Unfinished Business: The Japanese American Internment Cases

Plot Summary

In the spring of 1942, more than 110,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry were uprooted from their homes and businesses and incarcerated in desolate relocation camps. Without hearings or trials, men, women and children were evacuated under Executive Order 9066--the Wartime Relocation Act. Unfinished Business is the story of three Japanese-American resistors--Gorden Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu, and Minoru Yasui--who courageously defied the government order and refused to go, resulting in their conviction and imprisonment. The film interweaves their personal stories with moving archival footage of wartime anti-Japanese hysteria, the evacuation and incarceration, and life at the camps. It captures the men 40 years later, fighting to overturn their original convictions in the final round of the battle against the act which shattered the lives of two generations of Japanese-Americans. Produced and directed by Academy Award-winner Steven Okazaki (Days of Waiting), Unfinished Business is a gripping study of one of the most tragic--and significant--periods in American history.