NAMBA tells the American story of May Namba, born in Seattle, Washington in 1922 to an immigrant couple from Japan. In 1942, more than 125,000 Japanese Americans were forced to relocate to one of 10 dusty incarceration camps. To justify his reasoning, President Franklin D. Roosevelt claimed it was impossible to know which among our community was loyal to the US.
At the time, 20-year-old May was incarcerated in the Minidoka Relocation Center, where guards with machine guns loomed in towers overhead. As a result of her incarceration, May lost her job at an elementary school, and her Father lost his business. While these were devastating losses, the most impactful loss was that of their freedom.
May’s granddaughter, Miyako, narrates and guides us through her grandmother’s experiences living at Minidoka. Miyako packs a suitcase, heart-wrenchingly contemplating the most important belongings to bring to the prison camp. She makes a mattress out of hay and lies down in a horse stall to use as a bed, just as her grandmother did. Throughout the film, May and Miyako share this complex history—the injustice and love of country—that’s rarely discussed in history books.
Director + Producer: Emily Hanako Momohara
Editors: Emily Hanako Momohara + Mika Yatsuhashi
Score: Simon Tam + Joe X Jiang of the Slants
Starring: May Namba + Miyako Namba
Featuring: Bill Tashima, Bif Brigman, Neil King, Aaren Purcell, Anna Hostica Tamur a, Dr. Tetsuden Kashima, Jim Namba, Hanako Wakatsuki Chong
Namba: a Japanese American’s Life of Incarceration and Resilience was funded by a Truth and Reconciliation Grant from Arts Wave, a donation from the Seattle Chapter JACL and crowd funded by 80 individual donors.