The USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture is presenting “Repeating History’s Errors: The Relevance of the Japanese American Incarceration Today.” The event will screen Abby Ginzberg and Ken Schneider’s 2017 film, And Then They Came for Us. Following the showing, Director Ginzberg will hold a discussion with Karen Korematsu, the founder and executive director of the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, and Donald K. Tamaki, a partner at Minami Tamaki LLP, Korematsu coram nobis counsel.

And Then They Came For Us won the American Bar Association 2018 Silver Gavel Award as an exemplary work which fosters the American public’s understanding of law and the legal system. Featuring George Takei and other incarcerees, this film sets the stage for a discussion about the striking and disturbing parallels between the Japanese American World War II experience and today’s rhetoric, regulations, and court decisions affecting Muslims, immigrants, and other racial groups. Should courts continue to step aside and accept the government’s actions whenever it claims that they are “plausibly related” to national security?