Product Description

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. DVD Features: Bonus Archival Film: Japanese Relocation; Filmmaker Biography; Resources; Interactive Menus; Scene Selection

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54881 in DVD
• Released on: 2005-12-26
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 58 minutes

Amazon.com
Steven Okazaki's Oscar-nominated 1984 film Unfinished Business was one of the first documentaries to confront the relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II. As such it has an emotional immediacy that still rings clear today. Okazaki traces the story of Executive Order 9066, which decreed in the wake of Pearl Harbor that Japanese-American citizens living on the U.S. west coast should be uprooted and placed in relocation camps. In particular, we hear the histories of three men who separately defied the order and were arrested and jailed, each with his own particular story: Gordon Hirabayashi, Minoru Yasui, and Fred Korematsu. All three calmly describe their experiences, and Okazaki covers Korematsu's suit to have his conviction overturned. Newsreel footage, including footage from the camps, gives proof of the bleak relocation centers, and excerpts from government public-interest films (on relocation and the celebrated Japanese-American units of the U.S. military) give you-are-there looks at the era. These, and the forceful first-person testimonies of people involved, give weight to Korematsu's assertion that "it should never happen again to any American citizen just because he looks a little different from others." --Robert Horton