Extra credit documentary review

For many, news of a Muslim travel ban in the U.S. brings up memories of a dark part of America’s recent history.

Seventy-six years ago, a similar executive order called for the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans.

Director Abby Ginzberg was inspired by both of these events and drew a connection between the two in her documentary titled “And Then They Came For Us.”

The film, featuring actor George Takei, tells first hand accounts from Japanese Americans on what it was like to be forcibly removed from their homes in 1942.

The fifty-minute film displays photos from famous photographers, including Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams, to showcase real life in these camps.

While images of propaganda against the Japanese flooded the media at the time, photographs within the camps were packed away by the government, virtually unseen for years.

It is amazing to see how much emotion Lange was able to convey through her snapshots, seemingly able to freeze history.

As stated in the film, “We looked like the people who bombed pearl harbor, so we were treated as such… this was done to us in America.”

One thing the film tries to make clear is how important it is to know history so that it is not repeated.