Unfinished Business
In the Spring of 1942 over 110,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry were routed from their homes on the West Coast and herded to internment camps across the country, where they remained for over three years with no charges filed, no hearings held. Unfinished Business, a new documentary by Steven Okazaki, tells the story of three men who courageously defied the relocation order: Gordon Hirabayashi, a pacifist university student; Fred Korematsu, who simply felt he had the right to continue his life; and Minoru Yasui, a young lawyer who made himself the test case challenging the order's constitutionality. All were convicted and imprisoned. In recounting their personal stories, Unfinished Business also touches on the stories of many former internees, whose voices provide an uncompromising account of life in the camps. Photographs by Dorothea Lange are used with keen effectiveness and archival footage recalls the mood of anti-Japanese hysteria that led to this “disaster in American civil liberties.” But the disaster is by no means over: the 40-year fight of these three men to overturn their convictions is still in its final round, while the agony endured by thousands of people can never be erased. Unfinished Business won the 1984 Cine Golden Eagle. Steven Okazaki has also directed Survivors (1981), a film on Japanese-American survivors of Hiroshima.