Community News:
A unique, new documentary examining a “Community in Conflict” has been accepted into the Santa Fe International Film Fiesta next weekend. The screening of the film will be 12:15 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 21, at the Jean Cocteau Cinema, 418 Montezuma Ave., in Santa Fe. Tickets can be purchased online at BoxOffice.Santafe.Film. The Box Office phone number is 505-397-0138.
A trailer of the film can be viewed at COMMUNITYINCONFLICT.COM. The history begins when a committee of Community Leaders wished to identify the site of the Santa Fe Internment Camp where men of Japanese descent were held during World War II. Their efforts were fiercely resisted by some local veterans and their families whose loved ones had been Prisoners of War for 3-1/2 years under Japanese command if they had survived The Philippines Bataan Death March or the surrender of Corregidor a month later.
Learn the drama through the passions for those committee members who wished the Santa Fe political leaders to let them place a “marker” identifying the site of the former camp, and those angry citizens who resisted because they believed Japanese Prisoners of War had been held in the camp (not true) and because the City had not acknowledged the sacrifices and the military valor of their citizens during the war years. The request to allow the committee to put a boulder on city land was expected to fail 5-3 that night when the room was full and the atmosphere charged. Police were standing among the crowd. Learn the drama as each councilor voted.
Faces of these Community Leaders pictured include historian and author Nancy Bartlit, the only Los Alamosan on the committee, who joined the Santa Fe Marker Committee when she learned of it because she had taught in Sendai, Japan 13-15 years after the end of WWII. Bartlit wrote about the camp as a co-author of Silent Voices of World War II and has lectured about life in the camp for several decades. She was grateful to interview Bill Nishimura, a camp internee born in California, and to bring him to the dedication of the Santa Fe Marker in 2002 and 10 years later in 2012 at an anniversary of the Marker held at the New Mexico History Museum.
The community is invited to attend this event to see what California Director Claudia Katayanagi and Albuquerque Co-Producer Nikki Nojima Louis (whose father was in the Santa Fe Internment Camp) have prepared for the 45-minute viewing. Director of Photography is Satsuki Murashige and Harley King is Editor. Cast includes Thomas Chavez, Joe Ando, Doc Weaver, Rod Ventura, Gerard Martinez, Faith Okuma, Kiku Kato, Davis Begay, John Ojinaga, Santa Fe City Councilors Patti Bushee, Frank Montano, and Carol Robertson Lopez, and the New Mexico Japanese American Citizens League Players from Albuquerque.
