A Honolulu resident "goes national" tomorrow, in a PBS documentary about Big Bands formed by Japanese Americans forced into internment camps during World War II.
She's former swing singer Joy Takeshita Teraoka (pictured left), who lived in the Heart Mountain, Wyoming "war relocation center" when she was a teenager. This week, our team gave a sneak preview of the documentary to some of Joy's fellow residents at the Kahala Nui retirement community in Honolulu (pictured right).
Look for Joy in an hour-long PBS HAWAII PRESENTS Searchlight Serenade: Big Bands in the WWII Japanese American Incarceration Camps (Thurs., Jan. 31, 2012, 9:00 pm). It tells her story along with those of eight other detainees at other camps who created a soulful escape. Their accounts are accompanied by an evocative animation created from woodcuts and drawings. More than 120,000 Japanese Americans lived in incarceration camps during World War II and they tried to create a sense of normalcy in a situation that was anything but normal.
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