By David Briscoe/AP
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is still painful for one group of Hawaii residents — Japanese Americans, who feel their stories should have been part of the recent blockbuster Disney movie on the attack.
Prominent lawyer Sandra Hoshida was only one year old during the Dec. 7, 1941, invasion, but she choked up with emotion earlier this month recalling an incident in her family’s history.
After the attack, Hoshida’s father was taken to a mainland internment camp, her mother, left behind pregnant. The family joined the father a year later, except for a sister who had to remain in a Hawaii hospital.
“It was years later that we found out that she had drowned in a bathtub,” Hoshida said. “I still have a hard time talking about it.”
Hoshida and other Japanese Americans spoke at a forum at the Japanese Cultural Center to air Hawaii residents’ real experiences at Pearl Harbor.
Native Hawaiians, Japanese Americans and others have complained that they were slighted by the movie. Japanese Americans are particularly sensitive because they say one scene of a Hawaii dentist talking to someone in Tokyo seems to imply disloyalty among residents.
Jane Komeiji, an educator, said Honolulu was full of false rumors after the attack, including one that Japanese American farmers had fashioned an arrow on a plantation, pointing the Japanese planes to Pearl Harbor.
Another tale said one downed pilot was wearing a University of Hawaii class ring.
Komeiji showed an innocent pre-attack newspaper ad for her mother’s dry goods store, which had been interpreted by some as carrying secret messages on the attack.
In an interview just before last month’s Pearl Harbor premiere aboard an aircraft carrier in the harbor itself, director Michael Bay acknowledged there were few scenes showing local residents in the movie, but he said, “I don’t think it’s an oversight.”
“People say, ‘Why didn’t you get into the local story?’ I mean, where does the movie stop? Why don’t you get into what Germany was doing with the German spy here? The movie has got to be kind of focused,” he said.
The Rev. Yoshiaki Fujitani, a Buddhist minister, said his father, also a minister, had considered an offer to be returned to Japan, but none of his family wanted to go, so he remained in an internment camp.
Even when he was released, his father was not allowed to return to Hawaii or the West Coast until the end of the war, said Fujitani, who served in the U.S. military.
Despite the mistreatment during the war, Fujitani said he benefited greatly after the war from the G.I Bill, which provided education for veterans.
Former state official Ken Otagaki, who fought with Japanese American troops in Europe and lost a leg, said he was sometimes disappointed in the treatment he got as a Japanese American in a U.S. Army uniform.
But Otagaki said he managed to enjoy his experiences as an Asian American during the war, and also took full advantage of the G.I. Bill, getting a master’s degree and a doctorate. |
