'The Terror: Infamy' made more relevant by America's current political environment

AMC

'The Terror: Infamy premieres tonight.

Among Asian Americans, one of the most anticipated premieres of Asian Summer is the The Terror: Infamy featuring a almost all-Asian American cast. The series starts today, Monday (Aug. 12) on the AMC network at 9 p.m.

Featuring a cast and crew with deep-rooted connections to WWII, the imprisonment of Japanese Americans and the aftermath in Hiroshima, 

Set during World War II, The Terror: Infamy is set in one of the infamous incarceration camps where Americans of Japanese descent were detained. Much of the dialogue will be in Japanese with subtitles.

The story centers on a series of bizarre deaths that haunt the incarcerated Japanese American community, and a young man's journey to understand and combat the malevolent entity responsible for the deaths.

You can call The Terror: Infamy a ghost story, but the real "terror" is the incarceration of Americans based on their race.

Viewers will learn about a chapter in American history that is usually not adequately discussed in school.  With contemporary events such as the Muslim Ban and the anti-immigrant rhetoric, the fear that history could repeat itself is a real possibility. Viewers will probably find more stress in a POW interrogation or in-camp medical procedures than anything in the ghost story.

What will be interesting is if the viewers who are not of Japanese descent will be able to relate and identify with the Japanese American characters and start to view the non-Japanese characters as "others."

Asian Americans will also be behind the camera. The Terror: Infamy is co-created and executive produced by Alexander Woo ("True Blood") and Max Borenstein ("Kong: Skull Island," "Godzilla"). Woo also serves as showrunner. Josef Kubota Wladyka directs a number of episodes.

The cast will be familiar to viewers. The series stars Derek Mio as Chester Nakayama; Kiki Sukezane (Lost in Space) as Yuko, a mysterious woman from Chester's past; Cristina Rodlo (Miss Bala) as Luz, Chester's secret girlfriend; Shingo Usami (Unbroken) as Henry Nakayama, Chester's father; Naoko Mori (Everest) as Asako Nakayama, Chester's mother; Miki Ishikawa (9-1-1) as Amy, a Nakayama family friend.

The best known cast members is renowned actor, producer, author and activist George Takei (Star Trek) as Yamato-san, a community elder and former fishing captain. Takei also serves as a consultant. He was 5-years old when he and his family was imprisoned in one of the WWII concentration camps, also serves as a consultant. 

Takei has spoken out against the Trump administration’s detention camps along our Southern border, and as history shamefully repeats itself, The Terror: Infamy couldn’t feel more relevant.

Set during World War II, The Terror: Infamy centers on a series of bizarre deaths that haunt a Japanese-American community and a young man’s journey to understand and combat the malevolent entity responsible.

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Japanese Americans protest plans to use Fort Sill as detention center for border children

SCREEN CAPTURE / KFDX

Former internees protest the use of Fort Sill as a detention center for children separated from their families.

ASAM NEWS

A group that included Japanese Americans who were detained as children during World War II demonstrated in Oklahoma yesterday to protest the US government’s plan to house over 1,400 migrant children at Fort Sill, reports KSWO 7News.
“75 years ago, 120,000 of us were removed from our homes and forcibly incarcerated in prison camps across the country,” said protest organizer Satsuki Ina, whose sign included a photo of her as a child in a WWII incarceration camp. “We’re here today to protest the repetition of history.”

Some other survivors also brought camp ID cards and photos from when they were detained as children.

Fort Sill police threatened arrests if protesters did not move from base property. Police told them to resume their demonstration on the other side of Rogers Lane, which was considered Lawton city property, but protestors initially refused.

“If that’s what it takes, to be arrested to make our statement, for people to know that we mean it when we say, we’re going to do what we can for America to stop repeating history,” said Ina.

Once Lawton police arrived and let them speak, the protestors held a news conference and then headed to Shepler Park where they hung origami cranes and met with some other organizations and local Native American Tribes. The groups joined together in prayer and continued the demonstration into the afternoon.

