"A Vanished Dream: Wartime Story of My Japanese Grandfather" Screens @ La Ceiba Festival
La Ceiba Festival and NHK World Japan are honored to present the screening of the film, A Vanished Dream: Wartime Story of My Japanese Grandfather. For Regina H. Boone (Photojournalist with The Richmond Free Press), her paternal grandfather was an enigma. He was a hard-working Japanese immigrant but was arrested on the day of the Pearl Harbor attack never to return home. Regina's father rarely spoke about him throughout his life. It was only 5 years ago on his deathbed that he asked Regina to find out the circumstances surrounding her grandfather's disappearance. This film follows her quest to uncover the trail of her missing Japanese grandfather.
The film will be screened free to the public via the NHK World Japan website between Sunday, May 17 - Sunday, May 24, 2020. After watching the film, please fill out this brief questionnaire about the film below.
We also invite you to join us on Saturday, May 23rd at 10am EST/ 2pm GMT via IofC USA’s Vimeo Livestream for a Q&A with Regina H. Boone, Miki Ebara (Executive Producer & Chief International Correspondent with NHK World) and moderated by Emma Ito, Education & Program Specialist with the Library of Virginia.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
Regina H. Boone is an award-winning photojournalist who has spent more than 20 years documenting human resiliency including in her hometown of Richmond, Va. working for her family’s newspaper, the Richmond Free Press, to Detroit where she worked for nearly 14 years at the Detroit Free Press. In 2016, Time magazine chose a portrait of hers as its cover image documenting the Flint water crisis.
Following graduation from Roland Park Country School in Baltimore in 1988, she attended Spelman College. After receiving a BA in Political Science in 1992 Regina taught English on the JET (Japanese English Teaching) Program while living in Osaka for three years. Once her time in Japan was over she backpacked solo through Thailand, Indonesia, India, Nepal, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Egypt and Holland. Later she studied photojournalism as a graduate student at Ohio University.
In 2018, she completed the Knight-Wallace Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where Regina began researching her Japanese grandfather, Tsuruju Miyazaki, and his wrongful arrest on December 7, 1941 in Suffolk, Va. Her father, Raymond H. Boone was just three-years-old.
In 2014 as her father was battling pancreatic cancer he asked Regina to tell their family’s story. Her goal is to continue to fulfill his last request and to shine a light on another American injustice that has caused great intergenerational pain and trauma.
Regina’s hope is that the more that is known about the American government’s inhumane polices, the more people will become intolerant of these hurtful policies and practices.
Miki Ebara is currently Executive Producer and Chief International Correspondent of NHK WORLD, the English wing of Japan’s sole public broadcaster, NHK. Her tenure with NHK began in 1987 at the NHK Osaka. Ebara has built her career as Foreign Correspondent based in London, Bangkok and New York.
As NHK’s one of the first female foreign correspondents, Ebara covered the Bosnian war, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Middle East peace process and the troubles of Northern Ireland. In 1994, Ebara returned to Tokyo where, as an anchor, she hosted and produced an array of stories for NHK’s major news programs. She covered news events such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. From 2002 to 2006, she was posted in Bangkok, where she reported on the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and Tsunami. She went on to New York, where she covered politics and global diplomacy, including the U.S. Presidential election and the United Nations. She was awarded the Ricardo Ortega Memorial Prize for her series of programs related to NPT (Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty).
Upon return to Japan, Ebara assumed the post of the Editor-in-Chief of NEWSLINE at NHK WORLD from 2013 to 2018. Ebara received a B.A. in American History from Osaka University and holds an M.A. in Southeast Asian Studies from Chulalongkorn University in Thailand.