Manzanar - Other Works

Other Works

A made-for-television movie, Farewell to Manzanar, directed by John Korty, aired on March 11, 1976, on NBC. It was based on the 1973 memoir of the same name, written by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, who was incarcerated at Manzanar as a child, and her husband James D. Houston. The book and the movie tell the story of the Wakatsuki family and their experiences behind the barbed wire through young Jeanne's eyes. On October 7, 2011, the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) announced that they had negotiated the rights to the movie, and that they would make it available for purchase on DVD. Come See The Paradise was a feature film about how forced relocation and imprisonment at Manzanar affected a Japanese American family from Los Angeles and a European American union organizer. The film, released in 1990, starred Dennis Quaid and Tamlyn Tomita, and was written and directed by Alan Parker.

The 1994 award-winning novel, Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson, contains many scenes and details relating to Japanese Americans from the Puget Sound, Washington, area and their incarceration experiences at Manzanar. The 2000 film based on the book also details that connection.

Fort Minor's song "Kenji", from the album The Rising Tied (2005), tells the true story of Mike Shinoda's family and their experiences before, during, and after World War II, including their imprisonment at Manzanar.

The Asian American jazz fusion band Hiroshima has a song entitled "Manzanar" on its album The Bridge (2003). It is an instrumental song inspired by Manzanar and the Japanese American incarceration. Also, its song "Living In America", on its album titled East (1990), contains the phrase "I still remember Manzanar."

Channel 3's song titled "Manzanar" is about the incarceration.

A 2007 episode of the CBS television crime drama Cold Case, titled "Family 8108", dealt with the 1945 murder of a Japanese American man in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after he and his family were released from Manzanar. The episode originally aired on December 9, 2007.

Folk/country musician Tom Russell wrote "Manzanar", a song about the Japanese American internment, that was released on his album Box of Visions (1993). Laurie Lewis covered the song on her album Seeing Things (1998), adding the Japanese string instrument, the koto, to her performance.