Where the film succeeds best is drawing us into the world of the children, and seeing this life and death scenario through their eyes. The adults quickly become secondary, and indeed, the principal deflects the concerns of parents and other staff members, asking them to trust the students and their teacher, who himself keeps to the periphery as much as possible.

I’m always grateful to Jesse for his guidance and inspiration in my filmmaking life. Our relationship changed over the years, notably when I shifted my focus to being a producer instead of a filmmaker. I suspect my decision was bittersweet for Jesse, since it was clear I had taken his beliefs in mentorship and our collective creative future to heart. But it was also true that Jesse himself never gave up on the practice of actually making films, regardless whatever else he was doing as a “job”, right to the very end. I, on the other hand, now only make films vicariously, through the choices of filmmakers and films I produce and support.

For twenty five years during and after the war years, the Japanese cemetery in Cumberland was left unattended and it returned to it natural forest-like state. Also, there was vandalism. In the 1960s, Sensei S. K. Ikuta who was the resident Sensei of the Vancouver Buddhist Temple, with the assistance of the Vancouver JCCA, had a service club in Comox Valley gather the scattered head stones and place them in a memorial monument. Pre-Second World War deceased in the Comox Valley totaled one hundred ninety eight. Only a small number of head stones are mounted in the monument.

On Wednesday January 27, schools in Salmon Arm, BC were closed so…