80 Years Later

SYNOPSIS

Through multigenerational conversations with survivors and their descendants, 80 YEARS LATER (dir. Celine Parreñas Shimizu, THE CELINE ARCHIVE) explores the racial inheritance of Japanese American family incarceration during World War II. The film follows two cousins, Kiyo and Robert, respectively a teenager and child living in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1942 when Executive Order 9066 – which forcibly imprisoned 120,000 Japanese Americans in World War II – was signed. Eighty years later, the cousins continue to grapple with the meaning of their incarceration and its impact on their lives, ancestors, and descendants.

A personal and intimate account situated in a larger historical context, 80 YEARS LATER explores how different generations confront and cope with the ongoing legacy of family imprisonment, the ambiguity of trauma and loss that are an inherent part of their family's journey – and, ultimately, how they find their way to healing. Third generation Sansei Japanese Americans Kiyo and Robert, their fourth generation Yonsei children, and fifth generation Gosei grandchildren all struggle with issues of belonging. On one hand, Kiyo becomes a social justice advocate, and her daughter Jean serves Japanese American community causes just like her mother. On the other hand, Robert, a respected pediatrician in his community, and his daughter Jenny both assimilate through excelling in hegemonic standards of gender and race as quarterback and prom queen in their predominantly all-white schools. The Yonsei generation essentially inherit their parents’ ways of coping with the legacy of racial difference, while the Gosei generation are all mixed-race Japanese Americans who question if they can properly own their heritage and claim their history because of their uncertain racial recognizability. Refusing to turn away from their legacy, they learn not only their history but the wealth of not only their language and traditions and also their legacy of resistance.

This sensitive and intimate film provides a reflective portrait of internment, ultimately focusing its attention on how a family transforms trauma over time through the power of multigenerational connection.