Today is the 70th anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066, which cleared the way for the forced removal and incarceration of more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry 11,000 people of German ancestry (including Jews) and 3,000 people of Italian ancestry. This anniversary is being commemorated by Japanese American communities all over the U.S.

Photo taken by my grandfather Hiroshi Takayama in the Topaz internment camp

It was a real honor to have Enemy Alien included in a film festival devoted to Palestinians, to be included among Mohammad Bakri’s latest film Zahara which I was able to catch the night before my own screening.

On Saturday, October 1, I took a trip down to Galloway, New Jersey for a reunion of sorts with the main people who dedicated themselves to the fight for the freedom of Farouk Abdel-Muhti (a two-year struggle retold in the documentary Enemy Alien).

Sharin Chiorazzo, Kiyoshi Chen Aderer and Konrad Aderer

Any loss of life through indiscriminate violence is to be mourned and its perpetrators brought to justice. But the value of life and the principle of justice do not only apply to American citizens. Without liberty, there is no life, without life there is no liberty.

After a sneak preview at Anthology Film Archives (covered by the New York Observer), Enemy Alien has been released for distribution by Third World Newsreel.
Purchase Enemy Alien (educational institutions)

Tule Lake was the largest of the World War II incarceration camps for Japanese Americans, where the United States segregated thousands of incarcerees falsely designated as "disloyals." But this camp was also the site of some of the most heroic acts of resistance to the most heroic acts of resistance by Japanese Americans took place. At a key point in Enemy Alien I discover how the resistance at Tule Lake resonates with the protests Farouk organized with his fellow detainees.

Director Konrad Aderer and former Tule Lake incarceree Toru Saito, standing on foundation of a barrack