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Bittersweet T0 a kid, what is a parent but an endearing, loving; sometimes frustrating, annoying old person whose life is no more or less than the sum of his or her daily routine? In short, someone quite boring.
‘River’ honors
dad’s memory
Details of Jerry Fujikawa's
life were uncovered by his
daughter after his deathBy Nadine Kam
Star-BulletinImagine Cynthia Gates Fujikawa's surprise in discovering there was more to her self-effacing, singing-challenged dad than she imagined. Not that Jerry Fujikawa was in any way boring. He was a Broadway actor who branched out into character roles in television and film in the '50s through '80s. His credits stretched from "Chinatown" to "Kung Fu" to "Twilight Zone" to playing Whiplash Wang on "M*A*S*H" and Uncle Matsu on "Mr. T and Tina."
This was the part of Jerry's life visible to the world.
After his death, as Fujikawa gathered the mementos of his life -- the photos, movie posters, newspaper clippings, every pay stub and playbill from his acting career -- she also discovered something strange. As meticulous as Jerry Fujikawa had been about keeping items from 1949 up to his death in 1983, it seemed he had been just as meticulous as erasing the 36 years from his birth in Salinas, Calif., in 1912, up through 1948.
ON SCREEN
What: Day of Remembrance, featuring the film, "Old Man River." Cynthia Gates Fujikawa will speak about the work at a question-and-answer session after the screening
Cynthia Gates Fujikawa's search for her father's story is documented in her one-woman show turned documentary film, "Old Man River." The film shows Fujikawa on stage in front of the screen, with just a few props. As she tells her dad's story, images from his film and TV appearances, the war years and her childhood appear.
The film -- named Best Documentary Feature at the Cinequest San Jose Film Festival in 1999 -- will be screened at 2 p.m. Monday in the University of Hawaii Art Auditorium in recognition of the Day of Remembrance.
The Honolulu Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League annually sponsors the Day of Remembrance to commemorate Feb. 19, 1942, the day president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The act, a response to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, gave the OK for the incarceration of more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living in the United States. Fujikawa's family was among those interned at Manzanar in California.
"The reason the film was selected to be shown here might have to do with the fact that the Day of Remembrance (in New York City, 1994) is what influenced me to look into my own heritage and my own identification with these events," said Fujikawa, who began getting a sense of her dad's history when she was an 8th grader trying to write a school paper on World War II. Realizing her dad lived through the war years, she thought she could ask him questions and record his answers. The quick fix was not to be.
The only details she could glean of camp life were along the lines of what he ate for dinner -- beans, sometimes with franks -- and what he did for fun -- play basketball.This didn't exactly wow the other kids. Her reading followed that of a student who had written about the Holocaust, citing examples of torture, death and human experiments. Fujikawa's classmates in Los Angeles couldn't grasp the subtler horror of disregard for human rights that was at the heart of both the Nazi and American solutions.
Then, her mom dropped more tantalizing tidbits about "dad's first wife," adding that he also had another family of three children, "two boys, dead, one girl, possibly living," who would have been 20 years older than Cynthia. The film also documents her search for her half-sister.
(All will be revealed in the screening of the documentary.)
After graduating from high school, Cynthia Gates Fujikawa continued to press her father about the details of his life, but he still refused to talk.
She pursued an acting career of her own, studying at San Francisco State University and receiving an MFA in acting at the American Conservatory Theatre.
Although Fujikawa is half Caucasian, one of her first roles was as a stereotypical Japanese waitress, a role she knew well by watching the many stereotypes played by her father.
"My experience was very different from my dad's. Because I'm hapa, I could play some of the stereotypes, but my experiences were more negative because I didn't fit any clear stereotype, not that I would have wanted that but that's what you're stuck with.
"I was expected to be like Nancy Kwan, and I'm not. Things are better now than 20 years ago. Now, it's hip to be of mixed race, but even that's a stereotype.
"That's why it's so important for young actors, for any creative person, to create their own roles. That was my solution to things, to tell my own story, our story."
She moved to New York and in 1995 was a resident artist at the internationally acclaimed Mabou Mines theater, where "Old Man River" received its first workshop.
"Old Man River" had its world premiere in New York in 1997. A year later, Fujikawa took her act to Los Angeles, where filmmaker Allan Holzman -- an Emmy, CableAce and Peabody award winner -- approached her about turning "Old Man River" into a documentary film.
She put him off, but a week before the show was to close, he offered to film her on stage "just for archival purposes."
"We sat down and talked about how to shoot it. We decided to take an improvisational approach. He just put the camera on and I did my show. We did a couple of days without the audience, with me just talking to him, to the camera."
"Old Man River" has been on the festival circuit ever since and Fujikawa said response nationwide has been positive.
"People are really moved. They get a sense of the importance of family history, talking to their relatives. I frequently get people sharing their stories with me. One woman had a brother she never met; people tell me they always wanted to talk to their grandparents and now they're gone. They really get a sense that time is precious."
In cities where there are a lot of Japanese Americans, she said, "There's still kind of a reserve among nisei about talking about the camps, but they get excited when they see sansei who are vocal, who have something to say.
"I'm lucky in that a good friend of my father's has been a pen pal. He tells me about his feelings about his war experiences with racism. He's in his 80s and very open about it. He just never had anybody to talk with."
She can't help but think her father would have opened up if he had lived.
"Reserve is characteristic of people in his generation. They were told to keep things to themselves, but as time has passed, they are feeling the need to tell their stories. I've found people in their 80s and 90s who have been more willing to talk."
To others who want to record family histories, she said, "It's worth it to keep trying. I regret not having been more aggressive with my dad, but I'm fortunate that his brother and sister have been open to talking. I don't think this would have been true 20 years ago. Keep trying."
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