Stu’s been getting lots of movies on DVD from the library. Many of them do not appeal to me, which is great, as I can play back here and he can watch um, well, whatever, but the other night he put on one and I sat and watched most of it. I was in the middle of something so I went back and forth until I finally just sat the hell down and watched. I’m sort of glad I didn’t see it all since the whole thing would have made me dissolve. As it was, I was weeping for a good 10 minutes afterwards.

You folks who know me know I’m sappy – it’s a bizarre thing that I got much weepier after 9/11 and now just accept that it’s part of my emotional pattern. I don’t quite cry at commercials but I get teary-eyed at both good – kindness – and bad – the background story of this film. I’ve had reason to cry for both reasons over the past few days, like when I wasn’t able to see a documentary on PBS because our stupid-ass station doesn’t want to show anything risky (I’m not joking folks, they show the “Lawrence Welk Show” on Seattle’s PBS station and I could not find a way to access the thing. And I complained about the cowardice of the local PBS station and how the smaller station ½ hour away was much more encouraging. And the producer of the documentary sent it to me on DVD 3 days later. And I cried. And cried. (It’s called “Rolling” and I’ll tell you more after I watch it.)

But this is about a movie called American Pastime which I never fucking heard of. It’s about baseball and the Topaz internment camp in Utah. The only actor I recognized is Gary Cole. The film is dedicated to actor Pat Morita and I know the part he would have played, which in fact was a character named “Morita” – I’m guessing it was an homage, but I’m guessing.

If you don’t recognize the name Topaz, maybe you know Manzanar. It was where Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. If you’re too young or don’t know the history, please check this out. It’s really critical that you know about it.

American Pastime tells the story of the people locked up in the camp, as well as some of their captors and the townspeople in the town where the camp was built. Telling the plots of movies is boring, so I don’t really want to do that. You can guess. It’s about racism, patriotism, it’s about how people act in war, about how stupid people can be when threatened. It’s got romance and hatred, and understanding.

One of the characters in the movie, one of the internees joins the Army. I spent some time talking with Stu about how that I could never ever understand. I sort of get it when Black people did it even when they were in segregated barracks and considered too stupid to be real soldiers. I even sort of get the men who became the code talkers. But I am not sure I understand what it takes to put on the uniform of a country that has locked you up in awful ugly horrid circumstances with no proof that you or anyone like you has done anything wrong and then go fight in the uniform. The 442nd Infantry Regiment was made up of Japanese-American soldiers, who fought and died for the country that put them in concentration camps. According to a website dedicated to the history of the service of Japanese Americans in WW 2, “The 442nd Regimental Combat Team was the most decorated unit for its size and length of service, in the entire history of the U.S. Military.”

Of course at the end of the film, a wonderful moment happens. I’m glad of that, I’m not sneering at it even if it was a little predictable because it needed to happen. The idea here was that people learned and people changed and racist white guys were made to see that “Japs” were Americans too, just like them. Hey they played baseball. They played jazz saxophone.

The film uses some documentary-style footage and fictional stories. The camp was built from apparently original blueprints of the original, one of camps built to hold Japanese and Japanese-American residents of the United States. You remember Jack Soo? He spent time in Topaz. You know George Takei? He’s written about being raised in Tule Lake and another camp in Arkansas, called Camp Rohwer And yes, Pat Morita, whose family was also at Tule Lake.

At the end of this movie, I sat and cried and could not stop. Was I crying for the ending, where someone does something good and right in the face of opposition? Yeah, probably. Was I crying because I’m angry? Yeah, I do that a lot. Was I crying because these guys went and put on uniforms representing a government that locked them up based on fear, suspicion, prejudice and not a fleck of truth? Yeah, I’d say so. Could you do that? I couldn’t. I mean, try though I m ight to imagine being male, able-bodied and all that, trying to imagine the situation which would get me to fight in a war, I cannot comprehend the courage it took to join up and fight for the regiment whose slogan was “Go For Broke”.

Here’s the IMDB page for American Pastime: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0825225/