“League of Dreams” filmmaker Lane Nishikawa introduces the film at the recent JACL National Convention in Philadelphia. (Photo: Gil Asakawa)
You can’t accuse Lane Nishikawa of not being thorough.
The filmmaker/writer/director/actor/playwright spent years interviewing over a hundred people in 17 cities for “League of Dreams,” an epic documentary history of JACL. During the Philadelphia convention, members had the chance to preview a first take of the film, which clocked in at well over feature-length.
During the Q & A that followed the screening, Nishikawa acknowledged that the documentary needs to be edited down, especially for an eventual PBS screening. “League of Dreams” is meant to be a history of JACL’s first 100 years, so he technically has until 2029 to put the finishing touches on the project. It’ll be done sooner, though, and he’s offering to show the film for JACL chapters across the country.
Nishikawa is no stranger to JACL, or to the wider Japanese American community. Born in Hawaii and raised in California, he created his own degree, a B.A. in Asian American Theater at San Francisco State University, and made a name for himself doing one-man shows that combined a sharp wit with sharper social justice observations. He wrote and performed a trilogy about the challenges of Asian American writers getting published and actors finding roles, and if they get a role, avoiding stereotypes. He also wrote plays, including one about a Nisei soldier and his lifelong friendship with a Jewish holocaust survivor that he rescued from a concentration camp, and another play about a Nisei baseball player who leaves camp to be a soldier and runs into his brother, who’s fighting for Japan.
Then, he wrote, directed and starred in a trilogy of feature films about the Nisei soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The first, “When We Were Warriors,” is a short film based on his two-man play about a Nisei soldier and a holocaust survivor. The second, “Forgotten Valor,” is a look at a 442nd veteran who disappears when it’s announced that he’ll receive a Congressional Medal of Honor with other Nisei vets after 50 years, because the announcement stirs up traumatic memories.
The third, “Only the Brave” (2006), is a powerful full-length feature film about the 442nd and the regiment’s now-famous battle to rescue a battalion of Texas soldiers trapped in the Vosges mountains of France near the end of the war. Nishikawa starred in each of the projects, and for “Only the Brave,” he was joined by an all-star cast that included Tamlyn Tomita, Jason Scott Lee, Yuji Okamoto, Mark Dacascos, Greg Watanabe, Ken Narasaki and Pat Morita in one his last roles.
Since then, working with the San Diego chapter and JACL National, Nishikawa has turned his cameras to documentaries that focus on the Nisei veterans and their families in “Never Forget” (2016), produced for the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, and “Our Lost Years” (2019), a precursor to his current project, which tells the story of wartime incarceration. Many familiar community leaders were interviewed for these films, with Nishikawa setting up a camera at JACL conventions (last year in L.A., he filmed interviews in a room off the library at the Japanese American National Museum).
“League of Dreams” closes out his latest trilogy of films, intercutting his many interview clips with historical film footage, photographs and many shots of the Pacific Citizen as a way to tell the story of the organization in headlines and images.
And to prove he’s still being as thorough as possible, he has already set up more interviews to fill historical gaps that some audience members pointed out and is replacing interviews that were corrupted by technical glitches.
JACL conventiongoers were fortunate to get a preview look of the “League of Dreams” documentary that tells the proud story of JACL, from its origins to the social justice and educational work it carries on today.
To view a nine-minute teaser of the film, visit https://youtu.be/i3zP-PZ0d3g?si=x2Gt_zgdCyE0HH-T.
