Since 2019 I’ve been researching Japanese-language literature written in incarceration and adapting some of the stories for film. Starting next week I’ll be going to L.A. to begin location production on “They Took My Father Too,” an adaptation of a story written by incarceree Fujiwo Tanisaki and published in 1944 in the Tule Lake literary journal Tessaku (Iron Fence).
The story follows a Japanese American family living in Little Tokyo, in the traumatic timeframe of March 1942, when the government was preparing to forcibly remove all Japanese Americans from the West Coast. When the FBI resumes a wave of mass arrests of Japanese immigrants, the family takes desperate measures, knowing they have precious moments left together.
This will be the first film to focus on Tuna Canyon Detention Station, where over 2,000 Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants were locked up from 1941-1943…