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Sunday, 06 May 2012 10:50

The Manzanar Fishing Club

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 "All men are equal before fish."  ~ Herbert Hoover

manzara one sheetImagine you're studying at the kitchen table in your  L.A. home and there's a knock on the door. Your parents answer and they are told, "In 48 hours you need to gather your belongings and be moved." Everything you  know, love, and feel safe with is being upended.  You will be bussed to an internment camp where the summers are intolerably hot, the winters are brutally cold and the wind-driven dust never stops fouling your lungs and stinging your eyes.  Because you are of Japanese heritage, even if you were born here and have never known any other country or way of life, you and your family are to be considered potential enemy combatants. 
 
This then begins the documentary of the internment of Japanese Americas in a place called Manzanar shown all week at the Regency South Coast Village Theater.  But this is not an angry story told through the backward-glancing lens of  history, this is a story told forward-looking, of hope, the human spirit and, yes, fishing.
 
This little-known tale is illuminated brilliantly by screenwriter Richard Imamura, director Cory Shiozaki, and producer Allen Sutton who came on board at the latter stages of the film to provide marketing and post-production help.  Lester Chung and John Gengl also contributed their considerable skills.
 
Shiozaki spent seven years of his life trying to tell this story of survival.  He tapped his friends from grammar school, Imamura and Sutton and a musician friend, Harold Payne ("To Be Free") to help.  Together they researched, contacted, cajolled and finally succeeded in bringing these incredible images, archival footage, and interviews to life.
 
Imamura, a sometimes fierce-looking Nisei (2nd generation Japanese) took years of experience as a screenwriter and channeled it into a story that soars and dips above the ghosts of the desert.  Shiozaki, a veteran camerman who has worked for everyone from John Carpenter to Disney Family Channel, never seems to tire of talking about this film both in visual and oral mode.  His creative eye, honed by years of experience, never delivered a false note.  Sitting with him discussing the film is like tapping a deep well of history that continues to be a passion of his.  It shows in his adept work.
 
It was Shiozaki who came up on the photo featured in the film's one-sheet of the fisherman and Issei (1st gen Japanes) internee who found an elusive treasure in the high Sierras among the tumbled boulders.  I won't spoil it for you but the ending has a great reveal that would belie the documentary nature of the film.  It's almost a treasure hunt worthy of a Ron Howard movie laid against the prejudices and hardships of the shameful nature of what America did to its citizens whose only crime was to be of Japanese heritage.  The archival caricatures and racist posters shown in the film are shocking, and though we’d like to believe that that sort of thing isn’t possible anymore (and it’s never politicized in the film,) the parallels to 9-11 and the Guantanamo detainees are impossible to ignore.
 
The themes to this film abound - as mentioned, prejudice, the resilience of the human spirit, family, compassion and the seemingly genetic component of fishing.  But a question keeps coming up in your mind as you watch: Why? Why risk everything just to go fishing?
 
Those of us who have experienced the calmness, the tranquility, and the sudden thrill of the tug of the pole can somewhat understand why nearly 300 men and women at some point risked a great deal to sneak to the rivers and lakes that surrounded the internment camp in Manzanar.  But that doesn’t fully satisfy the question by any stretch.  The why can only be answered from within ourselves.  That is the beauty of the film that drives you inevitably to that introspection and self-examination.
 
Defying the barbed wire and guard towers would seem incomprensibile to most of us, let alone a people who daily lived the concept of following orders for the greater good.  But the fierce independance and pride of the men and women of this camp is also writ large against a desert that could have easily broken and swallowed their spirits.  Instead, those spirits thrived and found a way to make sweetness out of a bitter, bitter brew.  Certainly, going fishing didn't solve all the anger and despair.  But the real and symbolic nature of the act made it tolerable for many.
 
Shiozaki (also Nisei) mentioned that his family never talked of the internment so for him uncovering previously unknown parts of it was part of the joy of making this film.  But by sharing his journey and blending it with the journey of those who did no crime but were indicted anyway, the filmmakers have presented a thundering shout to the indomitable human spirit every bit as worthy as Rocky's "Adrian!" or Seabiscuit's thundering hooves.  In fact, I mentioned that this would work so very well as an independent feature film that it's my hope they pursue that avenue next.
 
Just the oral histories that became video histories that Shiozaki gathered would have to inspire you.  The interviewees, both survivors (yes, there are those who 70 years later still can talk about the experience 1st hand) and their sons and grandsons who show fierce generational pride in what their fathers and grandfathers accomplished during a most difficult time, is so evident in this film.  They described both the horrid conditions and diametrically the simple tackle used that then became real fishing gear purchased in catalogs from Montgomery Ward and Sears.  There’s also mention of photographer  Toyo Miyatake who brought a lens and film stock with him and had a friend craft a camera from wood so he could “illegally” record the daily life of the camp.  It’s his photo that has become the one-sheet for the film and from where the somewhat surprise-ending comes.
 
I went through several layers of thought and emotion in seeing this film.  It brought back memories of me and my dad fishing on the lakes in Ohio; of the continuing shame of the internment; of questions of my courage to do what they did in sneaking under barbed wire in the dead of night to trek somewhere that they could be free; of how elegantly and skillfully the story was told almost as if it was a watercolor of great prize created by master craftsmen, and my despair that I could ever write or produce something so hauntingly beautiful and understated.  Many emotions over this simple story (70 mins running time) that still resonate with me as I write this review.
 
The Q&A after the film was lively and informative. Shiozaki and Imamura were both able to articulate wonderfully on many levels the choices they made in telling the story.  Equally at ease with the art and the craft of making the film, the love they had for this story  and their work shone in the theater afterwards.  It was a true pleasure meeting them.

Seeing this film perhaps won't change your life but it will so enhance it and make you think.  It will shame you and remind you of why we should always question the knee-jerk responses we seem to have to events.  It's painfully ironic that the young men in these camps were drafted to fight in many theaters of war during WWII.  Once considered a potential enemy and treated like criminals, they were then asked to fight and die for this country.  At the same time the story will infuse you with a sense of pride that this country was built by the sweat and blood of millions of strong and proud Americans of all colors and races.
 
And also, that the simple act of dipping a pole in a lake is a perfect metaphor for the unquenchable spirit that we have been given by those men and women of the “greatest generation” who fought on so many levels, for their right to simply...go fishing.
 
WEBSITE (fearnotrout.com)

Larry Porricelli also contributed to this article

Read 1967 times Last modified on Wednesday, 05 August 2015 16:17
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Mark Sevi

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