Moving Day (1965)

• 74%
• 1965
• Phyllis Tanaka

UCLA student film that dramatizes the wartime eviction of a Japanese American farming family. Silent scenes of a family of five (presumably two Issei parents and their three Nisei children) eating, packing their possessions, making musubi for the voyage, and other preparations for removal are accompanied by first-person narration by a female voice, presumably the daughter of the family. The film begins with the words of John DeWitt read in his voice justifying the need for the forced removal of Japanese Americans. Moving Day is one of the first—if not the first—film by a Japanese American that depicts the travails of World War II.