Film: One Fighting Irishman

Discover the untold legacy of Wayne M. Collins, the fearless defender of Japanese American rights during WWII, in One Fighting Irishman. Following the screening there will be a compelling panel discussion featuring filmmaker Sharon Yamato, attorney Wayne Merrill Collins, biographer Charles Wollenberg, and Tule Lake survivor Hiroshi Shimizu.

One Fighting Irishman tells the story of San Francisco civil rights attorney Wayne M. Collins whose uncompromising defense of the Constitution drove him to spend twenty-three years representing over 5,000 of the most maligned Japanese Americans who renounced their American citizenship under duress while incarcerated  at the Tule Lake Segregation Center during World War II.

As one of only a handful of attorneys who fought on behalf of the rights of Americans of Japanese ancestry while working with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California, Collins also battled the national ACLU and the national Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) in representing Fred Korematsu, one of only a handful of people who refused to report for mass detention. After the war, he also represented Iva Toguri falsely accused of broadcasting as “Tokyo Rose.”

Sharon Yamato is a writer/journalist, TV producer, and independent filmmaker with more than four decades of experience in media and TV/film production. Her films include Out of Infamy: Michi Nishiura Weglyn, A Flicker in Eternity and Moving Walls, for which she wrote an accompanying book, Moving Walls: The Barracks of America's Concentration Camps. She has written articles for the Los Angeles Times and is currently a columnist for the Los Angeles daily newspaper, The Rafu Shimpo.

Wayne Merrill Collins, son of Wayne Collins, is an attorney who practices from Berkeley and is the chief keeper of his father's legacy. He took over his father's practice after he died and was able to get a presidential pardon for Iva Toguri, falsely accused of being a spy under the name of "Tokyo Rose."

Charles Wollenberg, author of Rebel Lawyer: Wayne Collins and the Defense of Japanese American Rights, emeritus history professor at Berkeley City College and vice president of the Berkeley Historical Society.

Hiroshi Shimizu, chairman of the Tule Lake Pilgrimage Committee, former incarceree at the Tule Lake camp.

NR, 30 mins., 2023. Closed captions (CC) in English.

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