Guilty by Reason of Race (film)

Documentary film produced by NBC and shown nationally on September 19, 1972, as part of the NBC Reports series. It was the second major network documentary on the wartime removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans after The Nisei: The Pride and the Shame , which aired on CBS in 1965.

Guilty by Reason of Race was produced and reported by veteran producer Robert Northshield and incorporated historic footage and photographs with contemporary interviews with Japanese Americans as well as those who advocated for incarceration at the time to tell the story of Japanese American removal from the West Coast and their subsequent confinement in concentration camps. Several former inmates are filmed visiting the places where they had been incarcerated, including Amy Uno Ishii, J. H. Takeda, and Betty Kozasa visiting Santa Anita and activist Edison Uno (who was an adviser to the film's producers) at Amache . It is also notable for including an interview in Tokyo with renunciant Masao Amachi, who recalled that he had "lost confidence" in the U.S. and felt that no matter who won the war, that he "would always be looked at as a Jap." The documentary also includes footage from a Manzanar Pilgrimage and from the contemporaneous exhibitions, Executive Order 9066 and Months of Waiting, 1942–1945 . The documentary ends with interviews noting the impact of incarceration and raising the question of whether it can happen again; it concludes that "there is no reason why it couldn't."

Interviews in order of appearance

Reaction from both mainstream and Japanese American reviewers was mostly positive. Ellen Endo Kayano of the Rafu Shimpo called it a "a poignant, factual retelling" that "was markedly devoid of the patronizing tone which often permeated previous attempt at recording the events of that era." Jon Funabiki of the Hokubei Mainichi wrote that it was the "most persuasively damning documentary yet produced for TV on the Japanese American concentration camp experience and its aftermath." Kats Kunitsugu of the Kashu Mainichi noted that it was "well edited, well put together... with no false notes of any importance that I could detect." "It's the kind of thing we need to remember; both we who are old enough to want to forget, and those who are too young to imagine genuine evil," wrote Maury Green of the Los Angeles Times . A Honolulu Star Bulletin-Advertiser editorial argued that it "should be shown once every year or two to remind older Americans what their generation did and to educate younger ones on a darker side of recent history." However playwright and critic Frank Chin felt that the show "told everyone a cheap sad story instead of telling the truth" and that it perpetuated racist stereotypes, "[a]s in previous times when white men transformed the hateful black stud into the lovable Aunt Jemima, so now the white racist that had seen mad dog Japs was now white racist love that saw helpless pregnant women and little babies." ^[1]

Not surprisingly, local NBC stations received dozens of angry phone calls protesting the documentary, citing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor or the Bataan Death March and few calls that praised the show. However those who took the time write letters were overwhelmingly positive in their comments. In reporting this development, Endo of the Rafu Shimpo wrote, "Conclusion: Bigots can't spell." ^[2]