One Fighting Irishman: Twin Cities Premiere Film Screening

Overview

Join us for the film screening premiere of One Fighting Irishman by filmmaker Sharon Yamato. This event is in partnership with the Twin Cities Japanese American Citizens League and in commemoration of the Day of Remembrance, observed on February 19 as a day for the Japanese American community to reflect and share the history of the forced incarceration of over 125,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.

One Fighting Irishman is a 30-minute film that tells the story of San Francisco civil rights attorney Wayne M. Collins’s passionate and uncompromising defense of the Constitution that drove him to spend 23 years successfully representing more than 5,000 Japanese Americans who renounced their American citizenship while imprisoned at the embattled Tule Lake Segregation Center, considered the worst of America’s ten WWII concentration camps.

As one of only a handful of attorneys who fought on behalf of the rights of Americans of Japanese ancestry while working with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California, Collins also battled the national ACLU and the national Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) in representing Fred Korematsu, who refused to report for mass detention. After the war, he (and later his son) represented Iva Toguri falsely accused of broadcasting during the war as “Tokyo Rose.”

The film will be screened in the 3M auditorium at 6:00 pm. Panel discussion and reception to follow. Featured panelists include: Sharon Yamato (writer, journalist and independent filmmaker), Wayne Merrill Collins (Berkeley attorney and son of Wayne Mortimer Collins, who took over his father’s practice), Hiroshi Shimizu (chair of the Tule Lake Committee, vice president of the Crystal City Pilgrimage Committee, and board president of the Japanese American National Library); and Carol Reitz (president of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American community, and board member of the Suyematsu Farm Legacy Alliance in Bainbridge Island, Washington).

To request an accommodation or for inquiries about accessibility, please contact engagement@mnhs.org.

This event is coordinated in partnership with the Twin Cities Japanese American Citizens League. Sponsored by the TCJACL Suzukamo funds. Funding provided by the State of Minnesota’s Legacy Amendment, through the vote of Minnesotans on Nov. 4, 2008, and our generous donors and members.