Yonsei and the Power of Remembering Japanese American History

Actress and filmmaker Rachel Michiko Whitney is turning her family’s layered, often unspoken history into art with her moving documentary short, Yonsei (a term that means fourth-generation Japanese American). The film has been traveling its way through the festival circuit, and Whitney sat down with Deadline to talk about what it means to honor your past while also working to create something entirely new.

What started as an attempt to tell her mother’s story as a Japanese American actress trying to make it in 1980s Hollywood evolved into something bigger. “Hollywood only viewed Asian American actors as stereotypes back then,” Whitney told Deadline. “It wasn’t until recently that I really understood that she never even had a chance to make a living because of the lack of opportunity.”

As she began to dig deeper, Whitney found herself tracing her family’s story back another generation to her grandparents, who met and fell in love at the Rohwer incarceration camp in Arkansas during World War II. That part of the family history was shrouded in mystery for decades. Her grandmother, now 100 years old, still downplays it. “She talks about her time in camp like it was summer camp,” Whitney said. “Both my grandparents never spoke about it to their children.”

That silence became the heart of Yonsei. “There’s this cycle where we convince ourselves our stories aren’t interesting or important enough to tell,” she said. “So, we don’t tell them. And then we don’t see them reflected anywhere, which just reinforces the idea that our stories don’t matter.” Even today, her grandmother insists her life story is “boring” and “no one wants to hear it.”

But Yonsei pushes back against that sentiment. “This documentary is about family,” Whitney said, “and how important it is to learn about who we come from before we were born. If we don’t, this kind of erasure happens—and maybe that’s why we question who we are.”

Her hope is that Yonsei inspires more families to break their own silences. “Why don’t we talk about our past trauma?” Whitney asks in the film. “It’s hard. But what does that mean for how we live our lives and what we pass on to the next generation?”

Yonsei recently screened at the Newport Beach Film Festival. For news on future showings, you can follow Rachel Michiko Whitney here. Check out some highlights from the film below:

Photo by Water Island Productions.