We had the great pleasure of attending a screening this past week of Nisei.
“Nisei” follows the harrowing journey of brothers Minoru and John Miyasaki as they are stripped of
citizenship, imprisoned, and then ultimately volunteer to join the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, an all
Japanese-American regiment and the most medaled unit in the history of the US military.
Visit our instagram for screenings and more info:
instagram.com/niseithefilm/
Rest in power to those who died on that fateful day off the coast of Hawaii.
A coordinated sneak attack by the Empire of Japan and the Nazi Regime in Germany on American soil. A nisei is a person born in the US or Canada whose parents were immigrants from Japan.
The 442nd Infantry Regiment (Infantry meaning boots on the ground kinda combat) 第442歩兵連隊
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT) was organized on March 23, 1943, in response to the War Department’s call for volunteers to form the segregated Japanese American army combat unit. More than 12,000 Nisei (second-generation Japanese American) volunteers answered the call. Ultimately 2,686 from Hawaii and 1,500 from mainland U.S. internment camps assembled at Camp Shelby, Mississippi in April 1943 for a year of infantry training.
After the attack, Japanese-Americans were placed into internment camps in California. President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 that resulted in the creation of the camps.
The West Coast was divided into military zones, and on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 that authorized military commanders to exclude civilians from military areas. Although the language of the order did not specify any ethnic group, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt of the Western Defense Command proceeded to announce curfews that included only Japanese Americans.
General DeWitt first encouraged voluntary evacuation by Japanese Americans from a limited number of areas. About seven percent of the total Japanese American population in these areas complied. Then on March 29, 1942, under the authority of Roosevelt’s executive order, DeWitt issued Public Proclamation No. 4, which began the forced evacuation and detention of Japanese-American West Coast residents on a 48-hour notice. Only a few days prior to the proclamation, on March 21, Congress had passed Public Law 503, which made violation of Executive Order 9066 a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison and a $5,000 fine.
In the next six months, approximately 122,000 men, women, and children were forcibly moved to “assembly centers.” They were then evacuated to and confined in isolated, fenced, and guarded “relocation centers,” also known as “internment camps.” The 10 sites were in remote areas in six western states and Arkansas: Heart Mountain in Wyoming, Tule Lake and Manzanar in California, Topaz in Utah, Poston and Gila River in Arizona, Granada in Colorado, Minidoka in Idaho, and Jerome and Rowher in Arkansas.
