Center for Asian American Media

This video presents clear evidence of the profound effect of the internment on generations of Japanese Americans. It chronicles Tanaka’s 50-year personal search for her father, whom she had not seen since age three. As a young man, the FBI arrested him for opposing the internment and diagnosed him as schizophrenic with paranoid tendencies. Tanaka finally finds him in a halfway house for the chronically mentally ill in Los Angeles’s skid row. Valuable for psychology, sociology and Asian American studies.

“THREE STARS!” – Video Rating Guide for Libraries

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"Through its visual plenitude and its insinuation of the unspoken, WHO'S GOING TO PAY FOR THESE DONUTS, ANYWAY? challenges the image's ability to represent history, any history. At the same time, the creation of images – the creation of the video, which Tanaka acknowledges as a family project – can act as a means of intergenerational healing, an affirmative process that bridges the familial gap caused by this lingering historical trauma. The image can confine, but it can also liberate."

- Robert M. Payne, "Visions of Silence," Jump Cut

Awards
Juror’s Award, Video, Atlanta Film & Video Festival
Bronze Apple, National Educational Film & Video Festival

Recognition
National PBS Broadcast
Whitney Biennial, The Whitney Museum of American Art
Museum of Modern Art, New York

College/Institution

Note for K-12/Public Library/Community Groups

If there is no discount pricing listed, please contact us.

For details and for previews, email distribution@asianamericanmedia.org
or call (415) 552-9550.