Synopsis
Rabbit in the Moon is a visually stunning and emotionally compelling documentary/memoir about the events, meaning and lingering effects of the World War II internment on the Japanese American community. It is also the story of two sisters, filmmaker Emiko Omori and writer Chizuko Omori, who revisited the absence of this vital history in their lives while searching for the memory of their mother who died shortly after their release from the Poston Relocation Center.
While working to reconstruct the events of the last years of their mother's life, they uncovered a reality far more appalling than they had imagined: betrayal and abuse by their government, betrayal by members of the Japanese American community, protest and resistance by the internees, and the ultimate release of the prisoners back into a country now foreign and hostile to them.
The internees are presented not as passive model prisoners but as actively critical, organizing protests, staging demonstrations, and demanding their constitutional rights. Protests and strikes began around the dismal, unsanitary living conditions - bad food, lack of schools and hospitals, no coal in sub-zero temperatures, etc. - but eventually the focus changed to the loss of their basic civil rights. To protest the loss of their constitutional rights they engaged in the great American tradition of public demonstrations. The War Relocation Authority suppressed dissent by various intimidation tactics, in some cases calling in the Army with guns and tear gas. Twelve interviewees give eyewitness accounts of these events which are linked together by the filmmakers' own experiences in the camps and placed in a larger historical context by the voice of the director, Emiko Omori.
Rabbit in the Moon examines: 1) the conflict and rift between the immigrant generation (the Issei) and the American generation (the Nisei) as power was shifted to the Nisei by the government; 2) draft resistance in the camps; 3) the truth behind the demonstrations at the Manzanar Relocation Center where two Japanese American teenagers were shot to death by the army and nine others were injured; 4) the racist sub-text of the "Loyalty Questionnaire" (a precursor to the McCarthy investigation); and 5) the effects of the camps on the community today. Each issue is illuminated in a deeply personal way. Every voice is of an internee with the exception of one, Ernest Besig, former director of the ACLU of Northern California, who came to their defense at that time. These men and women were silent for over fifty years for fear of being branded "disloyal", a stigma attached to having been a protestor during the incarceration. Now these voices have been given a chance to be heard.
In 1943 the internees faced one of their most traumatic challenges, answering a loyalty questionnaire. This document required a simple "yes" or "no" to very complex questions. For example, one of the key questions, number twenty-eight, asked that they give up allegiance to the Emperor of Japan and pledge allegiance to the United States. If the immigrant parents gave up allegiance to Japan they would become stateless people because they were forbidden by law from becoming naturalized citizens. On the other hand, their American children, who had never pledged allegiance to the Emperor in the first place, would become stateless people if they gave up allegiance to the United States. People were forced to choose between their families and the country of their birth. This created great anguish within the community as it ripped apart families, divided generations, and uprooted cultural traditions. The "rabbit in the moon" is a metaphor for the multi-cultural identities that exist in all of us. Where does one end and the other begin?
Extraordinary newly released home movies taken both prior to and within the camps are interwoven throughout the interviews creating a unique insider perspective. The home movies shot in the camps are juxtaposed against the official camp movies, sanitized government propaganda, that were broadcast to the outside world. The visual contradictions reflect the contradictions in our own memories. What do we remember and what was implanted by all of the government images we have seen? Archival materials and documents, artifacts, stock footage, personal photos, and evocative contemporary footage from various camp locations are used to create a haunting portrait of a very dark chapter in American History.
While working to reconstruct the events of the last years of their mother's life, they uncovered a reality far more appalling than they had imagined: betrayal and abuse by their government, betrayal by members of the Japanese American community, protest and resistance by the internees, and the ultimate release of the prisoners back into a country now foreign and hostile to them.
The internees are presented not as passive model prisoners but as actively critical, organizing protests, staging demonstrations, and demanding their constitutional rights. Protests and strikes began around the dismal, unsanitary living conditions - bad food, lack of schools and hospitals, no coal in sub-zero temperatures, etc. - but eventually the focus changed to the loss of their basic civil rights. To protest the loss of their constitutional rights they engaged in the great American tradition of public demonstrations. The War Relocation Authority suppressed dissent by various intimidation tactics, in some cases calling in the Army with guns and tear gas. Twelve interviewees give eyewitness accounts of these events which are linked together by the filmmakers' own experiences in the camps and placed in a larger historical context by the voice of the director, Emiko Omori.
Rabbit in the Moon examines: 1) the conflict and rift between the immigrant generation (the Issei) and the American generation (the Nisei) as power was shifted to the Nisei by the government; 2) draft resistance in the camps; 3) the truth behind the demonstrations at the Manzanar Relocation Center where two Japanese American teenagers were shot to death by the army and nine others were injured; 4) the racist sub-text of the "Loyalty Questionnaire" (a precursor to the McCarthy investigation); and 5) the effects of the camps on the community today. Each issue is illuminated in a deeply personal way. Every voice is of an internee with the exception of one, Ernest Besig, former director of the ACLU of Northern California, who came to their defense at that time. These men and women were silent for over fifty years for fear of being branded "disloyal", a stigma attached to having been a protestor during the incarceration. Now these voices have been given a chance to be heard.
In 1943 the internees faced one of their most traumatic challenges, answering a loyalty questionnaire. This document required a simple "yes" or "no" to very complex questions. For example, one of the key questions, number twenty-eight, asked that they give up allegiance to the Emperor of Japan and pledge allegiance to the United States. If the immigrant parents gave up allegiance to Japan they would become stateless people because they were forbidden by law from becoming naturalized citizens. On the other hand, their American children, who had never pledged allegiance to the Emperor in the first place, would become stateless people if they gave up allegiance to the United States. People were forced to choose between their families and the country of their birth. This created great anguish within the community as it ripped apart families, divided generations, and uprooted cultural traditions. The "rabbit in the moon" is a metaphor for the multi-cultural identities that exist in all of us. Where does one end and the other begin?
Extraordinary newly released home movies taken both prior to and within the camps are interwoven throughout the interviews creating a unique insider perspective. The home movies shot in the camps are juxtaposed against the official camp movies, sanitized government propaganda, that were broadcast to the outside world. The visual contradictions reflect the contradictions in our own memories. What do we remember and what was implanted by all of the government images we have seen? Archival materials and documents, artifacts, stock footage, personal photos, and evocative contemporary footage from various camp locations are used to create a haunting portrait of a very dark chapter in American History.
