PORT TOWNSEND — Tickets are available for the Rose Theatre’s free showing of two films dealing with Japanese-American internment during World War II.
“After Silence” and “The Woman Behind the Symbol” will be shown at the theater at 235 Taylor St. at 4 p.m. Thursday.
Tickets can be picked up at the box office.
This community screening is in honor of the Day of Remembrance, which commemorates Japanese-American internment during the war.
In February 1942, two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the relocation of 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast. They were incarcerated in concentration camps.
The government’s justification was to protect the country against espionage and sabotage by Japanese-Americans.
Exclusion Order No. 1, authorizing the first relocation, targeted Japanese-Americans living on Bainbridge Island.
One of them was 31-year-old Fumiko Hayashida.
As they waited to be taken off the island by armed military escorts, Hayashida, holding her sleeping 13-month-old daughter, was photographed by a Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer.
The photograph has since become a lasting iconic symbol of the internment experience.
“The Woman Behind the Symbol,” a 15-minute film by Lucy Ostrander and Don Sellers, reveals how the photograph became the impetus for Hayashida to publicly lobby against the injustices of the past.
As a child, Dr. Frank Kitamoto and his family lived on Bainbridge Island.
For decades, the Japanese-American community rarely spoke of the disturbing experiences of their exclusion and incarceration.
After the silence of many years, the story began to be told.
In Lois Shelton’s “After Silence,” a 30-minute film, viewers witness Kitamoto as he shares his story with high school students.