“We Were Americans” Film Presentation with Q&A

Commissioned in 2018 by ReflectSpace Gallery under the direction of Ara Oshagan, the documentary “We Were Americans” was filmed on location at the relocation center ruins in Poston, AZ, and was directed, produced and edited by filmmaker Avo Kambourian.

Join TGHS members Katherine and Glenn Yamada in conversation with Ara Oshagan and Avo Kambourian on “We Were Americans.”

Date/Time/Registration

Thursday, May 19 @ 7 PM
Click here to register.

Details

A few months after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 to 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. The order directed them to report to local authorities for further instructions.

Among those forced to leave their homes, farms and businesses were Ted and Fusaye Yamada and their first child, Gene. They were sent to the Colorado River Relocation Center in Poston, Arizona, one of 10 relocation (incarceration) centers.

Their second son, Glenn Yamada, a longtime Glendale resident, was born at the relocation center hospital in 1943.

“We Were Americans” traces the Yamada family story before, during and after their internment. Commissioned in 2018 by ReflectSpace Gallery under the direction of Ara Oshagan, the documentary was filmed on location at the relocation center ruins in Poston and was directed, produced and edited by filmmaker Avo Kambourian.

Bios

Glenn and Katherine Peters Yamada grew up in the San Joaquin Valley and met at Fresno State. They married three days after their 1965 graduation and moved to Southern California, where Glenn was employed by Price Waterhouse and Co., a major accounting firm. They moved to Glendale in 1979.

Katherine grew to appreciate family history through her mother. She and Glenn have  searched for her roots in Holland, Prussia and Russia and traveled to Japan in search of his ancestry. She has written several family histories and, while interviewing Glenn’s mother, learned the story of their internment during the war.

Glenn retired as CEO of Glendale Eye Medical Group in 2008 and now consults for local ophthalmologists.  He chaired the Glendale-Higashiosaka Sister City committee, Hoover’s Purple Circle, and the Glendale-Crescenta Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross and was a member of the Chamber of Commerce and Boy Scout executive committees. 

Katherine, who authored a history column, “Verdugo Views,” for the Glendale News-Press for many years, served as president of the Friends of the Glendale Public Library, National Charity League, Glendale Philharmonic Committee and three PTAs and was a docent at Heritage Square.

Avo John Kambourian was born and raised in the Armenian community of Los Angeles. At the age of 10, he picked up a Mini-DV camera and cast his friends in comedic short films. He was more intrigued when his parents bought a second VCR, allowing him to edit home-made movies and produce more elaborate amateur tapes. As technology progressed, so did his interests in storytelling and editing, leading him to continue honing his craft in high school with short documentaries about his community. In 2012, he earned his BA in Communications at UC San Diego. Since college, he has climbed the post-production ladder from Post PA to Assistant Editor and Editor, working for companies such as VICE, National Geographic, Hulu, Hit RECord, and Magnolia Pictures. In 2017, he released a documentary series called Echoes of Survival, about artists whose work has been influenced by their cultural identity as Armenians in America as a result of the Armenian Genocide. The series won an Audience Award at the Pomegranate Film Festival in Toronto and was also screened at festivals in Los Angeles and New York City.

Ara Oshagan is a diasporic multi-disciplinary artist, curator and cultural worker whose practice explores collective and personal histories of dispossession, legacies of violence, identity and (un)imagined futures. He has published three books of photography and has presented his work at the Annenberg Space for Photography and TedX Yerevan. Ara has had solo exhibitions at the Seongbuk City Gallery in Seoul, LA Municipal Art Gallery, Downey Museum of Art, Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts and Tufenkian Fine Arts in Los Angeles. His work has been reviewed and featured in the LA Times, LA Weekly, NPR's Morning Edition, Fox11 News, Spectrum News, KTLA, Curbed LA, LA Magazine, Associated Press, Hyperallergic, Artillery Mag, Mother Jones and the London Times Literary Supplement, among others. His work is in the permanent collection of the Southeast Museum of Photography, the Downey Museum of Art, the Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts, and MOMA in Armenia. Ara is based in Los Angeles and is a curator at ReflectSpace Gallery.