Pan-Asian Music Festival - Hidden Legacy: Japanese Traditional Performing Arts in the WWII Internment Camps (Film Showing & Discussion)

With its rich mix of compelling interviews, historical photographs, musical performances, and rare archival film footage, Hidden Legacy: Japanese Traditional Performing Arts in the WWII Internment Camps offers extraordinary insight into the persistence of traditional Japanese cultural practice among Japanese Americans interned during World War II. Despite intense pressure to reject all aspects of their ethnic heritage, with often harsh consequences for Issei (first generation) arts masters, many internees nevertheless chose to maintain--or even discover for the first time--Japanese forms of music, theater, dance, and other performing arts.

After a showing of the documentary (50 minutes), meet filmmaker and creative director, Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto-Wong, a koto performer for over 50 years whose interest in the subject grew from her mother's koto lessons at Topaz and Tule Lake camps.There will also be Japanese internment camp survivors who will speak about their experience with music in the camps.Click here for the documentary website.