The East Side Freedom Library and the Twin Cities Japanese American Citizens League invite you to join us for “Day of Remembrance”: Minnesota’s Role in Incarceration and Transcendence.

Register here to join this event on Zoom.

Eighty years ago, on February 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which led to the incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans. Many lost their homes, their farms, their jobs, and their access to education. Thousands volunteered for the U.S. Military Intelligence Service, which was headquartered in Minnesota, serving as interpreters and interrogators, knowing that they might come face to face with people of their parents’ homeland. Military scholars say that the M.I.S. shortened the war by two years, but the unit is little known because the veterans were told their operation was top secret and they could not talk about it.

The Registry, a documentary made for PBS in 2018 by Bill Kubota and Steve Ozone, interviews some of the remaining veterans, and it takes its title from the only comprehensive list of these veterans, which Seiki Oshiro of Burnsville, Minnesota, helped to put together. Seventy-plus years after the experience, these veterans wanted to make sure their stories live on, through their registry and this film. The Registry explores generational issues common not just to Japanese Americans, but to many American families.

Along with the filmmakers, Mr. Oshiro, now 90 and featured in the film, will be part of a panel of discussants on the 19th. We are asking audience members to view the film on your own using this link and the passcode Registry2020. Bill Kubota, who is based in Detroit, and Steve Ozone, based in the Twin Cities, are veteran documentary filmmakers, who have made several films for PBS. The panel will be preceded by a powerpoint presentation about the history of the MISLS through her father’s experience by Karen Tanaka Lucas of the TCJACL. She is a third generation Japanese American who was born in post-war occupied Japan where her father was stationed with the U.S. Military Intelligence Service. This story is an important chapter in our shared history, and we are honored to be able to bring it to our community.

Free and open to all