Did you know that one of the first members of the Black Panther Party was a Japanese-American guy named Richard Aoki? I'm watching a documentary about him right now. Aoki spent 10 years of his childhood in a concentration camp during World War 2, and then he moved to West Oakland, where he quickly became a radical political activist. There were actually several Japanese-Americans in the Black Panther Party, fueled no doubt in part by the fact that they were also harshly discriminated against around the time that the civil rights movement was taking place. Aoki was appointed as Field Marshall of the Party; among other members, he was known as the mysterious man who supplied guns to Party founder Huey Newton. Such an interesting life story! The documentary follows him around on the last six years of his life and interviews friends and experts who remember him.
You can watch Aoki at the SF International Asian American Film Festival, which starts next week.
Aoki Film main page
I checked this movie out when it premiered at the Grand Lake Theatre in Oakland last year. There is definitely great content to be seen in the documentary, but I was disappointed with its execution. It definitely needed better pacing and editing, and the ending left me feeling like it was still missing something. Not sure if they changed it since that showing, but Richard Aoki is truly a legendary Asian American.
Posted by: nyankobrulee | March 04, 2010 at 11:45 PM
Aoki was only in a camp for three years. The whole war only lasted five.
Posted by: Stephen Shervais | March 05, 2010 at 09:20 AM