The story of Japanese war brides is one of both love and prejudice.
They came with their military husbands to the United States after World War II and were treated as the enemy from a foreign land. At the same time, Japanese Americans viewed them as prostitutes.
“Japanese-Americans had been interned in prison camps during the war, and when they came out they were so anxious to prove themselves to be true Americans that they did not want to be associated with any hint of something amiss,” said Lucy Craft.
Craft is a journalist and one of three daughters of war brides who are producing a documentary on the war bride experience, reports the Japan Times. Her co-producers are Karen Kasmauski, 61, a National Geographic photographer, and Kathryn Tolbert , 62, an editor at The Washington Post. They are scheduled to begin shooting their film Fall Seven Times, Get Up Eight: The Japanese War Brides next month. Their parents were three of the 50,000 war brides who came to the US
“Hostility to Japan as a nation meant that Japanese women were the last foreign wives to be allowed to move to the U.S.,” says Craft. “This was a time when interracial marriage was prohibited in many states.”
Their fundraising campaign on Kickstarter has so far raised more then $25,000. You can watch a preview of their film below.
