Former NFL star Scott Fujita and his father take part in discussing a documentary about incarceration, justice and the football team at Heart Mountain.

By MIKEY HIRANO CULROSS
RAFU SPORTS EDITOR

“The war and all the problems of the camp were adult stuff. For us kids, we just wondered if we’re going to go out and play football or go hiking. That was our main concern,” recalled Bacon Sakatani about the years of his youth spent inside the Heart Mountain Relocation Center during World War II.

The 95-year-old’s stories of youthful innocence in incarceration are in stark contrast to what was happening to his family and the more than 10,000 others who were confined by the U.S. government at Heart Mountain in a remote region of Wyoming from 1942 to 1945, in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Sakatani was part of a panel discussion on May 27 at the NFL offices and studios in El Segundo, following a screening of the documentary short film “9066: Fear, Football & the Theft of Freedom.” The screening was held as part of AAPI Heritage month observances.

The film tells the story of how families at the 10 wartime incarceration camps dealt with their imprisonment, mainly those at Heart Mountain, and specifically about the high school football team that was formed inside the camp.

Former NFL lineman and Super Bowl champion Scott Fujita narrates “9066” and is featured along with his father, Rodney. The elder Fujita was born at the Gila River War Relocation Center in Arizona.

“It was an opportunity for me to take something that was otherwise horrible and start a meaningful dialogue,” Scott Fujita said during the discussion. “I just saw myself as a sort of a conduit to tell this story and to help be a part of the bigger conversation.”

Unable to have children of their own, Rodney and Helen Fujita adopted Scott as an infant. The former star for the New Orleans Saints and three other teams has long been open and vocal about his adoption, his ties to the Nikkei community, and the injustice of the wartime incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans.

“I recognize I don’t have a drop of Japanese blood running through my body, but being the big white guy playing football with a Japanese last name, people would ask abut that,” he explained.

Rodney said he has no memories of being in camp, and at first was hesitant to participate in the making of the documentary, which was inspired by Bradford Pearson’s book “The Eagles of Heart Mountain: A True Story of Football, Incarceration, and Resistance in World War II America.”

“My parents rarely spoke about it, but I knew there was a lot of pain, a lot of suffering,” Rodney said. “This film really brings incarceration to the forefront, and I’m so thankful for that. Young men like me gave it their all, they loved the sport of football, and they did the best they could.”

The film features several former Heart Mountain incarcerees, including Bacon Sakatani, Frank Murakami, Mike Hachimonji, George Iseri and Hal Keimi. Historian Brian Niiya and Alan Simpson, the late former U.S. senator from Wyoming, offer context.

“It gave everybody in the camp a sense of pride, living in these camp conditions, that they could put together [a team] and play the so-called all-American game called football and be very competitive against outside schools,” Iseri said in the film, recalling how the only uniform pants available to him were several sizes too large and that players stacked sheets of cardboard to use as padding. “It was a very desolate place, but everyone who was there made the best of it.”

The Eagles, made up around 40 players – only three of whom had any high school experience – were outsized and lacked experience, but managed to arrange for games against some local high schools. They won their first game over the Worland Warriors, 7-0, downing a squad with a long-established program and history of titles.

It was a truly unique situation that the Eagles could only play home games against visiting teams from in and around the town of Cody, because they were imprisoned.

Among the Eagles players was their center, a relatively large teenager named George Yoshinaga, who went on to be one of the most widely read Japanese American journalists in the country. His “Horse’s Mouth” column appeared for decades in The Kashu Mainichiand The Rafu Shimpo.

“He had the same kid attitude as Bacon, so playing on the football team was a good outlet for him, also because he was one of the guys who had played high school football,” said Yoshinaga’s son, Paul, who was on the discussion panel in El Segundo.

“He left a wealth of writing and photographs,” Paul said of his father, who died in 2015. “He shared stories about the wind blowing through the barracks that were made of just wood and tarpaper, so the families who lived there would do their best to make as habitable as possible.”

Scott and Rodney traveled to the former Heart Mountain site for the film, a trip that only bolstered Scott’s respect and reverence for the resolve shown by incarcerees.

“More than anything else, I’m proud of my dad and his family, and of Bacon and everyone who was impacted and the way they endured. For me, there was a lot of value in being on site and braving the cold, even for the 45 minutes we were out there. It gave me a real sense of ‘Wow, this is what it was like.’”

“Being there helped me connect to the story in a deeper way and to those who lived it,” Scott continued. “It speaks to the power of story and my opportunity to tell the story … We’re in a period of time now when words like ‘diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ are under assault. Regardless of one’s politics, I think we all recognize the value of telling unique stories, diverse stories from diverse perspectives.

“There are still people who hear about this for the very first time; I find that shocking. It turns the light on for a lot of people who may otherwise never had heard of it.”

Scott illustrated the point by recalling a run-in with a new teammate in the Saints’ training room during his NFL days.

“He was on the training table next to me and didn’t know this story. He heard us talking about it and said he remembered his grandfather talking about it, and saying how ‘all those Japs got what they deserved.’ It was one of those moments when you could have heard a pin drop. Everybody looked at me like, ‘Oh s–t, Fujita’s about to go kill this guy.’”

Instead, the 6-foot-5, 250-pound linebacker collected himself and turned the incident into a genuine teachable moment.

“I was able to sit down with this teammate and have a conversation about it, and the perspective I have about it through the exposure I have though my family,” he recalled. “Without hesitation, he apologized and said,’Scott, I’m so sorry, I had no idea.’ That’s the reason we tell these stories.”

“9066: Fear, Football & the Theft of Freedom” is being shopped around to film festivals and is shown in rotation on the NFL Network. There has been some suggestion to adapt the film into a full-length feature.

Sakatani reiterated the importance of getting stories like this out to a wider audience, for those, like him as a teenager, who may not be aware of similar unjust treatment in our country.

“My parents were the ones who suffered. I didn’t really have the feeling then of the injustice. I was just tagging along with my parents,” he said. “They were immigrants, foreign-born, but I was American. No one came to me and told me that I had committed any crime and should be in the camp. I was just a kid.”

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