dissident Japanese Americans were demonized and punished for speaking out against the false wartime incarceration."

Revolution Books is showing this film because the story of resistance to the unjust treatment of the Japanese Americans in WW II resonates deeply with our own time, when immigrants’ rights are stripped away, they are demonized, and some deported to torture prisons in countries they’ve never lived in - and people who oppose this treatment are attacked and vilified by the government.

This is a time for defiance, for voices of conscience to speak out, and for revolution. Defiant to the Last brings crucial experience and important lessons from the past, and we are very glad to be able to bring Satsuki Ina and Emiko Omori to our store.

Watch the trailer for the film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=631_T12Tuv8

Director Emiko Omori was incarcerated as a toddler with her family at Poston Concentration Camp, Arizona. She studied film at San Francisco State University. Omori's defining work, Rabbit in the Moon, explores the Japanese American incarceration experience.

A writer, activist, and psychotherapist, Satsuki Ina has spent her professional career seeking to understand the long-term impact of collective and historic trauma. When her parents protested their unjust incarceration during WWII, they were segregated to the maximum security Tule Lake Concentration Camp where Satsuki was born. She is Professor Emeritus at California State University , Sacramento and works as a consultant specializing in community trauma. Her book,The Poet and the Silk Girl: A Memoir of Love, Imprisonment, and Protest (Heyday Books) was released in 2024 and the audiobook version is available now at Libro FM and other audiobook outlets.

We are sharing this case from the series, American Crime, #89: 120,000 People of Japanese Descent Put in U.S. Concentration Camps During World War 2.
https://revcom.us/en/a/447/american-crime-89-people-of-japanese-descent-put-in-us-concentration-camps-en.html