Blossoms & Thorns DVD $15.00 + $5.00 S/H per item

Color, 19 minutes. ©2012 Ken Kokka. All Rights Reserved.

Only skeletal outlines remain of the greenhouses that once formed the nucleus of the cohesive Japanese American flower growing community in Richmond.  Uprooted by the federal government and forcibly removed from their homes and businesses, these growers spent the durations of World War II in barren desert incarceration camps.  Picking up the pieces Ruby Adachi Hiramoto, Flora Ninomiya, and Tom Oishi recount the struggle, dismay, and resiliency of the families who returned to reclaim their place in the floral industry and in the changing Richmond neighborhood.

Personal interviews with Ruby Adachi Hiramoto, Flora Ninomiya, and Tom Oishi with reflections by Franics Aebi and Lina Aebi Hale.  Narration by broadcast journalist George T. Kiriyama and cultural historian Donna Graves.  Christopher Wong, Music; Kim B. Christensen, Re-recording Mixer; Mari Nakamura, Graphic Design. Funding provided by Contra Costa Japanese American Ceitizens Leauge and numerous individals, with support from Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park.

• “I felt, being the son of an immigrant, being in business… I was as good as a the next white man.  So when the war broke out, it was a different feeling altogether.”
  —Tom Oishi

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Pricing effective as of July 2014.