How do we define Americans? If your origin is of another country, does that make you any less American? In times of great crisis, do we still fall into the trap of judging people by the way they look or where they are from simply because we are scared?

The lessons from Heart Mountain are invaluable and should never be forgotten.  The filmmakers David Ono (KABC-TV Channel 7 Eyewitness News Anchor) and Jeff MacIntyre (Producer, Videographer, and Editor - Content Media Group), with Chapman University alumna Toshi Ito (mother of Judge Lance Ito from the OJ Simpson Trial) will be part of a panel to discuss the history of the Japanese incarceration along with Chapman's Assistant Professor of Sociology Dr. Stephanie Takaragawa, whose father and his family and her maternal grandparents were in Heart Mountain. Dr. Marilyn J. Harran, founding director of the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education and the Sala and Aron Samueli Holocaust Memorial Library at Chapman University, will join the panel to discuss similarities of the injustices this time in history presented to these two communities.

Heart Mountain is a spectacular and beautiful backdrop to a story of triumph and tragedy. Over seventy years ago, an internment camp filled with 10,000 Japanese Americans sat in the shadow of the mountain. It was just a few miles outside Cody, Wyoming, where the land is rugged and the weather is brutal. It’s where American citizens were imprisoned, behind barbed wire and guard towers, for no other reason than because of their heritage. Eight out of 10 were from Los Angeles.

The Hirahara Photo Collection tells the story of Heart Mountain through pictures. Patti Hirahara, of Anaheim, California, whose grandfather built a secret dark room under their barracks where they processed film and developed pictures. The photos, donated to Frank Hirahara's alma mater of Washington State University were the inspiration for the documentary. In the years they were imprisoned, they took thousands of photos of camp life. Each photo is an opportunity to see the daily struggles and how people worked so hard at making life livable.

Most vivid are the stories from people such as former U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta and his friendship with former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson, Toshi Ito's heartbreaking story of her family and others who once called Heart Mountain “home.” From heartwarming to heart breaking, their experience of life in an American concentration camp reminds us of the fragility of freedom.

This award-winning film about the Japanese American Internment during WWII has won Four Emmy Awards, Two RTDNA Edward R. Murrow Awards, an RTDNA National Unity Award, and an Asian American Journalist Association's – Television Award. David Ono won their fourth Emmy Award this year at the 67th Annual Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards for his Outstanding Writer - Programming Emmy which included a segment about a Holocaust survivor that was liberated by the US Army's 522nd Battalion and will be featured at the screening.

http://www.codyenterprise.com/news/local/article_23db0a62-1724-11e4-a2c8-001a4bcf887a.html

Here is a preview of "The Legacy of Heart Mountain"

https://vimeo.com/132358591

www.heartmountainfilm.com

Producers: David Ono & Jeff MacIntyre

Photo Credit - Courtesy of the George and Frank C. Hirahara Collection, Washington State University Libraries, Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections.