Nisei Soldier: Standard Bearer for an Exiled People, and: Unfinished Business: The Japanese American Internment Cases (review)

Nor does the production play well on the level of history. Minor inaccuracies abound; for example, Washington was commonly addressed and referred to as "Excellency," not "Mr. President" as is used throughout the show. Using the correct title might have given an idea ofthe vice-regal air ofthe ceremonial life of the administration and some notion that Jefferson and Madison were not erecting straw men when they feared that the new government might slip into monarchy. More important, Washington is depicted as taking Hamilton and Jefferson out fishing and keeping them on the water until they agreed to the residence/assumption bargain wherein Southern votes for the assumption of state debts were swapped for a Southern location for the capital. This untrue and involving Washington even indirectly in the bargain is a serious distortion of the view he had ofthe presidential office and the way in which he actually executed it. Of greater significance than the treatment of individuals' actions, however, is the overall interpretation given to the period and its major events; it generally hews close to the lines established by Charles Beard in the early years of this century and popularized most extensively by Claude Bowers in the 1930s. Northern speculators and sharpies tangle with Southern slaveholding agrarians over the fortunes to be made in the new Republic; mobs in Philadelphia demonstrate their support for the French Revolution (and Jefferson) only by rioting, and the Whiskey Rebellion is the unreasonable outburst of a rabble of Western rioters. Little if any of the scholarship of the last thirty years is reflected here. The treatment of Hamilton's fiscal plans and the assumption/residence bargain, for example, would have benefited from a reading of E. James Ferguson's The Power ofthe Purse (1961), Madison and Jefferson's organization of the opposition from Noble Cunningham's The Jeffersonian Republicans, 1789-1800 (1957) and Washington's conduct of his office from James Ketchum's Presidents Above Party (1984). While previewing the presentation, I several times jotted down: "the 1 8th century is not the 20th!" and only later, looking over my notes did I realize that my annoyance had caused me to repeat myself. My repetitive ire, however, highlights a difficulty of the show. It does not seem to have been written by anyone who ever made a serious effort to understand the 1 8th century. While it is supposedly based on the well done biography of Washington by James Thomas Flexner, it shows few if any of the virtues of that work. All too often, it is a trivial, inaccurate, usually outmoded view of one of the most significant periods of United States history. If teachers use it for classroom purposes, they should do so only with great caution. Robert F. Jones Fordham University Film Reviews Nisei Soldier: Standard Bearer for an Exiled People. Written, produced, and directed by Loni Ding. 1983. 28-minute color documentary. Distributor: Vox Productions, San Francisco. Unfinished Business: The Japanese American Internment Cases. Produced, directed, and co-authored by Steven Okazaki. 1984. 58-minute color documentary. Distributor: Mouchette Films, San Francisco. 85 These two fine documentary films should be seen by every American. It couldn't happen here, but it did. And Americans need to be reminded, as a warning against the recurring eruptions ofracism that seem to infect all nations, including our own. The films present perspectives on the two major facets of the World War II Japanese American experience: internment and military service. Alone the films are involving and revealing. Together, they provide an unusually powerful exploration ofthis true American tragedy. The first two thirds of Unfinished Business deal with the United States government's round-up and incarceration of nearly 110,000 west coast residents of Japanese ancestry in so-called relocation camps. More than 70,000 of these internees were American-born Japanese Americans. While this woeful story has been told often, Unfinished Business does so with rare effectiveness, principally by focusing on the lives of three very special Japanese Americans: Gordon Hirabayashi; Fred Korematsu; and Min Yasui. These three brave young men insisted on their full rights as American citizens, defied the 1942 military orders that placed curfews and other restrictions...