by Jackie Maruhashi
Thank you to the Nisei Ski Club (NSC) Board and members for your wholehearted support of the Silicon Valley Asian Pacific FilmFest. The FilmFest took place on November 1-3, 2019, at the CineArts Theater in Santana Row. Nine out of the ten of our featured films screened to sold out crowds, making this one of the most successful film festivals ever, thanks to groups like the Nisei Ski Club.
The NSC sponsored “Alternative Facts: The Lies of Executive Order 9066,” and did its utmost to inform members by emailing, Facebook postings, and ticket raffling. The massive outreach resulted in 30+ NSC members attending Alternative Facts, and other films such as “Chinatown Rising” and “Mayor Ed Lee,” while some members purchased the “all access” weekend pass.
“Alternative Facts” depicts a true World War II government plot to force the removal and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast, 2/3 of whom were U.S citizens. Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in February 1942, authorized the War Department to establish military areas in which “any and all persons may be excluded…” Although the U.S. was at war with Germany, Italy and Japan, only people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast were designated for wholesale exclusion and removal. Even orphans with as little as one-sixteenth Japanese blood were removed. With only a few weeks notice, families could take only what they could carry. It is estimated that the evacuation cost the Japanese American community $6.2 billion in today’s dollars.
Decades later, two researchers studying the Japanese American evacuation found the “smoking gun,” evidence that government attorneys lied to the U.S. Supreme Court. The attorneys removed a footnote in the brief to the Court that indicated that the U.S. Navy found no acts of sabotage by the Japanese American community. The forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans should have never happened…
