`Paradise' Revisited -- The Pain And Confusion Of Internment Is Brought Back For Japanese Americans Watching Alan Parker's New Film

When Seattle elementary-school teacher Aki Kurose told colleagues she planned to attend a preview of ``Come See the Paradise,'' a new film depicting the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, one of them said: ``Oh, Aki, can't you just forget that?''

Another said, ``Well, that was for your own protection, you know.''

Chuck Kato, who attended the screening Wednesday night with Kurose and six other former internees invited by The Times, was not surprised.

``Some of the guys I've worked with in Alaska or in the Midwest have said, `Chuck, I heard you guys had to go to camps - is that true?' '' said Kato, a retired civil engineer. ``Some of them just did not know what the hell was happening.''

Such attitudes offend but do not surprise Kurose, Kato and other Nisei (second-generation Japanese Americans). The fact that such attitudes still exist is one reason the Nisei welcome ``Come See the Paradise,'' which opens today at the Metro Cinemas.

Could such internments happen again? Yes, they say. Listen to the whisperings about Iraqis in the United States, they say. A war with Iraq could trigger such imprisonments, some believe.

``Even when Iran had all of our hostages,'' said Kato, ``people were talking about rounding up all the Iranians.''

``Come See the Paradise,'' said Kato and the others, helps to answer why such imprisonments should never take place again.

Though they quibbled with some of the film's details - its profanity-laced script is not the language of the Nisei, they point out - they found it deeply evocative of their own experiences.

``Overwhelming,'' said Tama Tokuda, a retiree known to many in the Japanese-American community for her performance last fall in ``The Wash'' at the Northwest Asian American Theatre. ``The film brought back so many memories to me.''

Said Sharon Aburano, a retired teacher and librarian: ``They had three barbed wires on the fences, just as I remembered at the camp.''

The film centers on the Kawamuras, a fictional Japanese-American family from Los Angeles. Much of the movie was filmed in Portland, Tacoma and Seattle.

While most of the film charts the devastating impact internment has on the Kawamuras, the movie is also an interracial love story involving Lily Kawamura (Tamlyn Tomita) and fiery labor activist Jack McGurn (Dennis Quaid). But all the former internees said ``Come See the Paradise'' did not really begin for them until the Kawamura family received their orders to relocate.

The film has been criticized for assigning heroic status to its only significant Caucasian character, portrayed by Quaid. The film's director, Alan Parker, also was criticized in 1988 when his ``Mississippi Burning,'' a 1960s civil-rights drama, emphasized the good deeds of two white FBI agents.

But the former internees expressed only mild irritation at the emphasis on the white character. It's a tradeoff they can accept for the attention a big-budget film can bring to the internment issue.

``You have to get an audience in to see the movie,'' said Tetsuden Kashima, director of Asian American Studies at the University of Washington. ``And there aren't that many Japanese-American actors who have the drawing power of a Dennis Quaid.''

Kashima, who said he found the film ``engrossing,'' also describes it as inadequately rooted in history. Except for some subtle metaphors, he said, ``Come See the Paradise'' does not give enough attention to the forces that fueled internment: war hysteria, racial prejudice and a failure of political leadership. ``That's all in there, but only if you know the real story,'' Kashima said.

The internees' ordeal tattered the fabric of families and traumatized a generation. In all, about 120,000 West Coast residents of Japanese descent, including thousands from the Seattle area, were forced into remote camps. Most of those from the Puget Sound area were sent to Minidoka, Idaho.

``The shower and latrine scenes were disturbing and real to me,'' said Kurose. ``We all lost our sense of privacy for a couple of years, all stuck together. It was very powerful.''

People also lost most of their wordly belongings, and thousands of business owners had to sell their properties cheaply because they had only days to report for evacuation.

Kato's father lost a hotel and restaurant, Tokuda's father lost a clothing store and Tsuboi's father lost two groceries.

Children suffered their own losses, too. Lillian Kato, Chuck Kato's wife, lost dolls.

Her family, like many, owned figurines that represented the Japanese emperor, empress and the other members of the court. The ceremonial dolls usually were displayed on Girls' Day and Boys' Day, Japanese holidays honoring children.

``I had a whole set of them and they (her parents) burned them,'' she recalled. ``I feel the loss now because I would love to have passed them on to my children.''

Others in the group recalled similar experiences. Kurose remembered a government agent following her mother to the family's basement, where he watched her as she burned Japanese magazines.

``Our parents were afraid of being Japanese,'' Tokuda said.

Such is the power of film and the forgetfulness of Americans that the Nisei interviewed said they felt their internment had been validated - even proved, in a sense - by the release of the film.

The Japanese-American community had not been vocal about internment until the past several years, when Japanese Americans won legal victories that led to the agreement by the U.S. government to pay $20,000 - and issue an apology - to each former internee.

``They don't say much, because, for one thing, they were on a guilt trip,'' said Chuck Kato, who was active in the local efforts on the redress issue. ``They asked, `Why were we put in the camp? We must have done something wrong.'

``When you feel you have done something wrong, you feel shamed. They said, `You're guilty of being a Jap.' That's hard to get rid of.''

Because of that shame, said Tsuboi, who owns a graphic-arts business, Japanese Americans have worked to erase that stain, however misplaced.

``We tried to set a perfect example, because were were a visible minority,'' Tsuboi said.

Many Americans did not even know that the Japanese went into the camps, said Kashima, the UW professor. ``One of the reasons for this was that the Japanese did not tell them, because they were ashamed'' of the treatment they received from the government.

The shame did not begin with the internments, either.

When World War II broke out, Japanese Americans were immediately subject to harassment, the Nisei recalled. Sharon Aburano remembers taking rides home with Chinese friends who pasted ``I am a Chinese'' stickers on their clothing and cars. The white police, she said, couldn't tell the difference.

That shame is presented dramatically in ``Come See the Paradise'' by the collapse of Mr. Kawamura (portrayed by Sab Shimono), who is broken spiritually and physically by accusations that he collaborated with the FBI.

If the Nisei are often depicted as stoic and silent - upholding the Japanese spirit of gaman - then the Issei, immigrants from Japan such as the Mr. Kawamura character, were even more reserved. Many of the Nisei were adolescents who managed to have some fun even in the camps. Tokuda, like many Japanese-American women, met her future husband at the camp. But the Issei, people such as Tokuda's parents, took their imprisonment with heavy hearts.

Tokuda, who was 21 when she was interned in 1943, recalls that all her father's hair turned white within a month after the family reported to ``Camp Harmony'' at the Puyallup fairgrounds, where internees were assigned temporarily before relocation to Minidoka.

And she also recalls the day the bus arrived to take her family from Seattle to Puyallup. The bus stopped at 10th Avenue South and South Lane Street.

``When we got on the bus, no one said a word,'' she said. ``It was absolute silence. But I saw the tears on my mother's face. It was the only time I saw her cry.''