RELOCATION, ARKANSAS
AFTERMATH OF INCARCERATION
crew
Producer/Director
Vivienne Schiffer. Vivienne is a native of Rohwer, Arkansas, the site of one of the ten War Relocation Authority Japanese American incarceration camps. Previously a senior corporate partner at international law firm of Thompson & Knight, LLP, Vivienne is a documentary filmmaker and author. Her novel about the Rohwer incarceration camp, Camp Nine, was named as the If All Arkansas Read the Same Book selection for 2013 by the Arkansas Library Association. Camp Nine was awarded the 2014 Suzannah DeBlack Book Award in Arkansas History, and the 2013 Arkansiana Adult Fiction Award, and received a Booklist starred review. Relocation, Arkansas –Aftermath of Incarceration is Vivienne’s first film.
Editor
Linda Hattendorf. Linda has been working in the New York documentary community for more than two decades. Best known for her award winning directorial debut, The Cats of Mirikitani, her editing work has aired on PBS, A&E, and The Sundance Channel as well as in theatrical venues and many festivals. She edited the award-winning documentary 7th Street, directed by Josh Pais; Julia Pimsleur's Brother Born Again; Christina Lundberg's On the Road Home: A Spiritual Journey Guided by Remarkable Women, Nancy Recant's Jin Shin Jyutsu, and Danny Schechter's In Debt We Trust. She was Associate Editor on Frontline's The Choice '96, and on Barbara Kopple's Bearing Witness; Contributing Editor on POV's American Aloha: Hula Beyond Hawaii; a cameraperson on William Greaves' Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take 2 1/2 , and a researcher on the Ken Burns series The West. She was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and holds degrees in Literature, Art History, and Media Studies.
Co-Director
'Johanna Demetrakas. With her first documentary, Womanhouse, about a ground-breaking feminist art installation, Johanna won the AFI Independent Filmmakers Grant, a place in the Whitney Museum’s New American Filmmaker Series, and international recognition at festivals such as the Venice Biennale, Paris, and New York. Her second art doc, Right Out of History: The Making of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Partywas broadcast on PBS and the BBC after acclaim at the London and Berlin Film Festivals. Her art documentaries have been in many museum shows, including the major exhibit, “Los Angeles 1955 – 1985,” at the Pompidou Museum in Paris, 2006. The Pompidou recently bought a 16mm copy of WOMANHOUSE for their permanent collection. Since winning the Discovery Program Award and making the dramatic short Homesick in 1989 (Sundance, Houston Fest winner, Showtime broadcast), Johanna turned her energies to writing and directing dramatic fiction as well as documentaries. Her credits include LA Law, Doogie Howser, MD, and the Lifetime television feature Out of Line, starring Jennifer Beals. In 2004, Johanna produced, directed, and edited a two-hour special Biography of Richard Gere for A&E. It was the first A&E Biography without a narrator. Johanna’s editing credits include The World According to Sesame Street and Amandla! A Revolution in Four Part Harmony. That epic documentary, edited by Johanna, won both the Audience and Freedom of Expression Awards at Sundance, 2002, as well as being nominated for five Emmys, including a nomination for her editing. She Co-Directed and Edited Busrider’s Union with the legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler. She has collaborated with Renee Tajima-Pena on several films, including My America, or Honk if You Love Buddha, the PBS special My Journey Home, and the P.O.V. film, Calavera Highway. Johanna has served on several awards juries including the Director’s Guild of America, the IDA, The Student Academy Awards, and The Greek Film Festival. She taught writing and directing at Cal Arts and is now on the faculty at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts.
Director of Photography
Pablo Bryant. Pablo has been the Director of Photography on four feature documentaries and has shot additional photography on many other projects, including HBO’s Cinema Verite, and the documentary The Vanishing of the Bees, narrated by Ellen Page. He filmed in India and Nepal for the National Film Board of Canada’s Tulku, which aired on CBC television, and finished shooting the documentary Crazy Wisdom in 2010. In addition to his work as a cameraman he has produced, and directed a short documentary about the epidemic of homeless children in the US called Stand Up For Kids. He shot the DVD special features for MADMEN season 4 and 5, finished shooting on When the Iron Bird Flies in 2012, and began shooting on a feature documentary called Master Zhou in April 2013. He is the producer, director and cinematographer for the short film, Mr. Fish – Cartooning from the Deep End.
Composer
Amman Abbasi. Amman Abbasi is 28 year old composer based in Little Rock Arkansas. He has scored multiple commercials and documentaries, and has provided music for feature films. As a director, his first feature film, DAYVEON, premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival.