“So much of what’s happening today is very familiar to us,” Ina said. “We, my family, suffered for four years with indeterminate detention. My father was taken from us and put in a separate prison camp and there was a period of time when we didn’t know where he was, and I was a toddler at that time and when we’re finally reunified in Crystal City, Texas, in the family internment camp there, at that point, my father was just a stranger to me. I had a lot of anxiety as a child. So I’ve made it my life’s work to understand the trauma consequences of mass incarceration and chronic states of trauma.”

The Fort Sill post was last used to house migrant children in 2014 under the Obama administration, when it took in 1,861 migrants, reports The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Oklahoma’s Republican leaders opposed lockups like Fort Sill under Obama but have made a switch to defend them under the current administration.

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During WWII, Japanese Americans were detained in Fort Sill, Oklahoma where Homeland Security plans to house Central American children separated from their families asking for asylum

Sen. James Lankford said in a statement last week that likening the migrant detention centers to incarceration camps “is a false equivalency.”

“What happened then is not what is happening now,” read the statement. “… Every country now knows if you come into our country with a child, you will be released. It is our responsibility to ensure the security and safety of all the children coming into our country, and I have confidence that will be done properly at Fort Sill.”

“I feel a heaviness because history repeated itself when they interned the Japanese Americans there and now they are taking these children that they claim to be unaccompanied by adults and keeping them at Fort Sill, and that’s just wrong,” said activist Rev. Steven B. Thompson. “That goes against our very human nature.”

Ina hopes the government will utilize alternatives to building walls and detaining children.

“Our hope is that children who are coming across the border are placed in community-based facilities, provided services and all effort be put into reunifying them with sponsors and family members,” said Ina.

“Unlike 1942, when America turned their backs on us while we were disappearing from our homes, our schools, our farms and our jobs — we’re here today to speak out, to protest the unjust incarceration of innocent people seeking refuge in this country,” Ina said.

“We stand with them, and we say, ‘Stop repeating history.'"

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Former WWII Japanese American internee graduates with his grandson

SCREEN CAPTURE

Arroyo Grande HIgh School principal Dan Neff hands Haruo Hayashi his diploma.

ASAM NEWS

June 5, 2019 will be a day to remember for the family of 93-year-old Haruo Hayashi. The former prisoner at a WWII incarceration camp finally received his high school diploma in San Luis Obispo, California this week, reports the Tribune.
What made it even more special, Arroyo Grande High School also awarded a diploma to his grandson on the same day.

Like so many of those incarcerated, Hayashi missed his own high school graduation with his classmates. He spent his high school years at the Gila War Relocation Center, a euphemism for a federal prison.

After the internment order ended in 1944, Hayashi briefly joined the Army before returning home to Arroyo Grande to the family farm. Since then Hayashi has risen to prominence as a respected farmer, an advocate for reparations for those impacted by the War Relocation Order of 1942 and one of the most well-known figures in Arroyo Grande, reports the Tribune.

“It’s pretty awesome. He has been my biggest fan growing up, so it is really special to share this moment with him,”said his grandson, Kobe, to KSBY.

Kobe's grandfather, Haruo Hayashi had a quiet smile as he looked down at his diploma.

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Japanese American internees protest border detention camps

ASAM NEWS

Satsuki Ina, 76-year-old, returned to the scene of a childhood nightmare on Saturday (March 30).

She was among those Japanese American incarcerated at the Crystal City camp in Texas more than 75 years ago. Ina joined five other incarceration camp survivors and 100 demonstrators to protest the Trump administration policy of family separation of asylum seekers and the imprisonment of more than 1,000 women and children at Crystal City today.

“Nobody stood up for us,” Ina said to the Express News. “We had never committed a crime except to have the face of the enemy. But I feel empowered today that we can use our voices, voices that we didn’t have then to speak out against injustice and inhumane treatment of innocent human beings.”

Buddhist and Christian leaders joined in a memorial service while Taiko drummers slowly beat their instruments.

Grace Shimizu’s father was deported from Latin America and detained at Crystal City as part of an secret exchange for American prisoners.

“We’re not just saying we feel your pain, we’re going further than that — it has to stop,” she said to ABC News.

The survivors of the WWII incarceration camps believe history being repeated again and vow to prevent anyone from being unlawfully detained. 

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