Fumiko Hayashida: The Woman Behind the Symbol

Filmmaker Lucy Ostrander's documentary combines archival photos/footage together with interviews to tell the story of Fumiko Hayashida, whose life was uprooted when she and her family were sent to the Manzanar internment camp in California during World War II. Aged 31 in 1942 when the “relocation” of 110,000 Japanese Americans began—following the issuance of Executive Order 9066—pregnant mother of two Hayashida would be captured in an iconic photo that depicts a proud-looking well-dressed woman with a veiled hat, matching purse, and wedding ring, holding a sleeping baby with a teddy bear (both mother and child with ID tags hanging from their coats). Touching on her life, from being born to immigrant parents on Bainbridge Island, WA, to her marriage to a successful strawberry farmer, Hayashida here describes being worried about her children more than herself after the family was given a week to settle affairs and relocate, and also reminisces about the barracks at Manzanar and the family's later move to the worse equipped Minidoka center in Idaho (the film also follows Hayashida and her daughter on a 2008 12-hour pilgrimage back to Minidoka). After the family returned to the island in 1945, they struggled, and did not speak publicly about their ordeal until the 1990s. However, Hayashida's strength and courage have helped bring greater awareness to a painful and ugly chapter in U.S. history, while her testimony before a congressional committee was instrumental in passing a bill that will create an interpretive center at the dock site where the families were taken from their homes. Recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (J. Williams-Wood)