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Special film screening at AMP
To commemorate the legacy of the fight for civil rights, American Memorial Park will be showing the National Park Service film Remembering Manzanar on Wednesday, Jan. 21, at 6pm and 7pm. This 22-minute award-winning film documents the experience of some of the 110,000 Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated in camps in the United States at the outset of World War II.
During the era greatly inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King, Japanese-Americans began anew the fight to have the violations of their own civil rights acknowledged by the U.S. government. The legal challenge began in 1944 when Fred Korematsu, arrested for evading confinement, challenged the constitutionality of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the incarceration of Japanese-Americans. He lost that case, but in 1983 his conviction was overturned. In 1988, President Reagan signed the Redress Act, which made a financial compensation to those interned. Not all in the community accepted the offer.
In 1992, the National Park Service established Manzanar National Historic Site, the location of the first of the War Relocation Authority camps, where more than 10,000 Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. The film to be shown in the American Memorial Park Visitor Center is a powerful testimony to the resilience to these American citizens and to their place in American history.
Please join us for this film.Special viewing opportunities for school groups may be possible for a limited time during the next two weeks. To find out more about Manzanar and the internment story, visit http://www.nps.gov/manz/historyculture/japanese-americans-at-manzanar.htm. (NPS)
