Documentary Explores Terminal Island’s Once-Vibrant Japanese Immigrant Culture
By Steve Lowery

Growing up in Downey, what I knew about San Pedro was that it was the place you went to throw up on the Catalina boat, where you went to watch that guy make glass animals at Ports O’ Call and that getting there meant going past creepy Terminal Island—all rivets and mystery—reputed to be home to a prison (it is) and a midget town (if only) where everything was three-quarter scale except the justice, which was full-sized and brutal.

It wasn’t until two weeks ago that I learned Terminal Island had once been a thriving community, a village built around fishing and settled by Japanese immigrants. I learned this while reading the synopsis for the film Furusato: The Lost Village of Terminal Island which will close the L.A. Harbor International Film Festival Sunday. The documentary, directed by David Metzler, takes a look at this community once located on the southern edge of the Port of Los Angeles and home to more than 3,000 Japanese immigrants and their children.

In many ways, Metzler’s film chronicles what is the classic American immigrant experience, as Fish Harbor, as the village was known, is a place where parents work hard and their first generation offspring assimilate into American society by watching movies and playing baseball. By the time many of that first generation, known as Nisei, began heading off to San Pedro High, the village had become an amalgam of Japanese and American culture, a place where Shinto Shrines shared space with Boy Scout meetings.

Because of the area’s physical isolation, parents felt safe letting their kids roam, explore or dive for abalone as they fished or worked in the local canneries. Its isolation allowed locals to develop a culture that was uniquely theirs, emblematic of which was the dialect they spoke, a combination of Japanese and English often incomprehensible to outsiders. Residents were well aware of their place—neither embraced by the immigrant mainstream or their adopted home—and they referred to themselves as Yogores, dark and dirty on the outside, but pure of heart.

Not at all unique was that their national loyalty would soon be questioned. In their case, that suspicion was acted upon after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It took just 48 hours to displace all of Fish Harbor’s residents, who were eventually shipped off to concentration camps so the village and their way of life became a memory, and barely that for many who grew up just minutes away.

Rob Fukuzaki, who narrates the film, was born in Torrance but grew up in Hawaii—Fish Harbor was just something he’d hear relatives talk about. When Fukuzaki, sports anchor on KABC’s “Eyewitness News,” eventually came back to the mainland, Terminal Island became all the more real. In 2002 he acted as emcee for a group of former residents who’d formed a group called the Terminal Islanders in 1971 and dedicated a memorial on the site of their former home. Still, he was surprised when Metzler asked him to narrate the film.

“David found out my relatives were from Terminal Island and a lot of the home movies used in the film were shot by my great uncle Ben Fukuzaki. He thought it’d be a nice connection but, to be honest, from the very beginning, I felt a little out of place. I thought this shouldn’t be me, it should be someone who was there, who has more of a direct connection. But I was honored to be asked and once I said yes I wanted to make it right.”

For Fukuzaki that meant discovering the right tone. Anyone familiar with his work knows of his booming voice—most of all him—so when he first got into the studio he tried to tone it down.

“I tried to make it really somber,” he said. “The Mr. Announcer voice was not going to work.”

But it wasn’t until he was almost done with the film that he found his voice.

“I was about three-quarters of the way through when I started to get it,” he said. “I was telling this story about peoples’ homes and it really needed a conversational tone to it. So when I finished I asked David if I could do the whole thing over again. I wanted to make it right. It was a pride thing, I wanted to represent my family right and I’m really happy I did it again. Only thing was I was exhausted afterward and I still had to do the 11 o’clock news.”

Fukuzaki will be present Sunday to answer questions after the film, which on the day billed as “DocSunday” will be preceded by I Build the Tower, the story of Simon Rodia, the man who built the Watts Towers. It turns out he was an Italian immigrant. I didn’t know that either and I’m a descendant of Italian immigrants. Well, it just goes to show you that I really need to pay more attention to stuff.

FURUSATO: THE LOST VILLAGE OF TERMINAL ISLAND SCREENS AT THE L.A. HARBOR FILM FESTIVAL | WARNER GRAND THEATRE | 478 W 6TH ST | SAN PEDRO | 90731 | 310.548.7672 | LAHARBORFILMFEST.COM. SUN 5:15 PM. $8-10. FESTIVAL BEGINS THURSDAY. VISIT WEBSITE FOR MORE INFORMATION.