Post Production Consultant
Douglas O’Connor. Douglas has been editing documentaries for more than decades. He has worked with most major broadcast and cable networks, as well as with many independent directors and productions. Recent projects include post production supervision and editorial consulting on Roads to Mecca, an IMAX documentary/narrative feature, Post Production Supervisor on the Whit Stillman film Damsels in Distress, Co- Editor on the award-winning IMAX feature Jerusalem 3D, Editor and Producer on Gold Strike, a feature documentary for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Dream at the End of the Rainbow, a feature documentary with director Neil Leifer, and Post Production consultant on Relocation Arkansas: Aftermath of Incarceration, and Resistance at Tule Lake.
CAST
Paul Takemoto. Born and raised in Maryland, Paul Takemoto grew up under the shadow of a secret. While his father served his country during World War II as a combat medic, Paul’s mother and his grandparents were prisoners of their own country, innocent but imprisoned first in the Jerome, and later the Rohwer, Japanese American incarceration camps. Now a spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration,
Paul makes his home in Maryland, and is the author of Nisei Memories: My Parents Talk about the War Years. Before joining the FAA, Paul was a journalist. He received a BA in journalism from Ohio Wesleyan University, and a Master of Fine Arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Richard Yada was born August 18, 1943 in the Rohwer, Arkansas Camp. When the camp was closed in November, 1943, Richard’s parents, Sam Yutaka Yada and Haruye Yada, and their young sons, Richard and Robert, stayed in Arkansas and worked as sharecrop vegetable farmers in Scott, Arkansas, just outside of Little Rock. Richard attended elementary school in Scott, and junior high in Little Rock. Slated to attend Little Rock Central High School in 1958, Richard attended North Little Rock High School because the United States government closed Central High following the infamous desegregation crisis. Richard graduated from high school in 1961. He attended the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and graduated in 1965 with a BSBA and a major in Accounting. As the Vietnam War escalated, Richard entered the Air Force, where he enrolled in the B-52 aircraft flight school. Over 4 ½ years, he flew 59 combat missions and completed his tour of duty with an honorable discharge with the rank of Captain.
Once back in Little Rock, he became a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and worked as an Accountant, CFO and Vice-President with major corporations. In 1983, he joined Merrill Lynch as a Financial Advisor and currently continues as an Independent Financial Planner. Richard is on the Board of the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Arkansas, the Board of Governors of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, and a member of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) Investment Policy Committee. Richard has been married to Barbara Heim Yada for over 52 years. They have three daughters and five grandchildren. Richard is very grateful to the 442 nd Regimented Combat Team for their courage and loyalty. He also expresses his gratitude to the people of Scott, Arkansas, and as well as the State of Arkansas, for being so kind and nurturing during his formative years and currently in business and life.
Rosalie Santine Gould. In 1982, then Mayor of McGehee, Rosalie Gould, was approached by a colleague to organize a dinner for Japanese Americans who wanted to return to the Rohwer Incarceration Camp to dedicate a monument. Thus began a forty year relationship with the Japanese American community, which resulted in Rosalie undertaking the preservation of the Rohwer and Jerome Camp sites and the Rohwer Camp Cemetery. One of the people Rosalie met at that dinner was Mabel Rose Jamison Vogel, who had taught art at the Rohwer Camp. Mrs. Vogel had the foresight to collect her students’ artwork, and when she died, she bequeathed her collection to Rosalie. Over the years, Rosalie’s collection grew by gifts from former internees. Prior to her donation of the collection to the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, it was the largest collection of incarceration camp art in private hands. Rosalie is a frequent speaker on the Japanese American incarceration experience.
Full Crew and Cast
Producer and Director Vivienne Schiffer
Co-Director Johanna Demetrakas
Editor Linda Hattendorf
Directors of Photography Pablo Bryant, John Carrithers
Composer Amman Abbasi
Assistant Producer Wyatt Schiffer
Additional Music Jimmy LaValle
Additional Photography Dave Anderson, Gabe Gentry
Sound Recording Matt Crawford, Dwight Chalmers, Amy Sandefur, Adriano Bravo, Jeremy Zunk, Chris Borque, Alex Jennings
Additional Editing John Carrithers, Juli Vizza
Assistant Editor Chris Cloyd
Post Production Supervisor Douglas O’Connor
Archival Research Susan Ricketts, Pamela Loos-Noji
Legal Al Staehely Jr.
Cast
President Bill Clinton
Elizabeth Eckford
Ethel Futamachi Toda
Martin Gipson
Rosalie Santine Gould
Delphine Hirasuna
Mark McElroy
Ruth Takemoto McInroy
Andy Noguchi
James L. “Skip” Rutherford
Rose Futamachi Sasaki
Marian Shingu Sata
Barbara Takei
Alice Takemoto
Paul Takemoto
Marielle Tsukamoto
Christine Umeda
Richard Yada