Playa del Rey Filmmaker Showcases Film about Japanese-American WWII Mistreatment at Doc Festival

A movie about Japanese-American internment camps during WWII is being shown on Friday at the second annual American Documentary Film Festival in Palm Springs.

The film “Flicker to Eternity” by Sharon Yamato of Playa del Rey, is based on the diary of a Japanese-American teenager who was an American soldier fighting in Europe while his family was held captive at an Arizona concentration camp.  

During WWII, the U.S. government forcibly relocated about 110,000 Japanese-Americans, many of them U.S. citizens, from their homes to dozens of internment camps in rural areas of the country. 

In California, there were several concentration camps, one of them, Manzanar, near the town of Lone Pine, has become a National Historic Monument.

More than 30 filmmakers will be highlighted at the American Documentary Film Festival from April 4-8.