Kinstukuroi

Presented by the Japanese American Museum of Oregon.

Like every immigrant family, the Itos came to the United States to build a better life. After years of struggle and sacrifice, the dream that was America seemed within its grasp. Then the bombs fell and the world changed forever … With a stroke of his pen, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 and effectively destroyed the lives of 120,000 Japanese Americans at the onset of WWII.

Kinstukuroi follows members of the Ito family from their pre-war life in San Francisco’s Japantown to the concentration camps of the American West to the battlefields of Europe as they endure one of the most shameful periods in American history.

Following the screening there will be panel discussion with director Kerwin Berk and several members of the cast and crew.

Kerwin Berk is a Sansei filmmaker based in San Francisco’s Japantown. A retired journalist who worked at wire services and newspapers for more than 25 years, including the San Francisco Chronicle, he is the founder of Ikeibi Films, which believes that Asian Americans must tell our own stories in our own voice, using our own talent both in front of and behind the camera.