3:30 - 4:30
Watch Defiant to the Last: Resistance at the Tule Lake Jail, which is a story of collective resistance, revealing the chilling history of the Tule Lake Segregation Center and putting a timely, corrective spotlight on the dissident Japanese Americans who were demonized and punished for speaking out against the false wartime incarceration.
Emmy award-winning filmmaker Emiko Omori is a longtime Bay Area resident and a San Francisco State University School of Cinema alumna. She was the first female Asian American cinematographer at KQED, and her most celebrated work, Rabbit in the Moon, explores the Japanese American incarceration experience. She also directed Tattoo City, a documentary on tattoo artist Ed Hardy, among many other films.
NR, 37 mins., 2025. Closed captions (CC) in English.
Connect: Defiant to the Last - Website | Emiko and Chizuko Omori Collection - Website
Stretching from California’s southern border to northmost tip of Washington state, One Book, One Coast is a brand-new, multi-state community reading initiative that brings readers together around a shared book, sparking conversation, programs and reflection across the West Coast.
Our inaugural selection is They Called Us Enemy (2019), a graphic memoir by George Takei that recounts his childhood experience of incarceration alongside more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent, most of whom were U.S. citizens, following Executive Order 9066 in 1942.
Read along March–May 2026 and join the programs and discussions it inspires.